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Monks famously fasted for the forty days of Lent by supplementing their lack of food with liquid bread; beer. But how long could you really go without food, and especially water? In this interesting article, io9 tackles the question Could you drink beer instead of water and still survive? If the world ends in a nuclear fireball, I want to know how useful my beer cellar’s going to be as part of my survival plan.
Friday’s ad is for Goetz, and their Country CLub Malt Liquor. It’s from 1955 and “Mmm — just wait until you taste it.” That’s not me saying that, that’s what the ad copy says. Notice that can looks smaller? It doesn’t appear to be a 12 oz. can. Maybe that’s the “new” part of “Party Brew!”? I also love this bit of ad copy: “So smooth — so different! Looks inviting … tastes exciting!” Hilarious. What exactly does “exciting” taste like?
I’m pleased to announce that a number of South Bay, Silicon Valley brewers have banded together to form the Bay Brewers Guild, a new trade group for brewers located “South to Monterey, North to The Northern most point of the SF bay, East to all breweries that call the Bay their home (this can include places such as Livermore, Pleasanton, Walnut Creek, etc.), and West to the Pacific Ocean.” The new guild has been brewing for some time now, but it recently became official, and they’re a 501(c)3 non-profit organization as of November 27, 2012.
In a press release announcing their formation, the guild’s stated goals are the following.
They’re just getting started, and will be conducting monthly meetings. ALso, there’s no online presence yet, but I imagine that’s in the works. Executive Director of the new guild is Dan Satterthwaite, who’s a Siebel trained brewer who’s worked for Gordon Biersch and is currently in the process of opening his own brewery in Santa Cruz. If you’re in their geographic area and not currently a member, please contact Dan about becoming involved in the guild. Congratulations to everybody involved.
Founding Members of the Bay Brewers Guild:
Since today is World Water Day, our infographic for the day is So You Want To Save Water? Though it’s not strictly about brewing or beer, it seems relevant since water is the biggest ingredient used in brewing beer. Two interesting mentions of beer are in the poster. The first is that it takes 19.81 gallons to produce a glass of beer. I’m not sure about the exact number, but I do know many brewers are aware of their own water ratio and work hard to lower it. The second is that you can save 15,582 gallons of water per year if you switched from a daily glass of milk to a daily glass of beer. Now that’s conservation I can get behind.
Click here to see the infographic full size.
Wow, this is big news. My old friend Jeremy Cowan sent me a note this morning about this. His company, Shmaltz Brewing, makers of He’Brew and the Coney Island Craft Lagers of beers, will very shortly no longer be a contract brewer. He’s building a 20,000-square foot, 50-barrel brewery in Upstate, New York — Clifton Park (about 10 minutes north of Albany) — which will have an annual capacity of 20,000 barrels. Production is expected to begin in April or May, with a grand opened currently scheduled for July 7, 2013. He’s been working on the plans for this for a year and was finally ready to announce it to the world. Also, great news, is that his brewer, at least initially, will be Paul McErlean (who I’ve judged at GABF with). Paul oversaw all Shmaltz’s contract brewing before and “created every recipe in Shmaltz’s award winning family of beers.”
Here’s more information from the press release:
After 16 years as one of contract brewing’s loudest cheerleaders, Shmaltz Brewing Company, handcrafters of HE’BREW – The Chosen Beer® and Coney Island Craft Lagers®, is breaking with tradition and opening its own New York State production brewery. Located in Clifton Park, NY, 10 minutes north of Albany’s capital district, Shmaltz’s new home boasts a 50-barrel brewhouse with 20,000 barrels of annual capacity. With a $3.25 million dollar budget and countless hours of planning and preparation, what began as an improbable fantasy only one year ago, has blossomed into a nearly 20,000 square foot brewing reality.
