Today’s beer film is a commercial for a Dutch beer, Bavaria Beer, in this case for their Radler. The hilarious spot imagines that Elvis Presley is not dead, but today lives on a desert island along will fellow not dead celebrities Tupac Shakur, Kurt Cobain, Bruce Lee and Marilyn Monroe. When a ship wanders close, with practiced ease they sound they alarm and strike the set, so there’s (almost) nothing to see as the ship speeds by, training their binoculars on the now empty-looking beach. Luckily, you don’t really need to know Dutch to figure out what’s going on.
Beer In Ads #1141: The Sakura Elephant
Tuesday’s ad is for the Sakura beer, from 1924. An elephant is rearing back on his hind legs, holding the world’s biggest beer in his trunk. Below him, hundreds (or more?) cheer.
Beer In Film #84: Beer Wars
Today’s beer film is the documentary feature Beer Wars, written and directed by Anat Baron, who celebrates her birthday today. Beer Wars was released in 2009, making it nearly five years old. Whew, a lot has happened in that time. Enjoy.
The First “Official” Star Trek Beer
Trekkers rejoice, especially if you’ve gone so far as to learn the Klingon language. According to the Hollywood Reporter, CBS has announced “Star Trek’s first officially licensed and recognized brew,” which will be called Klingon Warnog.
The new beer, a “Danish Roggen Dunkel,” was brewed by Tin Man Brewing of Evansville, Indiana, in partnership with CBS Consumer Products and the Federation of Beer. Although curiously, some of the mock-ups list the beer as simply a “Roggen Dunkel” or a “Dunkelweizen.”
CBS is describing the beer’s flavor as having been drawn “from blending rye malt with a traditional clove character, creating a bold beer suited for the harsh Klingon lifestyle.”
According to the Star Trek Memory Beta wiki, Warnog was mentioned and appeared in an episode of Deep Space Nine — “Sons and Daughters,” from 1997 — along with several Star Trek novels.
The public will get their first preview and taste of Warnog at the Nightclub and Bar Show in Las Vegas today, March 25, 2014, before it becomes available across the U.S. and Canada later this year. This will most likely be the first in a line of Star Trek beverages, and there’s also a Vulcan Ale in the works. “Live long and party on!”
Beer In Ads #1140: Nippon Beer On The Train
Monday’s ad is for the Nippon Brewery, from 1912. Showing a couple of Geishas on a train, with a vendor at the station offering them beer from a full basket. Through the window on the other side of the train is a large factory, which is presumably the brewery.
Beer In Film #83: Microbrewers 1981-1996: A Photo History
Today’s beer film is really just a slideshow to music, but it’s such a great collection of photographs that it’s worthwhile anyway. The book, MICROBREWERS: 1981-1996: A Photo History, features a wealth of historic photographs of many of the pioneers of the craft beer industry taken by David Bjorkman, who co-founded New Brewer magazine in 1983 with Victoria Thomas and Charlie Papazian, and documented the nascent beer industry from 1981 to 1996 before moving to Mexico. The handmade book includes “over 300 photos of the first microbrewers in the United States” and can be purchased from Blurb. I bought it when it first came out in 2009, and despite its high price tag, it’s an awesome collection of photos. The song, by the way, is the traditional Irish song “Beer, Beer, Beer” performed by The Clancy Brothers.
Is Africa The Next Beer Frontier?
The Drinks Business has a summary of a new report, Beer on the Frontier: Opportunities for Brewers in the African Continent, in which Rabobank analysts conclude that Africa is poised to be the next big market for beer in the coming years, as populations and, hopefully, standards of living improve.
I was talking with Chris Swersey (competition manager of the judging for GABF and the World Beer Cup) recently about worldwide beer competitions. As far as we could conclude, Africa is the only continent (excluding Antarctica) without a big commercial beer event with judging. With Rabobank predicting that it will “become the world’s next fastest growing market for beer,” perhaps that will change.
Beer In Ads #1139: Tokio Beer
Sunday’s ad is for Tokio Beer, from 1906. I know some manga today looks like this, but it’s a pretty unattractive ad. The man with the Snidely Whiplash moustache doesn’t look very trustworthy and the fat cherub riding the red cock holding a large bottle of beer … well, what more can you say?
Beer In Film #82: Brew Minions
Today’s beer film is a hilarious, gentle spoof of the Discovery series Brew Masters that Sam Calagione and the folks from Dogfish Head made in 2010. This one, Brew Minions, was made by Dave Thibodeau and his minions at Ska Brewing in Durango, Colorado. Besides making some funny swipes at he Brew Masters series, it’s also a good documentary on the brewery and their making a beer for the 30th anniversary of one of their favorite ska bands, The Toasters.
The Shifting Definition Of Sober
Once upon a time, the word “sober,” meant simply “not intoxicated or drunk,” but over the past few decades, the term has been “hijacked” by AA and the addiction/recovery community to instead refer to “a state of being—one you can only achieve through total, lifelong abstinence if you ever drank alcoholically.” In other words, if you’re an active drinker of alcohol, you’re not sober as far as AA is concerned. Essentially, that’s turning the definition on its head, making it the opposite of its ordinary meaning, twisting it into doublespeak. Orwell would have been proud.
Reason magazine has an interesting article about this phenomenon, The Hijacking of Sobriety by the Recovery Movement, by psychologist, attorney, and psychotherapist Stanton Peele. Peele begins with how one celebrity was referred to by the media after revealing that after years as an alcoholic, she taught herself to have one drink per day without falling into ruin, something the abstinence-based medical community insists is not possible.
According to AA and the recovery movement, no former alcoholic can drink moderately. Any drinking whatsoever, according to these absolutists, and you’re no longer “sober.” One might think that a person who drinks regularly in a controlled, non-intoxicated manner is obviously not an alcoholic. Wrong!
When I suggested to my AA friend Ken (not his real name) that [a famous former alcoholic who’s learned to have a drink a day] shows one-time alcoholics can control their drinking, he objected strenuously. For Ken, “the fact that she has to limit herself to one drink a day proves she’s an alcoholic.” That’s right, drinking in a controlled manner proves you’re an uncontrolled drinker.
Not surprisingly, there’s mounting evidence that they’re wrong.
According to the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) — a massive government study of 43,000 Americans’ lifetime alcohol and drug use — about 75 percent of people who recover from alcohol dependence do so without seeking any kind of help, including specialty rehab programs and Alcoholics Anonymous. And only 13 percent of people with alcohol dependence ever receive specialty alcohol treatment. (Note that 13 percent is the upper figure for 12-step recovery, since ever participating does not mean the person recovered due to AA or rehab.)
The NESARC study also revealed that these recovered alcoholics don’t as a rule abstain. “Twenty years after the onset of alcohol dependence, three-fourths of individuals are in full recovery,” it notes. “More than half of those who have fully recovered drink at low-risk levels without symptoms of alcohol dependence.”
I especially love Peele’s conclusion. “For recovery absolutists, no one recovers from alcoholism without AA, just as no one can recover without giving up drinking forever. What arrogance! Who gave these self-appointed experts the power to tell everyone how they must achieve recovery?” Give the article a read and, more importantly, let’s stop letting AA and the medical community focused on making a buck off of people trying to cope with their own drinking problems frame the terms of the debate. I’m sober as I write these words. Later tonight, with any luck, I may not be. But tomorrow morning when the alarm clock reminds me of my daily obligations, I will be sober again. And that’s how it should be, not some Orwellian world where everyone who ever drinks a drop a beer is forever branded as a drunk, and alcoholic or free from soberness.
