Wednesday’s ad is for Pabst Blue Ribbon, from 1943. Pabst used these freaky anthropomorphic humanized ribbons with faces for a number of years and I always find them more than a little creepy and unsettling. This was in the middle of World War 2, when collecting scrap metal for the war effort. Apparently my mother was a decorated scrap collector. She would have been 6 in 1943 and her father, my grandfather, was an automobile mechanic, meaning there was lots of scraps around.
Maybe it’s Deschutes’ Black Butte Porter or Guinness that’s making Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI) come over to the dark side? But whatever the reason, ABI is apparently poised to release at least five, possibly six, new beers which, if not actually black, have significantly more color than your average ABI beer. And apparently they’re also more extreme beers — which for ABI means 6% a.b.v. (it’s all relative). The first of these, Bud Black Crown, is described as a “golden amber lager” so it would appear “Black Crown” is more of a ceremonial title than a beer descriptor. According to one label I saw, there’s apparently a website set up — www.budweiser.com/blackcrown — though so far there’s nothing set up there yet. The Black Crown came from the Budweiser Project 12, specifically the Los Angeles entry. According to AdAge, there will most likely be a big marketing push behind this release, which may include a Super Bowl ad, and — ooh boy — a specially designed bow-tie can. The Black Crown is expected to be launched in early February.
Next up is Michelob Black Lager, a “Special Dark Lager” and advertised as a “German-style Doppelbock.” There’s not much information I could find on this one, so it’s anybody’s guess what this will be like.
Then, from the Busch family comes Busch Black Light. So either they’re going after the old hippies with their black light posters or having a bit of oxymoronic fun like “jumbo shrimp” or “black gold.” This one’s also something of a head-scratcher. It, too, is 6% a.b.v. — high for a light — and also mentions being “ice-brewed.” It couldn’t be a “black light,” like a black IPA, could it? That seems way too far-fetched, doesn’t it? So what is it? I’m stumped.
And let’s not forget the Newark, New Jersey (née Latrobe, Pennsylvania) brand Rolling Rock. They’re coming out with Rolling Rock Black Rock, an “Extra Dark,” which presumably means it’s as “extra dark” as their regular beer is “extra pale ale.”
Lastly, there’s ABI’s German brand, Beck’s, which is brewed here in the states. Beck’s will apparently be launching two brand extensions, presumably hoping to squeeze more shelf space out of Bud-friendly retailers. The first of these is Beck’s Black Jewel. It appears that it was also be 6% a.b.v. — which I’m starting to think is a magic number — and is brewed with Liberty hops, and could possibly be a single-hop beer. No world, however, on the beer’s color.
Lastly, this one’s more of a stretch, darkside-wise. Beck’s Sapphire looks like it will either be a single hop beer or at least feature the German hop Sapphire (a.k.a. Saphir). But it does have a dark green and black label, so who knows? It, too, will be 6% a.b.v. (so that’s four out of six). Also, I always thought sapphires were blue and my understanding is that if impurities like chromium get into the gem, then it’s called “red corundum,” or more commonly a “ruby.” So who knows what the deal is with the red sapphire?
So why is ABI suddenly going over to the dark side with beer color, labels and in their naming strategies? Your guess is as good as mine. It’s not as if dark beers have suddenly started taking off last week. Guinness has been around for a very long time, and most craft breweries have included a porter or stout in their portfolios for decades. Although we don’t even know if these will even be black in color. It seems doubtful, more likely they’ll just be darker in relation to Bud’s other offerings, in much the same way the original pale ales weren’t really pale, just paler than the popular dark beers at the time of their introduction. Again, it’s all relative. Plus, calling beers “black” this or that just sounds cooler, especially to the hipster millennials they’re obviously targeting with these beers. Some have speculated that it’s in response to the recent success that Yuengling has enjoyed with their (slightly) darker beers, but I don’t know. It certainly will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the coming months.
Okay, last political post for the next four years. Well, maybe not that long, but I’m probably as tired of the political cycle as you are reading me going on about it. With the election finally over, we can get back to what really matters: drinking beer. So, one final congratulations to the Craft Beer President (with a link to an Indiana student paper article from September), and now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Illustration by Ben Wade, from the Indiana Daily Student’s Weekend in Bloomington.