The first stainless kettles were delivered this week and the inaugural brew date is targeted for late-April. Packaging should commence in May and June, and Shmaltz projects bringing 100% of its production in-house by mid-to-late summer. The heart of Shmaltz’s new operation features a custom-made, 5-vessel manual workhorse brewhouse as well as 8 fermentation and 2 bright beer tanks manufactured in the US from Oregon’s JV Northwest. The 120-bottle-per minute packaging line comes from the well respected Italian experts at SBC/BC International. The new Shmaltz brewery will package 12 and 22 ounce bottles and kegs of their diverse core and seasonal favorites. Several new releases and collaborations are on tap for 2013, and Shmaltz will continue their acclaimed exploration of barrel-aging with a current inventory of more than 300 bourbon, rye whiskey, and tequila barrels. The brewery projects hiring upwards of 10 full time staff for the new operation in addition to the dozen staffers currently handling sales, marketing and contract brewing operations. The space also touts a 1,700 square foot tasting room, and roughly 800 square feet of office space.
Even with this new beginning, Shmaltz will be piloted under the watchful and experienced eyes of the same dynamic team that’s brought the craft beer world many years of delicious beer and delicious shtick, including Jeremy Cowan (Proprietor), Bob Craven (General Manager), Matt Polacheck (Art Director), Zak Davis (National Sales Manager), Jesse P. Cutler (PR Director), and Paul McErlean (Consulting Brewmaster who created every recipe in Shmaltz’s award winning family of beers).
A press event and ribbon cutting ceremony will be announced shortly for late April or early May. The official, public grand opening bash will take place on Sunday, July 7, 2013. Specific details will be announced soon. Following the opening, craft beer enthusiasts will be able to enjoy the nectar of the new brewery gods at Shmaltz’s tasting room throughout the year. Brewery tours will be available to the public — times will be announced this summer.
Congratulations to Jeremy and the whole Shmaltz tean. L’chaim.
Thursday’s ad is for Schaefer, in the “smart new package.” When the ad is from, I’m not quite sure, but based on the can, probably the 1950s or before. It’s a simple ad, but for some reason — most likely nostalgia — I’ve always liked the Schaefer branding.
Today’s info graphic is titled the Rocket Science Behind Hangovers, from Rahul Desai’s Blog, showing how alcohol effects particular parts of the body, and how they lead to a hangover.
Click here to see the poster full size.
The Oakland Tribune is reporting that a settlement has been reached in the wrongful death suit brought by the family of beer writer and journalist William Brand, who was struck and killed by a Muni train in February of 2009. The report says that at $900,000, the “settlement is one of the largest in recent years for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.” While it’s not enough to bring Bill back, hopefully it will be of some comfort to his family that a certain amount of justice has prevailed and that they may hopefully find some peace of mind over his loss. You can read the full story by the Tribune at SF transit agency approves settlement in Muni crash that killed Oakland Tribune journalist.
Bill was a great advocate for craft beer in the Bay Area, and we’ve continued to toast his memory at both the opening and closing events for SF Beer Week each year.
Here’s to you, Bill.
Wednesday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1948. I love the look on her face, like she’s about to play a trick on someone, instead of simply delivering a beer. I know it was 1948, but it’s hard not to notice the servant/slave and husband/master relationship depicted in the ad. At least she looks happy in her subservience. He just looks clueless.
I’m not exactly sure why this is news at all. It’s part of a series of what I call “so what” or “duh” studies that the neo-prohibitionists use to promote their anti-alcohol agenda. Really, it can best be termed “joke science,” and frankly, even using the word science is giving it too much credit. It’s more “agenda science,” propaganda masquerading as science, where the conclusion comes before the “study,” and the results fit the agreed upon conclusion every time. This one’s from CAMY, the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, as anti-alcohol a group as you’re likely to encounter. Here’s what they did.
