Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Landmark Returns

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Landmark Beer Co., of Syracuse, New York, after a bit of a false start, has switxhed their contract brewery to Wagner Valley Brewing and the first two beers from their new relationship should be out shortly. Brewer/owner Kiernan May reworked the recipe for his India Red Ale (which was previously available beginning in 2004) and re-named it Colonel Hops Red Ale.

From the press release:

The former India Red Ale will be renamed Colonel Hops Red Ale. May’s new recipe has three times as much hops as the old beer, and since those hops are Centennial and Cascade, it will have the citrusy overtones and bitterness of a classic West Coast pale ale. It’ll be about 6 percent alcohol, or about a percentage point higher than a Budweiser.

The second beer, brand new, is Vanilla Bean Brown Ale. It’s an English-style brown ale, with the addition of Madagascar vanilla beans. It’s 4.8 percent alcohol.

Beer Remains on Top — This Year Gallup Agrees

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According to a press release from Anheuser-Busch, a recent Gallup Poll indicates that people were more truthful this year about their favorite alcoholic beverage. Last year’s poll appeared to indicate that wine was overtaking beer, despite the fact that beer outsells wine by an almost 4-to-1 ratio, and has for many years. I never believed last year’s poll and this year’s, having put beer once more on top, seems to confirm my earlier suspicions.

Speculation last year ranged from people giving the answer wine as their favorite because of its perception of greater sophistication to problems with the sample taken, such as the one earlier this year by Merrill Research. In other words, asking people what their favorite is may not always produce highly accurate results since the subject itself is so subjective. Sales figures, on the other hand, are more reliable and they have shown beer far in the lead for years and years.

From the press release:

Findings from Gallup’s annual poll on Americans’ alcohol and drinking habits demonstrate adult consumer consumption of wine has decreased, while consumption of beer has increased five percentage points since July 2005.

Of those Americans who drink alcohol, 41 percent most often drink beer. Beer is the largest segment in the alcohol beverage category in both volume and dollar sales, and accounts for nearly 60 percent of all alcohol beverage servings.

A-B also used the press release to tacitly suggest that their Here’s to Beer campaign was responsible for the turnaround by including information about it directly following the Gallup Poll story.

Latrobe Brewery Workers Approve New Contract

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Union employees of the Latrobe Brewery voted 113-9 yesterday to approve a new -two-year contract with City Brewery of La Crosse, Wisconsin. It was undoubtedly not exactly a level playing field, but the Latrobe brewery workers agreed to pay cuts and reduced vacation time in an effort to save their jobs.

A few months ago when City Brewery was negotiating to purchase the Coors brewing facility in Memphis, Tennessee, Teamsters rejected City’s contract offer expecting them to make a counter-offer. Instead City Brewery walked away from the deal. That fact had to be on the mind of brewery workers when it came time to vote yesterday.

Union officials were quoted as saying that the concessions were relatively minor and not beyond expectations. Of course, City Brewery still has to close the deal with InBev.

Union official George Sharkey indicated that City Brewery is planning a 24-ounce canning line for the Latrobe brewery. Rumors also are floating around about the possibility of Latrobe starting up a new proprietary brand. The plant will close shortly, on July 31, with only a “skeleton crew” remaining to keep the refrigeration units in working order. No word yet on when the brewery might re-open full-time again.

Beer Can Regatta

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Today is the 32nd annual Beer Can Regatta, a boat race in which all the ships are made entirely of beer cans. It takes place in Darwin, Australia, in the Northwest Territories, which looks to be about in the center of Australia on the northern edge.

A couple of beer can regatta boats, made entirely of beer cans.
 

The history of the event is a great example of creative problem solving:

The Darwin beer can regatta started as an unusual by-product of the devastation caused to Darwin by “Cyclone Tracy” in 1974.

Owing to the considerable damage caused by the cyclone, large quantities of materials and manpower from interstate were brought to Darwin to assist in the rebuilding of the city.

As many of the rebuilding work force personnel were from the southern states, and were not used to the humidity, the consumption of canned beer increased dramatically.

This resulted in an abundance of empty beer cans littering the many work sites around Darwin, and as there were no recycling programmes in effect at the time, the beer cans became a litter problem.