Tuesday’s election day ad is for Budweiser, from 1952. But the stubborn postures and acrimonious stares on the two political mascots are as recognizable today as they apparently were sixty years ago. Even though politics seem more divisive today than ever before, maybe there were always this bad? I don’t know if Budweiser has the power to get us all together, but perhaps craft beer?
The same artwork was also used in another ad, with a different headline, “Keep Cool.” Given that the two political mascots are sitting on a block of ice, it seems likely that this may have actually been the earlier or original ad.
I know I’m beating a dead horse — or is that donkey and elephant? — today, but as it’s election day and I’m of the opinion that most people don’t take politics seriously enough, it can’t be helped. Poking around today, when I should have been working, I found an interesting President’s Day piece from earlier this year on Politico. Entitled For Presidents, Beer is Great Leveler, it was written by Joe McClain, president of The Beer Institute. I wrote a similar article earlier this year, too, All the President’s Beer.
McClain and I certainly agree on beers’ importance to presidential politics. “Beer has come to symbolize the unique connection between presidents and the people they serve. Presidents are charged with bridging divides and finding common ground with citizens from all ideologies and backgrounds. There’s no common denominator like beer.” After dropping Eisenhower’s most famous beer quote, he continues. “Just as Ike used beer as a measure of the average American voter, voters used beer to measure presidential candidates.” But I absolutely love his conclusion.
Beer is a unifier and equalizer. It transcends party and ideology, geography and class, and is enjoyed by young and old, male and female, Democrat and Republican. It leads to common ground in politics and life. When so much in the world pulls us apart, beer has been there to bring us together.
Indeed. As I’ve been saying all day. Vote Beer!
Monday’s ad is for Schlitz, from around election day in 1941. It shows a cross-section of 1940s persons waiting in line to vote. The year before, FDR won an unprecedented third term for U.S. president. So in 1941, I’m not sure what election would have been taking place or what the hot button issues of the day would have been, though I’m sure World War 2 was big on everybody’s mind. Given that voting districts are usually small neighborhoods, this one appears to be unusually diverse based on the appearance of the people in line. It’s amusing that the caricature of the “rich person” in bowler hat and monocle is the only one looking at his watch. He must be the only busy person with somewhere else to be.
But regardless of your socio-economic status, your party affiliation, or any other divisive category, please vote tomorrow. Cheers.
A couple of months ago, my friend and colleague, Don Russell — who often writes under the non de plume Joe Sixpack — wrote a provocative article declaring Craft-Beer Drinkers to Decide Election. With the presidential election tomorrow, I thought it fitting to take another look at that.
Russell ranked “the states by brewery density — the number of breweries per 1,000 square miles.” From that, a pattern emerged. Of the 25 states with the highest concentration of breweries, all of them voted for the Democratic candidate in 2008; what statisticians call a “positive correlation.” His interpretation:
The density of breweries in a state is at least partly related to the density of its population; the more people, the more breweries. Obama performs better in densely populated states because urban populations tend to be more diverse and liberal.
Naturally, the reverse is true: States with fewer breweries per square mile overwhelmingly vote Republican.
Another colleague, Jeff Alworth in Portland, Oregon, disagreed with Russell’s analysis and said so in Gerrymandered! Craft Beer Is No Proxy for Political Leanings. He believes brewery density is the wrong metric to use, preferring breweries per capita. I confess that’s a statistic I’ve never warmed to, for no particular reason except that it seems to unfairly favor states with less people in many cases.
Russell doesn’t examine that, but he does also look at states by per capita beer consumption. In that instance, no illuminating trends appear. “Of the 10 biggest beer-drinking states, five voted for Obama in 2008, and five backed Sen. John McCain of Arizona.”
In the end, according to Russell. “What’s really important here is the type of beer voters are drinking.” Whichever way the election goes tomorrow, it will be interesting to see if any of this holds true. I can’t help but like the idea of craft beer deciding elections, however far-fetched. Still, the important thing is to drink craft beer … and vote. I want to see that bumper sticker: “I’m a craft beer drinker and I vote.”
UPDATE: As Stan Hieronymus points out, I was remiss in not including Beer Drinkers For Obama.
Given the NFL owner’s wanton disregard for their fans with the labor dispute debacle earlier this year, I’ve been paying much less attention to the football season. I check in to see if my beloved Packers have won, but that’s about it. For a number of years now — since I’ve had kids — I rarely go to a live game, usually because it’s such a time-consuming hassle and so expensive, in part because there’s four of us so costs rise exponentially. That’s especially true when it comes to beer, if you can even find anything worth drinking.
