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Beer In Art #130: Jacob Jardeans’ The Satyr And The Peasants

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art-beer
This week’s work of art is by a Dutch Artist, Jacob Jardeans, who was better known in his own time than he is today. Unlike his contemporaries, Rubens and Van Dyck, Jardaens never left Antwerp or found the success that they did. But in his hometown, he was one of the most popular artists. He painted a lot of allegories and mythological pictures, such as The Satyr and the Peasants, seen below, which was created around 1640.

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The portrait includes a peasant and his family, along with a satyr and a servant is bring beer. The satyr’s face is odd, almost seems to mocking his hosts. But it’s the peasant’s face, bursting with food, that has the really strange expression. He looks like he was caught mid-bite in a snapshot.

Curiously, Jardaens also painted a very similar scene, the main difference being the canvas is a bit wider to accommodate more area, and two more children, though the satyr has been replaced by another man (another peasant?) who’s draining his own mug of beer. The second painting is known as “Eating Man” but I don’t know if it was painted before or after the other one.

Jordaens-satyr-and-peasants

You can read Jardaens biography at Wikipedia or at the Jacob Jardaens official website. And you can see more of his work at Olga’s Gallery, at the official website gallery and the Web Gallery. And there are links to even more paintings at ArtCyclopedia.

Guinness Ad #71: Victory Gardening

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guinness-toucan
Our 71st Guinness ad is also from the “Guinness For Strength” series, with the yield of vegetables a direct result of the bottle of Guinness peeking out of the basket the gardener is carrying on his head. Now that’s a green thumb.

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And here’s a variation of the ad, presumably from just after World War 2, since the word “victory” is crossed-out and “plenty” written in just above it.

Guinness-plenty

Buffalo With Buffalo: Beer!

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buffalo
I confess I don’t “get” the humor in this 2006 cartoon. I imagine there’s an inside joke here that would be apparent if I was a regular reader of Buffalo with Buffalo, a comic strip written occasionally by a Buffalo, New York blogger. But it is all about beer, so I thought I’d share. If you think you understand the joke, please leave a comment with your best guess.

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Session #52: Collectibles & Breweriana

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schlitz-breweriana
Our 52nd Session is hosted by Brian Stechschulte, from All Over Beer. He’s chosen the topic Beer Collectibles & Breweriana, which he explains as follows:

I’ve decided not to focus on the substance of beer, but the material that plays a supporting role. Bottles, coasters, cans, labels, ads, tap handles, church keys, hats, t-shirts, tip trays, glassware and signs have been collected by fanatics ever since beer has been sold. These objects constitute the world of breweriana, a term that surfaced in 1972 to define any item displaying a brewery or brand name. The majority of highly prized objects are from the pre-prohibition era, but ephemera from every period in brewing history, including craft beer, finds a home with each beer drinking generation.

So what old or new beer related items do you collect and why? It’s that simple. This is your opportunity to share the treasured objects your wife or husband won’t let you display on the fireplace mantle. You don’t need to be a major collector like this guy to participate. In my mind, just a few items constitute a collection. Maybe you have mementos from a beer epiphany or road trips? You can focus on a whole collection or tell the story behind a single item.

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So breweriana. Collectibles. I have been plagued my entire life — my wife would say afflicted — with a desire to collect stuff. All kinds of stuff. Stuff as varied as my interests, which run fairly far afield and tend toward the arcane. There was a time when I scoured yards sales and flea markets on weekends, now I troll eBay. I love the hunt, especially when I don’t know what I’m looking for, just something that turns my eye.

People who’ve been to our home recently know that I have not exactly been cured, despite my wife’s best efforts over the past fifteen plus years. The problem is, I tend to imbue each object with meaning, its time and place of acquisition, how it fit into my life and the story it holds. Point to any object in my home — and I do mean any — and I can tell you the tale about how I came to acquire it, including when, why and where.

