Tuesday’s ad is for Heilman’s Old Style, though it looks old it could easily be newer but designed to look that way. I love the ginormous beer can towering over the hills in the foreground, with even taller mountains in the distance. A beautiful picture, it’s too bad the beer wasn’t better.
I just stumbled on this fun little video comparing biodiversity in the world of nature to the beer industry. It was created by Minute Earth, a YouTube channel showing primarily science videos about our planet. I wonder what inspired them to create Dude beer?
Today’s beer video is part six, and the final part, of the film The American Brew that was produced by Anheuser-Busch’s Here’s To Beer campaign in 2008. The DVD is still actually available from Amazon. Enjoy.
Monday’s ad is for Hull’s Export Beer, from “Connecticut’s only brewery,” according to the ad. Hull Brewing was founded in 1852 by Ph. Fresenius, and was bought by the Hull family when Prohibition ended, but it later closed in 1977. At one point there were at least 22 breweries in New Haven, Connecticut, so this ad must be later, after all the rest had closed.
Motley Fool has an interesting overview and comparison of the two bills regarding the restructuring of federal beer excise taxes currently before Congress, and likely to be resolved this year. The two bills, known as the BEER Act and the Small Brew Act (which Motley Fool calls the “Small Beer Act”), are both designed to reduce federal excise taxes, but in different ways, benefitting different size breweries differently. Which bill, if any, will pass is anybody’s guess at this point, but check out Beer May Be In For a Tax Break — Why This Could Be Bad for Some Brewers for one financial website’s take on them.
Pizza Port, a.k.a. Port Brewing, announced today through a press release from Ball Corp. that they will be releasing three of their beers in cans this week throughout their home market of San Diego, California. From the press release
For the first time in its 26-year history, Pizza Port will be entrusting its hand-crafted passion to a new, more portable can package. “It was a natural evolution for us,” said Pizza Port co-founder Gina Marsaglia. “Our consumers like to be outside and want to take great beer with them. The can is a portable and sustainable way for them to do that.” Vince Marsaglia, her brother and co-founder of Pizza Port Brewing, adds, “Our highest priority has always been to deliver the best quality beer to our consumers and aluminum cans help us keep our beer fresh by keeping out light and oxygen.”
Beginning this week, three of Pizza Port’s most popular beers will be available in recyclable cans throughout San Diego County. The labels will include Chronic Amber Ale (known as ChronicAle), Ponto Pale Ale and their very “sessionable” Swamis IPA that has the hoppy-ness of an IPA but is still very drinkable.
“By putting their exceptional beer in Ball cans, Pizza Port further confirms that aluminum cans are a premium packaging option for many of the best craft brewers in America,” said Rob Miles, senior vice president of sales for Ball’s global metal beverage packaging business. “Aluminum cans from Ball are helping craft brewers differentiate their products while realizing efficiencies in operating costs and energy savings.”
Here’s the three beers to be released in cans:
Swami’s India Pale Ale
Chronicale
Note: Curiously, a number of years ago Lagunitas was turned down when they submitted their amber ale under the label Kronik, which seems awfully similar. They were told it was rejected due to the drug reference, though I remember joking at the time that “Bud” was okay. Today it’s called Censored.
Ponto S.I.P.A.
Anchor Brewing announced today that his year’s season release of Anchor Bock will be the last. From the press release:
Anchor Brewing Company announces the release and final selling season of Anchor Bock® Beer, a seasonal interpretation of the strong German beers that mark the beginning of spring.
Each year, breweries in Germany celebrate the coming of spring with a strong, flavorful beer. Anchor Bock Beer, a dark satiny brew with rich hints of chocolate, caramel and roasted barley, is Anchor’s interpretation of this long-standing tradition.
Bock beers are believed to have originated in the town of Einbeck, Germany and traditionally feature a goat on the labels. The Germanic term “bock” translates to “billy goat”, but has over time come to mean a beer darker and stronger than a brewery’s “regular” brew. One with, you might say, the kick of a goat.
Anchor Brewing Company will be retiring Anchor Bock Beer in 2014 making room for several new seasonals yet to be announced.
“Anchor Bock has been a beloved seasonal not only by craft beer fans, but by the folks here at Anchor,” said Mark Carpenter, Brewmaster at Anchor Brewing Company. “In an effort to expand and innovate, as we have done for decades, Anchor will be retiring Bock after the 2014 season to allow room for several all-new brews, which we will be sharing with the world very soon.”
Anchor Bock Beer is available nationally from January through March in draught, 12 oz. six-packs, and 22 oz. bottles.
Check out their short video about Anchor Bock Beer, made last year, featuring Hazel the goat.
Today’s beer video is part five of the film The American Brew that was produced by Anheuser-Busch’s Here’s To Beer campaign in 2008. The DVD is still actually available from Amazon. Enjoy.
Sunday’s ad is for Feigenspan P.O.N. Ale, from sometime before 1943, which was when the Christian Feigenspan Brewing Co. was bought by Ballantine. P.O.N. stands for “Pride of Newark,” which is the in New Jersey city where the brewery was founded in 1875. I especially like the ad copy toward the bottom. “Don’t say a word … say P.O.N.”
I mentioned this recent study in another post, but it’s worth highlighting all on its own, especially because it contradicts much of the prohibitionist propaganda about how awful it is for kids to see alcohol advertising and how it corrupts their immature little minds, turning them into raging alcoholics. GfK Roper Consulting, which characterizes itself as “one of the world’s leading research companies,” recently released its annual Youth Report, Influences on Youth Decisions about Drinking. Having conducted the same survey since 1991, they note that parents have the most influence on whether or not kids drink before they’re 21. And not only has that been the case for over twenty years, but it’s actually been increasing steadily since that time, up 33% (one-third). During that entire time, advertising has been at or near the bottom the entire time, and is currently at a mere 1%, down 80% from when it was 5% in 1991. This while at the same time, prohibitionists have been complaining about the danger of underage minors just seeing advertisements for alcohol, and doing everything in their power to limit them to the supposed times when kids won’t see them, which is, of course, never.
Parents, as has been the case since they began conducting the survey, are the biggest influence by a wide margin. But prohibitionists have even managed to make it illegal in some states for parents to educate their own kids about alcohol, believing that they can do a better job with such programs, in California at least, as Red Ribbon Days and making up scenarios in high schools where one of their fellow students has been killed in order to scare them into not drinking, putting them through the very real emotional pain of dealing with a killed friend.
Second only to parents are best friends, but even their influence plummeted beginning in 2008, and is now only about 8%. So even peer pressure is waning. Third used to be teachers, but they’ve dropped below all media (defined as TV, radio, magazines, and Internet). In fact, all influence other than parents and friends are 2% or less, making them almost statistically irrelevant.
Going on all during this same time period from 1991 to the present, has been a slow but steady decline in the overall amount of alcohol people are drinking. So not only has the advertising become less effective, especially as younger generations are more media savvy, but people and kids are drinking less and less. But it’s harder to raise money from donations if things are improving from these anti-alcohol organizations’ point of view. So what should be good news like this is virtually ignored by them. Good luck trying to find anything about this survey on their websites. If they really cared about stopping underage drinking or keeping drunks off the road you’d think they’d be arming parents with the tools they need to educate their children about responsible alcohol consumption, but actions speak much louder than words, and their actions are all about sounding alarm bells and raising money.