To help find a better deal, and to prove my point, Save on Brew looked at beer prices at the 32 NFL stadiums in a post entitled the 2012 – 2013 NFL Stadium Beer Price Infographic.
Here’s what they found:
Going to the game? It’s gonna cost you. According to FanCostExperience.Com (and the source for our stadium data), prices are rising across the sport. The average beer is up 15 cents from last year at $7.28. In this economy, every cent counts.
Rounding out the price-assault on the American public, the average NFL ticket is $78.38 (that’s a regular ticket, the “premium ticket” average is $243.70), a soft drink is $4.57, a ‘dog is $4.84, parking is $27.35, a program is $4.06, and a cap celebrating your favorite team will set you back $21.38 (on average) and, of course, a few of those $7.28 beers adds up pretty fast. In fact, a family of 4 will spend, on average, $443.93.
So wow, that’s even more expensive than I’d thought. That makes movie theater food and drink look like an absolute bargain. I guess they need to make that much profit so they can pay the referees. I feel so sorry for the owners, that they must be struggling so much that they need to charge close to six times the retail price for a beer. Because if the average price for a beer at an NFL stadium is $7.28 for 17 oz., that’s 42.8 cents per ounce! That works out to be about $5.14 for 12 ounces. A six-pack of Bud Light at my local BevMo costs $5.79, making it pretty close to six times the price. Now that’s gouging.
For a mainstream craft beer it’s almost as bad. A six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale costs $8.99 at BevMo, meaning 12 ounces of pale ale will cost you more than half of the price of an entire six-pack outside the stadium.
Notice the average cost for a family of four? $444! Seriously, how many people can afford that on a regular basis? Another similar survey of NFL prices on Visual.ly, entitled The Real Cost of Attending a Game, likewise concluded that the average cost to a family of four is $427.42. In that survey, they found the average price for a small beer to be $7.13, a pretty similar result. Given how much money the owners make, it it really reasonable to charge so much for tickets and other concessions at the game? I understand that in some sense they’re market prices. There are enough people willing to pay that much, and many games are sold out or nearly so. But does that make it right? Especially when owners complain they can’t afford to pay the refs. Every few years they fleece the community in which they live, threatening to move the team if they’re not given free money, or at least tax relief, to build a new stadium they probably don’t need. Don’t believe that? Read Field of Schemes.
It’s really a shame. I love the game. I like watching the games, cheering on my favorite team, especially with my son. I know it’s a business. I get that. But sports is really a part of the entertainment industry, so it’s not exactly like other businesses. As the recent strikes in baseball, basketball and football have shown, team owners really seem to believe that the people who consume their products — the fans — don’t matter all that much. But they could ease up on the beer prices and still make a healthy profit. That’s a decision I could drink to.
Last year, Vanberg & DeWulf, the beer import company founded by Don Feinberg and Wendy Littlefield, celebrated their 30th anniversary with a Coast to Coast Toast. It was such a great success, that they’re doing it again this year. C2CT2 — Coast to Coast Toast 2 — will take place this year on November 15, which in Belgium is “King’s Day,” a national holiday celebrating their monarchy. So it’s a great date to celebrate Belgian beer and Belgian culture.
Last year, about 350 establishments across the country participated in the Coast to Coast Toast to Belgian beer. This year, Wendy tells me it should be at least 400. If you want to see if there’s a C2CT2 event taking place near you, there’s a list you can download at their website. If you want to consider hosting a toast, you can sign up at Eventbrite.
Even if you can’t make it out — I’m staying in again and toasting with the missus, for example — toast them in the comfort of your home. It should be easy enough to find one of the great beers they import. Any beer from the following Belgian and European breweries will fit the bill.
You can also find a list of all of their beers in their portfolio at their C2CT2 website.
Today in 1903, Panama gained their Independence from Colombia.
Panama
Panama Breweries
Panama Brewery Guides
Other Guides
Guild: None Known
National Regulatory Agency: None
Beverage Alcohol Labeling Requirements: Not Known
Drunk Driving Laws: BAC 0.08%
Alcohol Consumption By Type:
Alcohol Consumption Per Capita (in litres):
WHO Alcohol Data:
Patterns of Drinking Score: N/A
Prohibition: None