But I have actually scaled back those impulses significantly and with every move and spring cleaning, I shed more and more of what can best be termed useless possessions. Objets d’art, I would say. Junk is what most people would counter. Ah, well, as the saying goes: “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

That doesn’t mean I’ve lost my obsessions, quite the opposite in fact. I just try and pick more carefully these days. Between work and family, there’s far less time than when I was younger. As for breweriana, I’m not nearly as obsessed with it as some of my other hobbies. But I do have a box of coasters, another box of labels, a handful of cans and bottles along with a number of more unique items. I also have a number of Reading Brewery pieces, because I grew up just outside of Reading, Pennsylvania, and I love their logo. For a time before I was married, I also collected globes, mostly desktop globes but I also had a few larger ones, too. That led me to start picking up some old Schlitz stuff from the time when they used the globe logo.

Schlitz-world

For that reason I have more Schlitz breweriana than any other individual brand, though not as much as I once had. I still have a few lighted signs, a couple of bottles and an old label. But the crown jewel, and one of my favorite pieces of breweriana of all-time is this golden Schlitz statue of a woman holding up a stained-glass-like globe. Both the globe and the base lights up. It stands nearly four feet high, around 45 inches. I bought it at a yard sale in San Jose, when I lived there twenty or so years ago. I’d like to say that was the end of the story, but it’s not. See below the statue to learn its ultimate fate.

schlitz-statue-globe

As I said, I’d like to say that was the end of the story, and that it happily and proudly sits in my office today, but unfortunately that’s not what happened to it. It was not, sad to say, universally beloved and when my wife Sarah and I first moved in together after our engagement, it held an uneasy place in our new home, a bit like the wagon wheel table in the film When Harry Met Sally. So when I became the beer buyer at Beverages & more, it seemed like the right decision to decorate my office there with the Schlitz statue. And for several years it stood like a beacon on top of the small refrigerator in my office there where I kept samples.

Then one day I had a meeting with my sales rep. from Spaten USA, whose name I’ll omit to spare him any embarrassment. He was not of an inconsequential size, and for some reason while sitting in his chair, kept rocking back so the front legs were off the ground. Nervous energy, I suppose. But at one point while leaning back, he lost his balance and fell to the ground. The chair fell back, knocking into the refrigerator, setting off a chain reaction of falling objects that ended with the Schlitz lamp on the ground with the globe on top smashed into a million tiny shards of plastic. He offered to replace it, but I honestly didn’t even know how since at the time it not exactly something you could go into a store and buy. And so that was the end of my favorite piece of breweriana I’ve ever owned. Every now and again, I see one come up for auction on eBay and often fetches hundreds of dollars. But even if I found one it would not exactly be welcomed back into our house, so this favorite will have to live on only in my memory. But it was a great advertising piece. The few I’ve seen in circulation still look great, sitting on the bar back in a few old bars. It almost makes me want to drink a Schlitz.

The Politics Of Never Being Satisfied

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Marin-I
The anti-alcohol Marin Institute had a little item in one of their e-mail missives a few days ago, reporting on the news that Anheuser-Busch InBev announced that they would be lowering the alcohol content of their Tilt from 12% a.b.v. to 8%. You’d think that the anti-alcohol groups that have been whining about these drinks to high heaven would be at least be a little pleased that the beer company has bowed to their pressure. You would, however, be wrong. That’s because the fanatical nature of the politics they’re peddling can never, ever be satisfied until there is no more alcohol to be sold, despite their insistence that they’re not neo-prohibitionists. Nothing any alcohol company ever does will be viewed as anything but wrong, no matter how well-meaning. My favorite example is still when A-B canned water and sent it to earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The Marin Institute even complained about that because Bud had the temerity to put their logo on the cans and send out a press release. Of course, they complained about that in their own press release, but when they do it it’s apparently for a higher purpose.

