Climate Progress, the section of the website Think Progress devoted to the issue of climate change and related topics, had an interesting piece about the recent California drought and how it will effect the water needs of breweries. Entitled California’s Water Crisis Is Becoming A Beer Crisis, if you care about whether California’s breweries will make it through the coming drought, give it a read.
The last time I saw the Tax Foundation look at beer excise taxes was in 2009, but recently they updated their map of Beer Excise Tax Rates by State, for 2014, taking into account several states who changed their rates over that time.
Tax treatment of beer varies widely across the U.S., ranging from a low of $0.02 per gallon in Wyoming to a high of $1.17 per gallon in Tennessee. Check out today’s map below to see where your state lies on the beer tax spectrum.
A few state rates changed since we released last year’s data. Namely, North Carolina’s tax per gallon increased by nine cents, and there were slight increases in Arkansas (+2 cents), Kentucky (+2 cents), and Washington, D.C. (+2 cents). Washington’s tax decreased by 50 cents, and Minnesota’s number was one cent lower than last year. (See the 2013 edition of our Facts & Figures booklet for last year’s numbers.)
There isn’t much consistency on how state and local governments tax beer. This rate can include fixed-rate per volume taxes; wholesale taxes that are usually a percentage of the value of the product; distributor taxes (usually structured as license fees but are usually a percentage of revenues); retail taxes, in which retailers owe an extra percentage of revenues; case or bottle fees (which can vary based on size of container); and additional sales taxes (note that this measure does not include general sales tax, only those in excess of the general rate).
The Beer Institute points out that “taxes are the single most expensive ingredient in beer, costing more than labor and raw materials combined.” They cite an economic analysis that found “if all the taxes levied on the production, distribution, and retailing of beer are added up, they amount to more than 40% of the retail price” (note that this may include general sales tax and federal beer taxes, which are not included in the estimates displayed on the map). Last year, we did a podcast with Lester Jones, Chief Economist at the Beer Institute on tax treatment of beer, which is worth a listen.
Monday’s ad is for the United States Brewers Foundation, from 1941. This is one of a series of pro-industry ads that the brewer’s trade group engaged in post-prohibition to show the brewing industry in a positive light. This one shows an older farmer resting after, presumably, a long day in the fields tending to the crops. His wife, however, is still hard at work pouring him a beer. I guess it’s not yet the end of the work-day for her.
Today’s beer video is another animated film about Craft Beer, done as a student project by Michael Jolly, from St. Louis.
Craft Beer from Michael Jolly on Vimeo.
Here’s an interesting piece of data. There’s not a lot of background for it, but from what I can tell it’s an interactive map showing the “Top Beers In The US By State 2008-2013,” by Perlinnoise. Since it was tweeted by RateBeer, I can only assume it’s based on their ratings over that six year period of time, from their top 100 list. Only 18 states had beers that made the list, and from the interactive map, holding your cursor over a colored state brings up a list of the beers that made their list. It also includes the number from each state. California has the most, by a wide margin, at 128. Second is Michigan, with 46, followed by Indiana (24), Florida (19), Colorado (18) and Oregon (17). Unfortunately, one glitch with the interactive map is that you can actually scroll down and see the whole list of beers from California.
Sunday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1946. From A-B’s “Great Contributions To Taste” series, this one features Luther Burbank, the “American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science.” Although born in Massachusetts, he settled in nearby Santa Rosa, California and you can see his name everywhere here in Sonoma. Although he created over “800 strains and varieties of plants” he doesn’t seem to have had any relationship to beer, not that that stopped the advertising machinery.
Today’s beer video is essentially an animated version of an infographic entitled the American Beer Revival, created by Visual.ly.
The American Beer Revival from visually on Vimeo.
Saturday’s ad is for Jacob Ruppert Beer, from maybe the 1950s. I love the tagline, “Tasting is Believing,” but even better is the line at the bottom of the ad. “Slow Aged for Finer Flavor.” BUt I don’t know about the model, dressed in a nautical blouse with a captain’s hat on her head. She looks like she’s really there beachside as the boats put out. That I’m not believing.
Perhaps it’s why I became a writer, but I’ve always been fascinated by languages, and especially different alphabets. They always seemed like secret codes, and few more so than Egyptian hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics are, of course, one of the earliest forms of written communication. They were once thought to be the oldest form, but more recent evidence seems to suggest that Sumerian writing most likely predates the Egyptian writing, and that they probably developed independently.
Not surprisingly, since beer was so important at the dawn of civilization, even though the number of individual hieroglyphics was limited (compared to modern vocabularies) there were several beer-specific hieroglyphics. How many there are is uncertain. E.A. Wallis Budge compiled a list of over 1,000 that was published in various forms between the late 1890s and 1920. But the standard reference is generally thought to be Gardiner’s Sign List, created by British Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner in the 1950s, containing around 750 common form hieroglyphics from the Middle Egyptian language.
Gardiner’s Sign List is organized into 26 categories that are assigned a letter and then a number to keep them straight. For example, “E” is for “mammals” and E6 is a “horse.”
So here are the Egyptian hieroglyphics that have to do with beer and brewing, at least from the Gardiner’s Sign List. I’ve also included different views of the same hieroglyphic, that is different ways that it was written or expressed. The Letter and Number is, of course, how each is classified in the Gardiner’s Sign List.
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Today’s beer video is a short little animated film by Pedro Conti entitled One More Beer! Shot and sweet, and pretty funny.
One More Beer! from pedro conti on Vimeo.