Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Dutch Wonderland to Join the Modern World?

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Every state’s alcohol laws are arcane little systems of dysfunction and no two are exactly alike. I grew up with the laws in Pennsylvania, which have to be near the top, at least in terms of how seemingly bizarre and arbitrary they are. Until very recently, you couldn’t get a drink on Sundays, due to archaic “blue laws.” It’s also a case state, meaning you can only buy beer by the case, except in bars that can sell you a six-pack often at wildly inflated prices.

Pennsylvania is also know for it’s Amish, or Pennsylvania Dutch, population, and I grew up right near these communities. In fact, my ancestors who emigrated to the state in the early 1700s were Anabaptists from Bern, Switzerland. They settled in Bernville and for generations were Mennonite farmers. There’s also a cheesy theme park in the area, near Lancaster, called Dutch Wonderland. All of this has little to do with the story, except to explain why I’ve called the entire state “Dutch Wonderland” ever since I moved away from it over twenty years ago.

One of the odder features of the state, which ended when they introduced photo driver’s licenses, were PLCB cards. These were essentially “drinking cards” which served no other purpose than to legally allow you to enter a bar or other place where alcohol was served. A few weeks before turning twenty-one, you filled out a form and dropped it off at your local “State Store,” along with a pair of headshots from one of those old photo booths that dispensed a sheet of four photos for half a buck. Then on or after your birthday, you picked up your card back at the shop. After your driver’s license also included a photo, there was no need to keep making the drinking cards and they were discontinued. None of this has anything to do with the story, either, I just find it fascinating the lengths states will go to keep minors from obtaining alcohol. It was a pretty elaborate and complicated system. And at the time I was quite indignant because I was also in the armed forces and could never understand the logic that allowed me to die for my country but denied me the right to drink a beer. Plus it’s the weekend and my mind is pretty tangential, jumping from thought to thought without much regard to where it’s leading me.

Alright, back to the main story, and it’s a somewhat familiar one. Every few years it seems Pennsylvania flirts with the idea of changing their liquor laws in some fashion, but it never seems to go anywhere. Now it appears that finally the times, they are a-changing. On February 1, a convenience store in Altoona sold the first beer (sadly a 12-pack of Coors Light) in that type of store. There are still some pretty arcane rules at work such as having to keep the beer separate from other sales and using different cash registers — meaning you have to ring up your purchases twice at the same location at two different cash registers. But now that the Sheetz chain has opened the door, others are considering following suit, such as Wegmans and Weis.

Naturally, the current beer distributor system, through their lobbyist organization, the Malt Beverages Distributors Association of Pennsylvania, is opposing this change because it threatens their monopoly. I can’t say I blame them, but for most people the present system is a pain in the neck and makes it difficult for the brewers themselves, too. The writing may finally be on the wall on this one. I know if I still lived in Dutch Wonderland I’d be arguing hard for this change, especially having tasted the world outside Pennsylvania where alcohol is more freely available. In virtually every neighboring state, beer can be purchased in grocery and convenience stores. Most of the arguments against this change are the same old nonsense about protecting children.

As the Pocono Record editorializes:

Nonsense. Other states where private enterprise extends to alcohol sales have no higher rates of alcoholism, nor has there been a problem with cashiers’ age. These problems are surmountable if Pennsylvania, the do-anything-you-want state in so many other ways, could once get past the idea that government alone should decide when and where citizens can buy beer, wine and liquor.

The real motivation for the perpetuation of the PLCB is political power over an entrenched bureaucracy, not protection of citizens. Pennsylvania should leave the vending of alcoholic beverages to bar and restaurant owners, wine sellers and grocers and other merchants. These capitalists can decide, based on sensible rules and consumer demand, their hours and their prices. Competition would produce a much more consumer-friendly system than what we have now.

But now it’s up to the state’s Commonwealth Court, who has before it a case filed by the Malt Beverages Distributors Association of Pennsylvania seeking to keep the status quo intact for 1,100 beer distributors and 300 wholesalers. So far, experts seem to be leaning toward the court ruling against the distributors. They point to the fact that last year the court would not issue an injunction stopping Sheetz with going ahead with their plan. While certainly not dispositive, it does seem to be a positive sign. It will likely be a few months before the court is expected to decide the case. Until then, Dutch Wonderland will join the modern world, whether briefly or permanently, by allowing beer to be sold in the wider world.