The subtitle of the Marin Institute’s article was “Color Us Unimpressed,” and that’s them in a nutshell, as far as I can see. Nothing that any alcohol company does will ever impress them, short of voluntarily giving up and shutting down their business. Apparently that’s what being a “watchdog” means. The way they operate, “watchdog” has come to mean complain about absolutely everything the companies you’re watching do, no matter what it might be. Personally, I can’t remember a kind word the Marin Institute, or any other similar group, has ever said about a company that makes an alcoholic beverage. You’d think a self-avowed “observer” would be able to separate the good from the bad, but when by definition anything an alcohol company does is bad then I guess there’s nothing left to praise.

So I don’t understand why we even bother trying to appease them. It never works. It never, ever will work. Can we please stop playing into their hands by trying to be reasonable when such a strategy can never work? The anti-alcohol groups represent a minority of the population. The majority is like you and me, and enjoys a drink now and again and manages to do so responsibly, in moderation and while maintaining a job and a place in society. There are people who can’t handle drinking, but let’s stop those extreme examples from being the only ones cited. Let’s start pushing more positive stories. There are children who get their hands on alcohol, but it’s no different than when we were all underage, and most of us didn’t turn out too badly as a result. Reasonable steps should be taken to keep kids away from anything that society deems unsuitable for them, but when we get fanatical about it — as is most definitely the case with alcohol — all we do is ruin society for everybody, the adults included. It’s madness.

The whole rationale for the fanatical dislike of high alcohol malt-based beverages is that they’re, as the Marin Institute puts it; “sweet, fruit-flavored kid-friendly swill.” Well so what? People under 21 are still not allowed to buy them. If they manage to do so, that’s an entirely different problem. The fact that young adults ages, say 21 to 29, also like and want to buy “sweet, fruit-flavored kid-friendly swill, in a single-serving container with bright colors and design” should make no difference whatsoever. If it were anything but alcohol, people would recognize how absurd this argument is. The idea that a company can’t make a product that appeals to people who wish to buy it under the theory that it also might appeal to people who aren’t allowed to buy it is utterly absurd.

Soda pop, candy and fast food, all of which are arguably just as bad for kids, market their wares in just such a fashion and few people think twice. Many schools even offer some or all of those foods and drinks at their school, some even accepting legal kick-backs just to keep those products available on school grounds. But that’s okay because it’s not alcohol.

The irony is, I don’t like Tilt, or Joose, or any of the other alcopops, but what I dislike even more is when anti-alcohol crusaders use them as an excuse to assault common sense and to foment fear about all of the dangers that such things set loose upon the world. It’s especially troubling when they use that old tried and true “it’s for the kids” canard. It’s just bullshit. More people need to say so. Today, it’s alcopops. Tomorrow it’s beer with caffeine. The next day it’s everything else they don’t like. And you can bet on one thing. They’ll never, ever be satisfied.

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Wisconsin Legislature Attacks Craft Brewers

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wisconsin
With craft beer being the only segment of the brewing industry showing strong growth, you’d think that state governments trying to fix our current economic woes would be doing everything they can to help one of the few bright spots in American business. But never underestimate the power of lobbying by interests with more money than the craft brewers, namely beer distributors and Milwaukee-based powerhouse Miller Brewing, operating in the U.S. as MillerCoors, but also part of the international conglomerate SABMiller. (And thanks to a number of people who sent me different links to this emerging story.)

Right now in Wisconsin, there’s a battle brewing and it looks like the state’s many craft brewers will be hit the hardest by a proposed new wholesale bill that was recently approved by the state Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee. The bill is backed and supported by the Wisconsin Beer Distributors Association, the Tavern League of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Grocers Association, the Wisconsin Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Stores Association, the Wisconsin Wine & Spirits Institute and MillerCoors. In other words, all the big players, with money, who do most of their business with the big, corporate beer companies.

