Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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“It’s For the Kids”

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The neo-prohibitionist organization Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) released a statement yesterday claiming that beer logos on cars, toys and at the NASCAR track “Confuse Young Kids About Drinking and Driving.” Boy these organizations think kids are pretty stupid, don’t they.

Now I’m not a fan of car racing. I follow some sports, but it’s just not a huge part of my life. I have nothing against them per se although I do think our obsession with sports in general distracts people from more important issues, but that’s probably just me. And the strange thing is I don’t really like the big beer companies sponsoring sports and the attendant ads very much, but on wholly different grounds. For me it’s about the message they’re sending about what beer is and how it should be consumed where I believe most of their advertising perpetuates false and misleading information about beer itself. And I think this has done great harm to beer’s image over the last several decades making it harder for craft brewers to compete.

But the one sport I hate with a passion even more is using kids as an excuse to further an agenda. It’s a time-honored strategy and neo-prohibitionists have honed it to a fine art. Don’t like something other people are doing? Claim it’s bad for the kids. It’s always about the freaking kids. This just so frys my bacon. I have kids. Many, if not most, of the hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of people whose livelihoods depend on beer from brewers to distributors to salesman to truck drivers to the ad agency people who come up with the ads have kids, too. I don’t see them coming unglued because a toy car has a Budweiser logo on it. Now I wouldn’t buy my son a Bud car because I don’t like Bud. But he does have a Radeberger Pilsner truck I bought him in Germany. And he has some trucks with craft brewer logos on them and some with other import beers like Murphy’s (before Heineken bought them). Do I think he’s going to be harmed because of this? Of course not. Only someone uninvolved with their children could come to that conclusion. There are plenty of real threats I’m worried about in raising my children. Even just talking about this one is a waste of my time.

But the neo-prohibitionists are serious. They really think this is the problem that needs addressing. Anything, anything that has to do with adults enjoying alcohol must be stopped. It must not be allowed. If anyone can abuse it, then none of us are safe until alcohol is once again outlawed. And we all now how well that worked out the last time we tried it. In fact, it’s never worked out when any body’s tried it. They may dress it up as concern for the kids and even for the public at large but this is just a grubby little attempt at controlling the lives of all Americans in a way the majority of Americans don’t want. That’s supposed to matter in a democracy, what the majority of people want. But minority opinions are increasingly pushing their way to the front of the line with misinformation, propaganda and deep pockets.

And while I’m ranting, how about euphemistic names that neo-prohibitionists use to obfuscate their true purpose. This one cracks me up: “Science for the Public Interest.” Science? Their press release is just anecdotal hogwash with no scientific basis whatsoever. It’s pure opinion, and that would be fine as long as they said so. And who’s public interest are they representing. Not mine. Not the thousands and thousands of brewery and related industry workers and their families. Their mission statement claims they “represent the citizen’s interests” but are all citizen’s interests the same? How could they be? So they’re really pushing a particular, if unstated, agenda. But if they want truth in advertising isn’t it only right that they should begin with their own name? If their very name is misleading and doesn’t really convey their true purpose why should we believe anything they have to say? I have a hard time giving credence to any organization who claims a higher moral ground but can’t even manage honesty in their own name.
 

A couple of my son Porter’s toy trucks. Radeberger, who makes a fantastic pilsner and Anderson Valley Brewing, an environmentally friendly brewery that is a huge part of its local economy. And the problem with these is …? Let’s see, global warming, no universal health care, a war in Iraq, record deficit, secret spying on Americans by our own government, the Patriot Act, AIDS in Africa, the growing scarcity of oil and water, and on and on but no, this is the big problem. Could we please get some perspective?

Miller Strike Looming

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According to UPI, the Teamsters are warning distributors of Miller beer throughout Milwaukee, Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Minneapolis that a strike is imminent. Apparently healthcare benefits are the sticking point in negotiations between the union — who represents more than 1,400 employees of the brewery — and SABMiller, Miller’s parent company.

Miller’s union workers voted to authorize a strike back in the third week of June. The Teamsters press release today discusses possible strategies for this potential strike and yesterday they warned that SBMiller was risking US Market share by ignoring healthcare concerns of union workers.

Old Contradictions

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I have to give credit for this to Randy Bishop of idDream, who posted it on his blog as an update to a piece he wrote regarding Anheuser-Busch’s foray into the organic beer market with Wild Hop Lager and Stone Mill Pale Ale. He uncovered a letter I’d read before but had forgotten about regarding an article written by Fred Eckhardt for the March 1997 issue of All About Beer magazine. The article concerned the long-standing feud between Anheuser-Busch and Boston Beer Co. Fred wrote about the contradictions A-B argued about with regard to contract brewing. A-B responded to Fred’s article with a lengthy response of their own. In that response, A-B said the following:

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.

Fast forward nine years to the release of Wild Hop Lager, which revealed its origin only to the beer cogniscenti who when they read “Fairfield, CA” on a beer label knew something most people wouldn’t realize. Ironically, the argument expressed in their letter to Fred is the same one I made in my original post about this back in March, Wild Hop Lager: A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing. Several months after its initial release the website now acknowledges that it’s a A-B product but the packaging in the stores still does not. Perhaps when they move through the existing packaging the new labels and carriers will reveal its true ownership Until then, I think they’ll be doing exactly what they accused Samuel Adams of in 1997: misleading consumers.