[R]esearchers at CAMY and the Boston University School of Public Health conducted an online survey of 1,032 youth ages 13 to 20. Participants were asked about their past 30-day consumption of 898 brands of alcohol among 16 alcoholic beverage types (are there really that many well-delineated types?). They answered questions about how often and how much of each brand they consumed. The study appears in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
In a million years, you’ll never guess what they found out. Ready. Sitting down? They discovered that underage drinkers consume the same popular brands as most adults! Woo hoo, drop the balloons. What a surprise! Among the top ten brands reported, four were beers:
Well, now let’s look at the top selling beer brands overall, as of Dec. 2, 2012:
And note that Coors Light showed a better than six-percent increase, while Budweiser slipped almost three percent, so when the survey was conducted they most likely lined up, one, two, three.
According to the press release. “Of the top 25 consumed brands, 12 were spirits brands (including four vodkas), nine were beers, and four were flavored alcohol beverages.” Since they haven’t released the full list, we only know the top four brands of beer.
So however much money and resources they spent on this, what they paid for bought them the news that what adults drink and what their kids are sneaking a drink of match up almost exactly. And while most thinking adults would look at these lists and just shake their heads, the anti-alcohol CAMY sees this as revealed wisdom.
“For the first time, we know what brands of alcoholic beverages underage youth in the U.S. are drinking,” said study author David Jernigan, PhD, CAMY director. “Importantly, this report paves the way for subsequent studies to explore the association between exposure to alcohol advertising and marketing efforts and drinking behavior in young people.”
Really? We finally know what kids are drinking, do we? Thank goodness somebody finally thought to ask them, by conducting a poll. And while most reasonable people might question what these results mean, CAMY immediately leaps to the conclusion that this proves an “association between exposure to alcohol advertising and marketing efforts and drinking behavior in young people.” Holy moley, can these people spin a yarn. Without any evidence of causation whatsoever, they declare these findings show there is an association. But all it reveals is that kids drink the same brands that their parents do, that they drink the beers they have access to (i.e., can pilfer from their parents’ stash or get an older brother to buy for them). Guess what I drank when I was unable to walk into a store and buy my own beer? Whatever I could get. Do they really think that underage kids are determining in advance what brands they decide they want to drink, and then do whatever’s necessary to insure that’s what they actually get? Pul-leeze. They’ll drink whatever they can get, and be happy about it. You can’t be too picky at that age. So it’s a good thing most teenagers haven’t yet developed a discerning palate, otherwise they’d be mightily disappointed on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, the danger with this sort of junk science is that it’s then used like real science to promote a particular agenda and change public policy. For example, when the Partnership for a Drug Free America reported on it, in Study Finds Underage Drinkers Prefer Top Alcohol Brands, they concluded with this quote from CAMY director David Jernigan:
“This research will lead to insights that will inform public policy,” he says. “Everybody has gut sense that some brands are appealing to kids more than others. Now we know for which brands that is working.”
Except that there are no real insights in this at all. That it’s even in a “scientific journal,” albeit “Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research” — not exactly the journal Nature — is baffling. Here’s the “Background” from the abstract: “Little is known about brand-specific alcohol consumption among underage youth.” Really, we don’t currently know what brands underage kids are drinking? Seriously, how can they print that without losing all credibility. Neo-prohibitionists have been complaining about what kids are drinking for decades, if not longer. But until we asked 1,000 teenagers to take an online survey, we had no idea which brands? Are they kidding? What a joke.
Then there’s the “Conclusions,” which frankly I’m surprised is plural, as if there is more than one conclusion. But here it is: “Underage youth alcohol consumption, although spread out over several alcoholic beverage types, is concentrated among a relatively small number of alcohol brands. This finding has important implications for alcohol research, practice, and policy.”
I can’t wait to here about the “important implications” to which they believe that future “alcohol research, practice, and policy” will be altered by the groundbreaking news that kids are drinking the same stuff their parents are drinking. Why isn’t this on the front page, above the fold, of the Grey Lady herself? But really, the question ought to be why is it news at all.
I wonder how CAMY would process this Brazilian brand created to warn about the dangers of underage drinking?