A Darwin citizen, Lutz Frankensfeld, came up with the suggestion that they should hold a boat race, with all the boats fabricated out of beer cans. The theory was that this would give the local population and workers alike, an incentive to clear up some of the empty beer cans, and at the same time have a day of fun.

The inaugural beer can race in 1975 was an instant success, and it was decided that it would be an annual event.

Over the years it has developed into a major event on the Darwin social calendar, it is now run by the local Lion’s Club. Organised by various groups over the years it went from success to success, with boat entries ranging in numbers from 15 to 30, and in size from 1 metre to 12 metres.

A beer can boat on the high seas.
 

The race is for four adults in one boat, though there is a junior division for kids using only soda cans. There are six pages of rules but it all boils down to having the right spirit, especially in the funny “Ten Canmandments.” It looks like they’ve added all sorts of fun events over the years and this looks like it would be one great event to attend. Plus I’d much rather be on a beach in Australia than stuck in the heatwave that is California right now.

Hopping in Maine

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When Rick Courcy retired, he wanted to get out of the city and so moved his family from Masschusetts to Oxford County, Maine, known as the “Gemstone Capital of Maine.” He settled on a 90-acre farm in Paris, with a view of Mount Washington.

Mount Washington (along with Mount Madison) seen from the Appalachian Trail.

Courcy was whiling away his time watching television while still trying to figure out what unique crop to grow when he saw a beer ad and was hit by inspiration. So he hopped up and planted organic hops, built the requisite trellises and has spoken to area brewers who are interested in using locally grown hops. He’s called his hop farm Paris View Farm. According to John Harker from Maine’s Department of Agriculture, Courcy is now the only commercial hop grower in the state.

Now that’s great news. I don’t think I realized hops would grow in Maine’s climate but according to Harker, “hops used to be grown in nearly every farmer’s backyard.” I always thought the reason spruce and other plants were common as a hop substitute throughout New England was because hops wouldn’t easily grow there. Oh well, maybe it’s global warming.

UPDATE 7/25: Brendan from Beerdata.org did a really nice more in-depth piece on this story last week.

Connecticut Gives 21st Amendment Thumbs Up

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The Day, an independent newspaper headquarted in, of all places, New London, Connecticut, has a review in today’s paper of 21st Amendment’s Watermelon Wheat beer in a can. Author Tim Cotter has a nice little story about fruit and spices used in beer and apparently Pete Slosberg gave him a can of Shaun’s Watermelon Wheat during a recent visit to Connecticut. The paper also ran a one of my photos of Shaun and Nico that I took during our Ball Plant tour, which was nice.

Tim’s Tasting Notes:

After popping open the can I passed it around the house to see if anyone could detect a whiff of watermelon. Everyone recognized something fruity but no one was able to nail it as watermelon. I took one sip from the can and then poured it into a glass. The wheat left the beer cloudy in the glass. The taste grew on me, and about halfway through the watermelon flavor was unmistakable. I like my watermelon straight from the fridge — as cold as possible — and I wish I had chilled this can more. All in all, a refreshing summer brew.

Brit Antrim Returning to the Mainland

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Brit Antrim, who was formerly the head brewer and production manager for Anderson Valley Brewing from 1996 to 2003, moved to Hawaii three years ago to take a position as production manager at Kona Brewing. I found out yesterday that he’s not going to be renewing his contract and will be returning to the mainland after he trains his replacement. Brit is a great person and a terrific brewer. If you need an excellent brewer, production manager or both, he’s your man. If you’re interested, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll put you in touch with Brit.

Britt Antrim (at left), Production Manager of Kona Brewing with Rich Tucciarone, Kona’s head brewer, at last year’s GABF.

From the Glass-Lined Tanks of Old … St. Louis?

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Now that Anheuser-Busch will be brewing Rolling Rock at their facility in Newark, New Jersey, I expected they’d have to change some of the packaging. But in a press release from last Friday, A-B announced their intention to not change almost anything. I suppose that’s not too much of a surprise since their stated goal is to “produce the same beer and maintain its traditional taste,” according to Doug Muhleman, chief brewmaster of Anheuser-Busch.

Andy Goeler, vice president, Import, Craft and Specialty Group, Anheuser- Busch, Inc. said “[o]ur priority is to honor the Rolling Rock brand and its traditions. One way we’re doing this is through our packaging. The Rolling Rock pledge is an historic part of this brand, along with the mysterious ’33’ and the label’s other features. We wanted to take all steps possible to honor this tradition, so we plan to quote the pledge on the label in a tribute to this rich, proud history.”