They claim that the new bill is designed “to stop St. Louis-based Budweiser and Bud Light brewer Anheuser-Busch from buying wholesale distributors in Wisconsin.” And that might be understandable and even believable, except for one little detail. Not only was the Wisconsin Brewers Guild (which represents over 35 independent, small craft brewers) not consulted on the bill, several of the provisions of the bill actively harm the small brewers, and those same provisions have nothing whatsoever to do with Anheuser-Busch InBev in the least. Obviously, someone is lying.

Here’s how several local news outlets in Wisconsin are reporting on the story. First, here’s the Isthmus Daily Page:

Current state law severely restricts the options brewers have to distribute their beer. Only breweries that produce less than 50,000 barrels of beer per year are allowed to sell their beer directly to retailers. All others must contract with wholesalers for distribution.

Worried that perhaps microbrewers were operating in too free a market, legislative Republicans have proposed even more restrictions on the beer distribution business. The legislation that passed JFC gets rid of any exemptions that allow some microbreweries to distribute their own beer, as well as forbids breweries from selling beer on their own property, either as a bar or a retailer.

And what would Walker-era legislation be if it didn’t offer more power to state government? The legislation also takes the power of licensing of wholesalers away from municipalities and puts them under the control of the state Department of Revenue.

But what will most likely happen in reality is that small brewers will have a much harder time bringing their beer to market. Whether the bill actually targets small brewers, or it’s an unintended consequence, is unclear but I can’t help but think that legislators — elected officials, after all — have a duty to look out for all of their constituencies, and should understand how their actions effect everyone. I know that’s overly idealistic, but that’s how it’s supposed to work and I’ll always continue to hope for at least that much. The fact that the big players all had a say but the small brewers did not speaks volumes about how this is working in reality, and it’s a pretty ugly picture, if not of outright corruption, then at least of unseemly favoritism.

Here’s what Sprecher Brewing president Jeff Hamilton had to say about the bill, as quoted in The Milwaukee Business Journal:

“This is limiting our business model,” said Hamilton, who also serves as president of the Wisconsin Brewers Guild. “The current system is working just fine.”

MillerCoors and the state’s distributors “went out on their own” in promoting and developing the legislation, Hamilton said.

“We didn’t have a say and it is devastating to our business,” he said.

Hamilton believes the target of the legislation isn’t Anheuser-Busch but rather craft brewers that have been rapidly growing as major brewers have struggled.

“It’s hedging against future competition,” he said.

Consolidation among the state’s distributors has made it more challenging for smaller brewers to sell their products, given the number of brands distributors carry, Hamilton said. The legislation also would thwart plans by some craft brewers to start their own distributorship.

A spokesman for MillerCoors, Nehl Horton, even acknowledges it would limit craft brewers’ options, but insists that it wasn’t their intention. To which I can only say, so what? They had to have known how this would affect craft brewers, but MillerCoors obviously didn’t care. Why should they? But the fourteen Wisconsin legislators, they should have cared about how this would effect viable Wisconsin businesses.

Obnoxiously, Horton added that “the fundamental issue is whether small craft brewers want to be brewers or want to be brewers, wholesalers and retailers.” Given the way small brewers have been treated by distributors and retailers over the years, as they struggled against some pretty big, entrenched institutions to change how people thought about beer, that’s an awfully insulting thing to say. Craft brewers have had to find creative ways to gain access to market out of necessity, including doing their own selling and distributing, precisely because of all the roadblocks put in their way by distributors, retailers and big brewers, the very people who are trying once more to harm their business with this new legislation. So to hear MillerCoors suggest that small brewers should behave more like them, after making it impossible for them to do so for decades, is a pretty offensive thing to say.

And now even the bars and restaurants, many of whom undoubtedly serve craft beer, are also out to get the brewers, too, as the new bill also takes away their ability to sell their own beer, even on their own property. As the Daily Page notes:

But why forbid brewers from operating pubs and restaurants — at least one on their property? It seems a rather blatant attempt to appease the Tavern League, which supported the legislation, and hopes that brewpubs don’t threaten their businesses.

