Brookston Beer Bulletin

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Boozin’

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pint
There seem to be so many of these colorful infographics around these days that I could post one almost every day and not run out for a while. So here’s today’s, Boozin’ A Colorful Look at the U.S.’s Drinking Habits and How We Stack Up. One curious figure I noticed, especially given the whining of the neo-prohibitionists. We have one of the highest teetotaler percentages, WTF? That’s disappointing. Another factoid that stood out was that the heaviest drinking day of the year was the day before Thanksgiving, what they referred to as “Black Out Wednesday” — do I hear a new holiday being created? That surprised me, though while they do list sources at the bottom of the chart, it’s not clear where that one came from. I would have thought Halloween, or one of the summer big picnic holidays.

boozin

Beer In Ads #777: Go First Class With Pizza & Beer

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Tuesday’s ad is for Miller High Life, from the early 1960s, part of their “Go First Class” series. The ad seems to be saying that pizza and beer are the path to being high class. Now, I’m a great lover of pizza, and there are few pairings so obviously perfect together than beer and pizza. I could eat pizza almost every meal if you let me, and there are amazing gourmet pies all over the place these days. But in the 1960s? I certainly don’t remember pizza being thought of as “high class” until very recently. Also, I have to say. That is not the most appetizing pizza I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Miller-pizza

Beer In The Pacific Northwest

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gigantic-brewing
My buddy Ben Love, who last year opened his own brewery in Portland, Gigantic Brewing, just sent me this cool video featuring his “master brewer,” Van Havig, who joined him at Gigantic, after many years at the Rock Bottom in Portland. The short film, entitled Victory, was created by Jerry Makare as a project for the University of Oregon Multi-Media Journalism Program Foundations class (J610) in Fall 2012. Havig makes some great points. Portland is an amazing place to drink beer, and what he’s saying, I think, holds true for a few other pockets of the country, but as far as I know, the market penetration of specialty beer there is second to none. It’s certainly one of my favorite places to enjoy a beer.

Farmville Hop Farming

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farmville-hops
I know next to nothing about Farmville, the popular farm simulation game played on Facebook, apart from the fact that it appears to be a time suck of epic proportions, with something on the order of 76 million active users every month. I know the company that created the game, Zynga, is in San Francisco. I remember passing by their offices with a huge screen outside the building on the way to the annual Christmas party at Anchor Brewing last month.

So maybe this is old hat, but here’s something I didn’t now. Searching for a graphic of hops yesterday, I discovered that in 2011, FarmVille added hop farming to their English Countryside Farm module, and it’s apparently available beginning with level 20, whatever that means. According to the wonderfully geeky FarmViller:

The Hops is a seed on the English Countryside Farm, available from level 20. It became available with the introduction of the English Countryside Farm beginning March 22, 2011.

It is available from the Market for 150 coins after reaching level 20. When bought and placed on the farm, the player receives 2 XP. It can be harvested every ten hours for 220 coins. The seed itself can be sold for 8 coins.

Here are the stages of growing hops in FarmVille:

Freshly Planted Hops

farmville-hops-1

Hops at 33% Growth

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Hops at 66% Growth

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Hops Ready to Be Harvested

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Hops Treated with Crop Fertilizer

farmville-hops-5

Hops After Having Withered

farmville-hops-6

A quick search reveals that you can also grow barley, but there appears to be no way to malt it or put all the ingredients together to brew beer. Oh, well, just when it was starting to look interesting. Perhaps I dodged a bullet there, after all.

Farmville_Freak_super_hops_grown

One Nation, Under Hops

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hops-and-beer
The Geeks of the Industry blog, under his “Creative Strategist” tag, lists Craft Beer and the Thank You Economy as number 16. Here’s what the University of Oregon advertising student blogger had to say, presumably interpreted through his burgeoning education.

The craft brew industry is a prime example of a 21st century customer-brand dynamic. As you may know if you’ve been reading my blog, I am a bit obsessed with the philosophy of Gary Vaynerchuk and his views on what social media means to the present and future of branding. Microbrews and their cult-like support from many walks of life is a perfect example of the power of word of mouth in the 21st century. The village ecosystem of commerce is returning with the powerful viral capability of the passionate few.

Those sentiments are illustrated nicely with this clever infographic, created by Column Five Media for Visual.ly, under the title How Indie Brewers Are Outpacing Beer Industry Growth. I just love the proliferation of infographics, they are my Kryptonite. I am powerless to resist them. Enjoy.

one-nation-under-hops

Beer In Ads #776: Chicken In The Basket

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Monday’s ad is for Pabst, from 1954, part of their “What’ll You Have” series. The ad features a glass of Pabst paired with “Chicken in the Basket.” That’s some shiny-looking chicken. One interesting thing about the ad copy is I’m used to beer being “paired” with food, but here they say this. “Teamed with any food, distinctive Pabst Blue Ribbon makes meal-time an extra pleasure.” That’s an interesting way of putting it. One’s not paired with the other, but instead the two teamed up together.

Pabst-chicken-basket

You’re In The Clear: The Health Benefits Of Moderate Consumption

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health
Here’s a great infographic about the Health Benefits of Moderate Consumption entitled Beer You’re in the Clear. It was produced a few years ago by the design firm Belancio, and highlights many of the benefit of the moderate consumption of beer, something the anti-alcohol folks continue to decry and deny. They’ve also made a limited edition with, in my opinion, better contrast, making it easier to read.

BeerClear-v2
You can see a larger, easier-to-read, version at Belancio and an even larger one at Fast Company.

Pixelated Beer

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pixelated-beer
If you’re as old as me, you probably remember when video games had very limited graphics and most were pixelated, only roughly approximating what the characters and backgrounds in the games looked like. I remember getting an Atari 2600 right after high school and playing it a lot while I was in the Army, when we had long blocks of time to kill. Worse still, the very first videogame I played was — believe it or not — Pong, in a stand alone cabinet that was inside Shea Stadium, when my step-grandparents took me to see the Mets play sometime in the early-to-mid-1970s. It must have been after 1972, since that’s when Pong debuted. I was Orioles fan back then — Brooks Robinson was my guy — so I don’t know why we went to see the Mets. Anyway, pixelation seems to be hot again these days in design, some kind of retro nostalgia no doubt. An artist in Spain, Iñaki Soria Izquierdo, did a series of designs of well-know beer bottles using a pixelated style. He appears to go by just his middle name professionally — Soria — and at his site, in his portfolio, is what he calls IcoBeer. I assume because he’s in Spain, the designs are all for well-known international brands, because it would be great to see his treatment of some American brands.
soria-4-beers
His website includes only the following description:

Pruebas gráficas de representación iconográfica de objetos (Estrella Damm / Heineken / Corona Extra / Guinness) a partir de estructuras y formas geométricas básicas.

Which Google translates as:

Graphic evidence of iconographic representation of objects (Estrella Damm / Heineken / Corona Extra / Guinness) from basic geometric shapes and structures.

But they remind me of those early videogame designs, with just simple square and rectangular shapes, and very few curves, to give the impression of the bottles and labels. Anyway, I think they’re pretty cool. Here are the four designs Soria did:

Corona

soria-corona

Guinness

soria-guinness

Heineken

soria-heineken

Estrella Dam

soria-estrella

Beer In Ads #775: New Schlitz Label

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Friday’s ad is for Schlitz, though I’m not sure from when, perhaps someone who’s an expert in breweriana can sort it out, because it’s from whenever Schlitz started being “identified by a NEW cream, brown and gold LABEL.” But it’s a beautifully simple ad, with a great illustration of their bottle.

Schlitz-new-label