Next month, when the beer will begin being brewed in New Jersey, the label will continue to read:

“From the glass-lined tanks of old Latrobe,
we tender this premium beer for your enjoyment,
as a tribute to your good taste.
It comes from the mountain springs to you.”

Other items printed on the bottle, including the steeplechase, horse and mysterious “33” will also remain unchanged.

Now is it just me or won’t it be pretty hard to claim that the beer is “from the glass-lined tanks of old Latrobe” when it’s brewed in Newark? Does that kind of announced deception spun as “honoring tradition” bother anyone else? It’s one thing to quietly keep the label intact, but to shout that you’re paying “tribute to this rich, proud history” while not, in fact, doing so seems arrogant in the extreme to me. If A-B had really cared about the tradition of this beer, they would have bought the brewery and continued making it in Latrobe. That would have honored the tradition and paid tribute to its history. This is spin and propaganda at its most openly brash. Curiously, this press release does not appear, at least as far as I can tell, on their corporate website where their other press releases reside. Instead, it came through PR Newswire, an online service that disseminates press releases to journalists and other industry watchers. Draw your own conclusions for that, but it seems at least a little odd.

Also from the press release:

Rolling Rock bottles will continue to have a two-color painted label on green glass from the same supplier in Pennsylvania. The front label will continue to recognize Latrobe Brewing Co., along with a required geographic designation. Anheuser-Busch will first brew Rolling Rock in the northeast, but expansion to other locations is expected. Therefore, the company is opting to place its St. Louis headquarters on the bottle.

Well that seems reasonable. A-B will be making Rolling Rock in Newark, New Jersey, stating on the bottle that it’s “from the glass-lined tanks of old Latrobe” (Pennsylvania) and listing its origin as St. Louis, Missouri. Let’s review once more the letter A-B sent to All About Beer magazine in response to some labeling criticisms beer writer Fred Eckhardt had made in a 1997 article.

We don’t take issue with contract brewing — we just think beer drinkers have the right to know who really brews their beer. We, along with many other traditional brewers and beer enthusiasts, object to those who mislead consumers by marketing their beers as “craft brewed,” when in fact their beers are made in large breweries.

It may not be a perfect fit, but it still shows the King has an arbitrary sense of moral righteousness and some curious notions of right and wrong, very much in the mold of Louis XIV and other Old World royalty. It’s wrong if they do it but when we do it we’re just “honoring tradition.” Uh-huh. We are not amused.

Jesus for the King of Beers

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Pop artist Ron English has been posting public works — most of them illegal billboards — for years now. He claims to have done more than a thousand of them. Some of them are amazing, insightful and poignant. He did one which showed Jesus Christ with a bottle of Bud and the text, “The King of the Jews, For the King of Beers.”

A billboard created by popaganda artist Ron English
 

In Houston, Texas a few weeks ago — and suspiciously around the same day that a new exhibition began at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, which included the work of Ron English — another billboard with a similar message appeared.

A billboard that appeared June 21 in Houston, Texas
 

According to the Houston Chronicle, “English denied any direct connection to the Houston billboards and said he no longer posts illegal signs in Texas, where legal penalties are far stiffer than in the Northeast.” In Texas, it’s a misdemeanor carrying up to six months jail time and a $2,000 fine.

Clear Channel Outdoor, a division of Clear Channel the giant media conglomerate who has all but ruined radio in our lifetime, owns the billboard, which is not much of a surprise since they own almost all of them you see. “A company spokesman said, the billboard — like at least two others in the past two months — was hijacked” and not paid for. Billboards the size of the Jesus one (6 by 12 feet) run from $300-500 per month, according to Clear Channel. After about two weeks, the Jesus billboard has now been replaced with a paying customer’s advert.

Apparently it’s wildly popular — love it or hate it — and the billlboard’s tagline is currently one of the top searches on Google. Technorati reports over 1,600 (make that 1,601) posts about the billboard.

Also from the Chronicle article:

What does it mean? The faux-Budweiser ad points to the unscrupulous nature of advertising, Ryan Perry, who works at the Station museum, said. “I think it says that nothing is sacred. That if Jesus sells beer, advertisers wouldn’t mind using him.”