Again, Wisconsin legislators had to know what they were doing, but did it anyway. June 15th, the provisions of the new wholesaler bill comes up for a full vote. Hopefully, an action alert from Support Your Local Brewery will be forthcoming.

And finally, here’s a television report from Channel 9 WAOW, in central Wisconsin:

Beer Missing From MyPlate

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food-pyramid
Yesterday the USDA scrapped their old food pyramid in favor of a new nutritional chart. The new one is called MyPlate, and as you’d expect it’s shaped like a plate. It’s also a bit simpler than previous efforts, divided into just four groups: proteins, grains, fruit and vegetables. And just off the plate is a fifth food group: “dairy,” looking very much like a cup of milk.

MyPlate

But where’s the beer? I say that only half in jest, as I realize that culturally there’s simply no way that alcohol would ever show up on our food pyramid. That’s despite the fact that for adults (let’s remember the food pyramid is for everybody) who regularly drink in moderation the odds are that they’ll live longer than folks who abstain or drink to excess. Yes, that means moderate beer drinkers are healthier, so it doesn’t seem like it’s too much of a stretch to think it could, or should, be included. Unfortunately, most Americans just can’t bring themselves to admit the obvious, that beer might actually be good for us. That’s especially true in a climate where a majority of adults do in fact drink responsibly while a very vocal minority of anti-alcohol fanatics do everything they can to undermine and distort those very facts.

MyPlate-beer

Not surprisingly, there are other countries whose food pyramids do include alcohol. In the French pyramid, they recommend two glasses of wine for a woman, and three for a man, every day. The Greek pyramid also suggests “wine in moderation.” In fact, eighteen EU nations give at least some type of advice about alcohol in moderation. Likewise, the Latin American food pyramid also recommends “alcohol in moderation.”

And in fact, many food pyramids with names like the “new food pyramid,” the “healthy food pyramid,” and the “Harvard food pyramid” do include the moderate alcohol drinking as part of their recommendations for a healthy lifestyle. But as long as the neo-prohibitionists are the only ones shouting about their peculiar disdain for alcohol, and the alcohol industry continues to play exclusively defense, nothing about this debate is likely to change anytime soon. It’s enough to drive me to drink.

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The Harvard Food Pyramid

Wikio Beer Blog Rankings For June 2011

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The June 2011 standings will soon be released for Wikio’s Beer Blogs. Machuca at Craft Austin got a sneak peak at the new rankings, so here’s what happened to the Top 20 over last month:

Wikio June 2011 Beer Blog Rankings

1Beervana (+1)
2Brookston Beer Bulletin (-1)
3The New School (+/-0)
4Brewpublic (+/-0)
5A Good Beer Blog (+/-0)
6Appellation Beer: Beer From a Good Home (+/-0)
7The Stone Blog (Not in Top 20 for May)
8Washington Beer Blog (+3)
9The Daily Pull (+/-0)
10Oakshire Brewing (+/-0)
11Lost Abbey Brewer’s Log (Blog) (Not in Top 20 for May)
12KC Beer Blog (+1)
13I Love Beer (Not in Top 20 for May)
14Seattle Beer News (+/-0)
15The Not So Professional Beer Blog (+5)
16The Brew Lounge (Not in Top 20 for May)
17It’s Pub Night (-2)
18Craft Austin (Not in Top 20 for May)
19The Session Beer Project (-7)
20Beer-Stained Letter (-1)

Ranking made by Wikio

As usual, I added the relative movements of each blog from last month. This month, 25% of the blogs are either new or have re-emerged in the Top 20. And a few of the dropouts were surprising, including such heavy hitters as Beer Therapy, Drink With The Wench and Lew Bryson’s Seen Through a Glass.

For the third time in as many months, Beervana and I switched places again. Congratulations to Jeff. I expected as much this time, as I was in South America for at least a third of the month, and access to WiFi was spotty at best and free time even less so. Over half of the top 10 stayed put, too. As always, I continue to stress that this is just a bit of fun and that we shouldn’t take it too seriously. Until next month ….