Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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State Beer Excise Tax Rates

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Today’s infographic is a map of the State Beer Excise Tax Rates for each of the fifty states as of January 1, 2013. It was created by the Tax Foundation as one of their weekly maps. It’s just the state excise taxes brewers must pay, and doesn’t include either federal excise taxes or any local excise taxes. Tennessee has the highest state excise taxes and Wyoming has the lowest, a fact that the anti-alcohol folks like to exploit and whine about as often as they can whenever these maps show up online, never discussing context or the total taxes each state brewer pays. Not surprisingly, since oftentimes these are also referred to as sin taxes, six out of the highest ten states are in the south, with Florida at #11 and Mississippi at #13. California’s near the middle.

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Click here to see the map full size.

Beer In Ads #886: Mr. Basketball

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Monday’s ad is for Pabst Blue Ribbon, from 1950. It’s one of Pabst’s “What’ll You Have” ads, but featuring a sports celebrity, George Mikan. In post-war America, Mikan was known as “Mr. Basketball” and was the Lakers’ center when they still played in a state with lots of lakes. He’s considered a pioneer of modern basketball, and retired as the all-time leading scorer. The NBA actually altered the rules of the game to reduce his dominance and he was directly responsible for the three-point line was and partially for the shot clock. And apparently he drank Pabst.

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Examining Our Compulsions For The Next Session

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For our 76th Session, our host is Glen Humphries, who writes Beer is Your Friend. His topic is an extension of another recent Session, the one about Beer Audits. That Session inspired him and as he was “writing about buying heaps of beer, [it] got [him] thinking about just what it is that compels [him] to keep buying beer.” In other words, why do we keep buying so much beer? So here’s his invitation to The Session for June 2013 and his topic, Compulsion:

Like most beer fans, I tend to buy way more beer than I can drink. I can have a fridge full, plus a few boxes of bottles, plus homebrew and still I’ll walk into a shop and buy some more. Or order some more online. Or do both in the space of a few days.

Why do we do stuff like this? Obviously we’re not just buying stuff to drink because, if we were, wouldn’t we just wait until we were running low and then stock up? What so many of us do is stock up, even though we’re already stocked up. Perhaps we’re expecting the zombie apocalypse to happen soon and don’t want to go through that sober.

Is buying heaps of beer something you worry about? Do you look at your Aladdin’s Cave of beer and feel even a smidge of guilt about how much it all cost you? Or do you just rub your hands together, cackle with glee and say ‘‘it’s mine! All mine!’’.

What lengths do you go to to hide this compulsion? For instance, do you try and sneak beer into the house so your other half doesn’t see it? (Not saying that I’ve done this. Oh, okay, I have done this).

It’s a compulsion that can extend to homebrewing too. Do you keep making new batches of homebrew, even though you already have plenty of your own brews to drink?

If you’re on holidays and you drive by a brewery, are you compelled to stop in? Or do you go so far as arrange your holidays to ensure that you happen to drive by a brewery or two? On the offbeat side of compulsion, I know I can be compelled to try a beer I just know will be crap. Like Destroyer, that beer the band KISS put out. Absolute crap. And I knew that before I bought it. But I still bought a six-pack of it.

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So on Friday, June 7 — would that be “E-Day?” — admit your own beer-buying compulsions and wax philosophically about the reasons why you buy what you buy.

Beer Pong

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Today’s infographic is a humorous instructional poster about beer pong, and how it’s played. I’m not a big fan of drinking games, but it is a great infographic, with a nice retro feel to it. It was created by Mel Marcelo. It almost makes me want to try it … almost.

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Click here to see the infographic full size.

Beer In Ads #885: If You Love Beer, You’ll Love This Red Hat

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Friday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1952. It uses their popular “If you love beer … you’ll love Schlitz” mantra that graced so many of their ads. But this one seems slightly odder. For example, I don’t quite get the animated discussion that appears to be centering on that red hunting cap. But perhaps more interesting is the bottom left corner, where they’re attempting to teach consumers that brown bottles protect beer better. And I thought that was a new tactic.

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The Audacity Of Hops In California

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This week was a fun one, in part because Tom Acitelli was in town on his book tour, promoting his new paperback The Audacity of Hops: The History of America’s Craft Beer Revolution. He started Tuesday evening at the Anchor Brewery, where he spoke briefly, signed some books and all of us enjoyed a few beers.

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Tom Acitelli reading from the “Audacity of Hops” at Anchor Brewing.

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Dave Suurballe, Judy Ashworth, Julie Nickels and Bruce Paton at Tom’s book event.

The next day, Tom drove up to my house, and from there we had lunch at Russian River, and then we whisked over to the production brewery for a quick tour before doing a Bottom of the Bottle podcast at Beercraft in Rohnert Park. Then that evening Tom did an event at Lagunitas hosted by my local book store chain, Copperfield’s Books, before heading back home to Boston the following morning.

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Tom with Vinnie Cilurzo at Russian River’s production brewery.

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On the Bottom of the Bottle podcast (photo by Greg Coll).

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Joe Tucker, stealing a drink, Jeremy Marshall, me Tom and Ken Weaver at Lagunitas.

It was great fun hanging out for a longer period of time with Tom, as we’d only met briefly a couple of times before. His new book, The Audacity of Hops: The History of America’s Craft Beer Revolution, seems very, very good. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of the parts I’ve managed to find the time to read so far, and many people whose opinions I respect are all saying the same thing: that Tom has managed to write a comprehensive, thorough and enjoyable history of the craft beer since 1965. I heartily recommend his book to anyone new to the beer world, or anyone who wants to get some context to how we got to where we are today. It’s been a great journey.

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