Beer of the Times: Wheat

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Eric Asimov has a good article in today’s New York Times about wheat beers, well-research with lots of history. The Times also did a tasting of wheat beers, and here I think they made a few key gaffes. They stated from the outset that they were “looking for American versions of Bavarian-style brews” but tasting director Bernard Kirsch added “a few German sleepers.” That Bernie, what a cut-up. And they found that “as expected, the American wheat beers were all over the map, with brewers taking great liberties with the style.”

But here’s the thing. Not all of the beers they tasted were in fact Bavarian-style hefeweizens. Now is that the brewer’s fault or Bernie’s fault for the beers he chose? Either on purpose to confuse the panel or through ignorance of the style, he picked several non-German-style hefeweizens, inlcuding Widmer Hefeweizen. Widmer is in fact an American-style hefeweizen that is a completely separate style for GABF judging. Widmer defined that style, a fact panelist Garrett Oliver was well aware of. But when the panel dismissed Widmer, they said it “bore little relation to the style.” Of course it did, it was a different style.

So when Garrett’s own Brooklyner Weisse was chosen as the winner of their tasting, he “was unembarrassed by the panel’s unanimous approval.” Frankly, I think he should have been, at least a little bit. Generally speaking I think it’s a bad idea to sit in judgment on a panel in which one of your own beers is present. If you’re judging at the Great American Beer Festival you can’t even judge a category in which you’ve entered a beer, even if the flight you’d be judging doesn’t include your own beer. I’m sure he can be objective and personally I feel quite certain he was. Unfortunately, it’s all about the perception of impropriety. A few years ago, I judged at a beer festival sponsored by a brewery. When one of that brewery’s beers was chosen as the winner of a particular category, they disqualified themselves to remove that very perception.

Now I like Garrett Oliver and think he’s done as much to promote good beer as any living human could, especially in regard to advocating beer and food. In that area he’s been the leading expert. If he’s giving a seminar, talk or dinner I always try to attend. They’re invariably very worthwhile events, with much good beer education to boot. So this seems like a strange faux pas for him. He’s been involved with many of the Times’ tastings in the past and I suspect when they asked him, he felt he couldn’t say no. I honestly felt connflicted about posting anything negative about Garrett, because I do hold him in such high regard. Ultimately, I had to mention it because to not do so would have been to compromise my position on this issue even though I knew that Garrett is one of those rare people who could walk above such controversy and be objective under the circumstances. So I think he either should have removed his own beer from the tasting (which for business reasons I imagine might have been difficult) or excused himself for this tasting, even though very few people, and no one who knows Garrett, would have a problem with it.

Three of the beers they gave poor marks to were, according to the panel, “well past their prime” which I take to mean out of code, past their pull date, in other words no longer in a condition to drink. This is undoubtedly the fault of a distributor or retailer as beer should be pulled from the shelf once it’s past its code date. And Bernie should never have accepted samples of this type. Perhaps they weren’t clearly marked and I don’t know the method Bernie used in collecting his samples. But unless he got them from the brewery itself, in my opinion, the Times should not have penalized the brewers who made these beers with a bad review because they got an old sample.

They did at least like my favorite of the style, Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier. It’s especially good on draft though the bottled beer is excellent, as well.

Square Beer Bottles

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According to an item on Vestal Design’s blog, Alfred Heineken, who is credited with making Heineken beer an international brand, had a unique, if somewhat bizarre, idea to make square beer bottles that could be fitted together and stacked to build houses after people finished drinking them. It was mentioned briefly in his BBC News obituary, but with few details (Heineken passed away in 2002). According to Vestal Design’s account, Alfie was wandering the beach in Jamaica and was struck by the large number of beer bottles littering the beach. He was also apparently “concerned with the lack of cheap building materials, and at the resulting living conditions for the poor.” In one of those same leaping kind of moments that produced Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (you’ve got chocolate in my peanut butter!) he put two and two together and got five. Voila, the square beer bottle was born. Or it would have been, except that Heineken’s board of directors didn’t share his vision. He thought square Heineken bottles would be imported around the world and then they’d stay there and be used to build houses. They thought he was nuts, or at least the idea was.

Vestal Design speculates that you would need one thousand bottles to build a house ten feet square. They also note glass is a good insulator and the bottle was designed in such a way that the bottle neck fit into a groove in the bottom of the bottle so they would essentially fit together. They would certainly stack in your refrigerator better, too, wouldn’t they?

Alfred Heineken’s World Beer bottles, which he envisioned using to build houses.

Oregon Trader Gets New Owners, New Name

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According to an article in the Corvallis Gazette-Times, Orgeon Trader Brewing located in Albany, Oregon has been sold and re-named Calapooia Brewing Co. The new owners, Mark Martin and Laura Bryngelson, opened about three weeks ago. Their best-seller so far is Yankee Clipper IPA. They also apparently offer an amber, a chile beer, a pale ale, a stout and a wheat beer. Best of luck to them both.

AP Discovers Wild Hop Lager

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Yesterday’s media ran a story by AP entitled “Organic beer sales grow, Anheuser-Busch enters market.” The article itself is fine, mostly comprehensive and well-written. But what struck me was the phrase A-B “enters market” (my emphasis) because I started writing about Wild Hop Lager on March 23. To my mind, almost four months later is not exactly a scoop by the mainstream press.

One statement in the article was quite interesting regarding sales of organic beer:

While organic beer sales are still minuscule in the overall beer industry, they are rising fast. North American sales of organic beers grew from $9 million in 2003 to $19 million in 2005, according to the Organic Trade Association.

That’s slightly better than doubling sales growth in two years’ time, which is pretty impressive.