Monday’s ad is another one for Rheingold Beer, this one from 1955, and features Miss Rheingold from that year, Nancy Woodruff. In this one, Nancy’s wearing a wide grin and a hat that would look better on Gilligan. In her left hand, she’s raising a letter “D” and she’s holding a letter “R” in the other. I wonder what she’s trying to spell?
Beer that’s served too cold or even worse, in a frozen glass, is a pet peeve of mine, something that drives me up a wall whenever I encounter it, which is far too often. Slate had a nice piece on this last year by Mark Garrison entitled Grab Me a Warm One that I wish more bar and restaurant owners would read. Hat tip to Jeff Cioletti for the link.
Here’s an interesting survey that was just released by Survey Analytics entitled the The Secret Life Of The American Beer Buyer. They describe themselves as “an enterprise grade research platform that provides companies with feedback in over 30 industries.” Throughout the results of their “online consumer survey to capture sentiment on beer preference and purchasing habits,” they keep going back and forth between the terms “beer” and “craft beer” which seems to muddy the results somewhat. And given that results are rife with mass-produced big brewer brands I have to question the way the survey was conducted and whether it was meant to be beer or craft beer. It suggests a certain sloppiness or lack of understanding. It also points out how useless the distinction can be in practice, too. But here’s some of what the survey revealed.
On their blog, they also created an infographic with some of the results.
And their press release offers additional insight into the findings:
Average consumer spends more than $1,200 a year on beer
Every year consumers shell out an average of $1,270 on beer. The highest reported amount was $10,000 while the lowest was just $100. Twenty-two percent of consumers buy and drink beer two to three times a week while 20 percent imbibe just once a week and 9 percent pop open a bottle more than five times per week.Budweiser is a polarizing brand
The King of Beers managed to top the charts in both the best and worst brands of beer. Fifty-one percent of people rated it as their favorite while 46 percent named it their least favorite. The other brands that rounded out the best list: Coors (13 percent), Corona (12 percent) and Stella (10 percent). As for taste preferences, 33 percent of consumers prefer the taste of ale and 24 percent would rather have a lager.Only 5 percent of consumers use price to determine favorite breweries
Surprisingly, a very small percentage used cost as the deciding factor for what beer they love most. What did they base their favorite brand on? Who has the best ads (32 percent), where the beer is brewed (29 percent) and what style of beer the brand makes (22 percent).Craft beer and home-brewing trends continue to grow
Consumers don’t want to buy just any beer off the shelf — they want to invest time in creating their own brew or in learning about small microbreweries. Fourteen percent of people surveyed had brewed their own beer at home and enjoyed it while 68 percent are interested in taking craft brewing lessons from their favorite craft brands such as Dogfish Head and Breckenridge Brewery. What state shines as the best at brewing craft beer? Nineteen percent say California.
In addition, they created a couple of word clouds based on respondents most and least favorite beer brands.
Tell Us Your Favorite Beer Brand
Tell Us Your Least Favorite Beer Brand
Today’s beer video is an interview with Mark Morvant, professor of chemistry at the University of Oklahoma , by the local newspaper blog The Thirsty Beagle. Morvant is teaching a free online course on The Chemistry of Beer. The class started January 13, but apparently you can still participate and catch up if you hurry and register soon. So far, over 7,000 people have signed up for his class. Watch the video below to see if it’s for you.
Given that craft beer on this side of the pond has seen double-digit growth almost every year for over ten years, the news that sales of beer in Great Britain has shown positive growth in two consecutive quarters may not not seem like something that’s newsworthy. But this is the first time it’s happened in more than ten years, as pub closures and other factors have had troubling consequences for British beer. The latest figures, released by the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), show total beer sales up 0.8% in the 4th quarter of 2013, with off-trade (primarily retail) up 3.9%, although pub sales were down 2.2%.
The Morning Advertiser article also mentions the announcement concurrently that Marston’s will build a new £7 million bottling plant, which the BBPA believes translates to increased confidence on the part of British brewers. The credit for all this good news is thought to be the decision by the UK government’s Chancellor to “cut [the] Beer Duty in last year’s Budget,” meaning lower taxes on breweries. According to the BBPA’s Chief Executive, Brigid Simmonds. “These figures demonstrate that cutting beer duty helps increase beer sales, stimulates industry investment and saves jobs. We hope the Chancellor takes note and freezes beer duty in his next Budget to give a further boost to British beer and pubs.”
This is important on our side of the world because there are currently two bills before Congress with the same goal, to lower the excise tax of beer to stimulate our economy and create jobs in the brewing industry and related support industries here, too. That it appears to have worked in Great Britain is a promising development that may make it more attractive to legislators in justifying the tax cut.
Sunday’s ad is again for Rheingold Beer, this one from 1957, and features Miss Rheingold from that year, Margie McNally. This one shows her sitting by the side of a pond next to a birch tree in a striking light blue dress with white polka dots, holding a matching hat in her hand. Behind her there’s a white swan gliding by. Despite the idyllic setting, for the second day in a row there’s not a hint of a beer anywhere to be seen.
Here’s a pretty cool historical artifact, from the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale. It’s a print that was created in 1808 by London publisher Thomas Tegg. It’s printed on woven paper, an “etching with stipple” and is hand-colored. The “plate mark is 25 x 35.2 cm.,” on a sheet of paper 27 x 28 cm, and the plate is numbered 151 in the upper righthand corner. When new it sold for one shilling, but I’m guessing it goes for a bit more now. It’s title is “Sir John Barleycorn — Miss Hop — (and their only child) — Master Porter” and is further “dedicated to the publicans of London.” Ah, they had a baby and named it Porter, too. Small world.
Today’s beer video is, of all things, an episode of an old television show, The Streets of San Francisco, which was on the air for five seasons, from 1972 to 1977. Tonight’s shows, as always “a Quinn-Martin Production,” was from the last season — Season 5, Episode 20 — and is entitled “Dead Lift.” During its run, many guests stars appeared on the show, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s in tonight’s episode, playing a body builder whose bad temper leads to …. wait for it murder. But he’s not the reason I posted it. What’s cool about this episode is that Schwarzenegger’s character, Josef Schmidt, works at Anchor Brewery, and the brewery can be seen in one of the scenes. At 9:43 we see a close-up of the bottling line, which pulls back to a wider shot where we see Schwarzenegger walking through the brewery with a keg on his shoulder. But after being told he’s working too hard, he goes a little crazy and starts throwing kegs around, and they fire him. Unfortunately, that’s the only scene in the brewery, and there’s no Michael Douglas either, as this was near the end of the show’s run and he’d already left for greener pastures.
Saturday’s ad is for Rheingold Beer, from 1956, and features Miss Rheingold from that year, Hillie Merritt. Wearing a lovely pink ensemble, she’s tending quite the colorful garden of yellow tulips and other spring flowers. After filling her basket with freshly cut flowers, I hope at least she’ll be going to get a beer now.
Today’s beer video is a talk given by Sam Caligione of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery for the Brewmasters at Google series. Sam gave this hour-long talk in July of 2012.