Frankly, the two look dissimilar enough that it would be surprising if it turned out English did it, though I suspect the vandals were aware of his art and the exhibition in town. Personally, I find almost all advertising insulting and annoying so I find things that poke fun at it the best kind of social commentary. This is what the magazine Adbusters is dedicated to doing and I think Ron English’s swipes at modern advertising are likewise necessary to expose the lengths to which corporations will go to hawk their wares. The fact that this one was about beer was just icing on the cake.

Coors DWI: A Different Take

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Pete Coors, family scion of Coors Brewing Co. (now Molson Coors) was famously arrested on a drunk driving charge in late May for which his license has now been revoked. I’m sure much will be made of this by the neo-prohibitionist movement, especially since Pete had personally overseen Coors’ “21 Means 21” responsible driving program. Coors himself has said. “I made a mistake. I should have planned ahead for a ride.” But did he really make a mistake?


(AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)		 Predictably, because of who Pete Coors is, this has made the rounds of all the major and minor news outlets, many pointing out the irony of Coors’ responsible drinking program and this incident. But I think there’s a larger issue that needs revisiting. This is an excellent example of how far over the edge neo-prohibitionist groups have gone in their quest to remove alcohol once more from society.

According to Pete Coors’ statement, he had “consumed a beer about 30 minutes before leaving a wedding.” He then ran a stop sign one block from his home in Golden, Colorado, and police stopped him in his driveway. According to the Washington Post, “[i]n one breath test, he registered a blood alcohol level of 0.073 percent. In a second, 20 minutes later, he registered 0.088. In Colorado a blood alcohol count of 0.05 results in a driving while impaired charge, while a count of 0.08 results in driving under the influence.”

But let’s assume Pete’s statement is correct. That means an average size person isn’t able to have even one beer thirty minutes before getting into a car. And I’ll assume he was drinking a Coors beer, which isn’t exactly a strong one. If the Colorado standard is 0.05% to be considered “impaired,” then one Coors was more than enough to make virtually any person unable to have even one beer while out at a social function. It’s a wonder any bars are even open in Colorado anymore. This is an excellent illustration of just how far the pendulum has swung in favor of the neo-prohibitionists. MADD and other similar organizations have been tireless in lowering the acceptable blood alcohol level in state after state. And no politician wants to be seen as being for drunk driving, a fact these vultures prey upon. But let’s look again at what Pete did that signaled the Colorado Highway Patrol that he was a candidate for suspicion. He ran a stop sign one block from his house, and made it there safely since that’s where the police arrested him. And not even ran it, but in the words of the arresting officer, “rolled through [the] stop sign.” In many places that’s known as a “California stop.” Now who among you hasn’t ever done that, especially right by your house where you’re intimately familiar with the driving patterns. At worst, he should have been cited for the stop sign and that’s it.

But over 25 years of scare-mongering tactics have even made police more apt to assume alcohol is involved in practically everything. You could just about here the officer’s mind whirring as he read the name on the license, assuming he didn’t already know who he was pulling over. Once he knew who he had, you just know a breath test was in order. Because there’s nothing else that’s been reported that suggests there was any other probable cause to test for alcohol. Certainly not “rolling through a stop sign” automatically rises to that level and I have a very hard time believing a 59-year old man who’d had one drink thirty minutes before leaving a wedding (plus whatever his driving time home was) would have appeared very drunk at all. It’s ridiculous in the extreme.

I realize that it’s unpopular to say so, but we’ve gone too far in punishing the majority for the sins of the minority. We do it all the time. Most of our laws are based on this theme. Look at airport security for a recent example. Certainly we need security at the airport, but all that’s really happened is people are more and more inconvenienced for very little, if any, benefit to increasing actual security. Who believes you’re safer flying now due to the “heightened security” at the airport? Investigation and surveys continually prove otherwise. The fact is if a terrorist really wants to harm a plane, he’ll figure out a way, and it won’t be by putting a bomb in his shoe even though everyone now has to take off their shoes because that happened just one time. But every problem demands that politicians make some show of addressing the problem. Usually this takes the form of new laws, procedures, etc. which do no real good and serve only to get them re-elected while the measures themselves really just screw the rest of us.

And so it is with drunk driving laws. There will always be people too stupid to know when not to get behind the wheel of a car. Before MADD, I concede that society didn’t handle those problem people very well and they truly were — and are — a menace. But making it impossible for the rest of us who maybe can exercise reasonable judgment about whether to drive or not was not the only solution, and it certainly wasn’t the best solution. Personally, I hate paternalistic laws that seek to tell people how to behave. Seat belts are a good example of this. Now I agree that we should all wear seat belts, but I bristle at the idea that it’s a law. It should never have been a law. People should have been encouraged to wear them but if they were too stupid to listen that’s where it should have ended.

But by lowering the blood alcohol standards, the number of people arrested for driving drunk has predictably gone up. Are the roads safer now? The statistics at MADD don’t seem to suggest that. The ones I looked at appear to simply fan the flames of fear and intimidation. One in every 121 drivers has been arrested for driving drunk. Does that seem even remotely reasonable? Are there less alcohol-related accidents now than before 1980? It only appears everything is getting worse, which means MADD can stay in business and keep soliciting funding for years to come without really solving the problem.

By now, perhaps you think I’m advocating driving drunk. Nothing could be farther from the truth. But how we define what being drunk is and how we deal with a person who showed poor judgment by driving when he or she was in no condition to do so, is at the heart of this problem. Making the standard for being intoxicated lower and lower has not made the roads safer and has victimized thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent people. It has had a chilling effect on legitimate businesses that serve alcohol and made most Americans afraid to get behind the wheel if alcohol has touched their lips at all. Is that really the kind of society we want to live in? We should definitely punish those people who show time and time again that they cannot be trusted to make good decisions. Such people are menaces to society and they should not be allowed to drive and should be punished for any crimes they commit. And most of the crimes a person could be charged with existed before 1980, such as vehicular manslaughter, unsafe driving, etc.

So all MADD did was make more people vulnerable to prosecution. The founder of MADD, Candy Lightner, began the neo-prohibitionist movement after her 13-year old daughter was killed by a drunk driver who “had three prior drunk driving convictions and was out on bail from a hit-and-run arrest two days earlier.” I would have been pissed off, too, and I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if my son, Porter, or my daughter, Alice, was taken from me in that way. But the way to have addressed that problem was to strengthen enforcement of drunk driving as it existed. That person should never have been allowed behind the wheel two days before or after the second or third conviction. The justice system failed in that case and was definitely in need of reform. I don’t think anyone would dispute that.

But out of that incident, everyone else who lives in our society has been punished for that person’s crime. We’ve all become the victim of people’s grief run amuck. An entire industry has been stigmatized as evil because some people can’t enjoy it responsibly. We all have suffered because of those folks and they’re the ones who deserve to be punished. There’s nothing I hate worse than a bad drunk. My stepfather was one. And I know a few others, even a couple in the beer business. I hate being around them. They’re the problem, there’s no doubt of that.

Contrast that with mobile phone use in an automobile, which has been shown to impair a person’s driving as much as or in some cases more than that of a drunk person. Where is the outrage toward phone companies that breweries face? Why aren’t phones stigmitized as harmful to society? Why is restricting phone users from getting behind the wheel of a car any different if the potential for harm is at least the same? Where are the websites and non-profit organizations to combat this growing problem on our nation’s highways? Why isn’t AT&T being picketed for putting our youth in danger on the road? I think this very disparity points to the unspoken agenda lurking beneath the surface with many neo-prohibitionists: alcohol is a moral issue and they’re using it to tell you and me how we should live our lives, which is to say like they want to live their own.

I think it’s time to say that. It’s time to stand up and say our alcohol laws have become ridiculous in the extreme and have gotten in the way of how we live our lives. In my opinion, laws should be nothing more than a balance of competing interests that produce the greatest good for the most people. People who put themselves and others at risk by getting behind the wheel of a car when they’ve had too much to drink should be punished. But we’ve gone so far out of whack in defining what that means that literally no one can use their own prudence or good judgment because having even one beer makes us all criminals. So because of a few, the many can no longer responsibly enjoy themselves with a reasonable amount of alcohol.

I realize Pete Coors must show deference to the law because of his position and because of his business. But I think the rest of us should use this incident to let our politicians know that our alcohol laws have gone too far and we must reform them in such a way that they’re fair and reasonable. People should be able to enjoy the legal pleasures of a free society without fear and without being treated like criminals. Otherwise, we will no longer have a free society at all in which to enjoy that beer.