Yuengling Video Tour

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The National Association of Manufacturers has a really cool series of videos on their website showing “Cool Stuff Being Made,” with a new one every week. This week’s video features a 23-minute tour of the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Our tour guide is assistant brewer Jeffrey Tito, who shows the ingredients (including corn grits!), the brewhouse, the mill, the bottling line and a detailed walk through the entire brewery. Yuengling was founded in 1829 and, as such, is the oldest American brewery still in operation. I’ve visited the brewery many times, having grown up not too far from there. It’s located in a small coal mining town in the eastern part of the state.

To watch the video, you do have to register, but it’s simple and free. In addition, there’s an archive or other really cool stuff being manufactured, like clarinets, motorcycles, candy and even parade balloons. The archive also inclues brewery tours of Anheuser-Busch and the Boston Beer Co. If you want to keep up with new videos, there’s an RSS feed for the films and also a feed for video podcasts, which appear to be created a few weeks after the original airing date.

Latrobe Brewery Receives State Grants

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The Associated Press is reporting that Wisconsin’s City Brewery, the new owners of the Latrobe Brewery, has been awarded state assistance to the tune of over $4.5 million. The Pennsylvania has been closed since early last summer. The grants and loans were announced by Governor Ed Rendell, who also said he believes 250 brewery employees should be back to work by June 1 of this year.

The True Meaning of Beer?

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This little screed came courtesy of a regular east coast reader (thanks Loren) by way of the Beer Advocate Forum, where it was commented on extensively already. It’s a column from yesterday’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review entitled “Beer snobs forget the true meaning of beer.” Despite being a large former bouncer, the author, Mike Seate, is apparently vying to be the next Ann Coulter. He also writes a blog for the Tribune-Review called the “Hot Seate” and according to his bio there, he has already gotten a “stack of hate mail as tall as Shaquille O’Neal” and “collected more than nine hours of angry phone calls from readers, many of which he hopes to compile into a comedy CD tentatively titled ‘He Hate Me.'” So it seems clear he’s acting this way on purpose. He claims to be “writing about the grittier side of local life, focusing on touchy subjects like racism, economic strife, crime and the police, transportation, pop culture trends and, occasionally, the absurdity of modern politics.”

I won’t spend much time dissecting his article, it’s too intentionally inflammatory to bother and Todd Alstrom and the legion of Beer Advocates commenting after him have pretty much said it all already, anyway. Suffice it to say it’s the ignorant ramblings of a man who honestly appears to know nothing about the subject he’s writing on. It’s pure unadulterated opinion. There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion per se, plenty of beer writers have them — not that I’m naming names. It’s when you can’t back them up with supporting facts, any expertise or even familiarity with the subject matter that causes those opinions to become meaningless. Obviously anyone can say anything they want to. But that doesn’t mean anyone else has to listen. It’s unfortunate that some such people get an imprimatur from the mainstream media outlets by virtue of their thoughts being published. Newspapers, radio and television openly court controversy because it sells papers and air time. Now that “news” has become viewed largely in the same way as entertainment programming by their owners, ratings and revenue have become more important than providing a public service as a thank you to all of us and the FCC for giving them control of the airwaves so they can make billions of dollars. As the great writer A.J. Liebling wrote. “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.”

Seate reminds me of the peasants outside of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory with pitchforks and fire, ignorantly mistaking the technological advances his work represents as a monster. He clings to the notion that the “true meaning of beer” is that it’s a “workingman’s drink,” ignoring centuries of history. Mike’s blissfully unaware that were it not for the “strange orders of Trappist Belgian monks who craft their beers in dank basements” he so blithely insults he would have no industrial light lager to swill from a Styrofoam cup. Like virtually every commodity the world has ever known, its role and status in society is always changing and evolving. Things very rarely stay the same. Mike is obviously uncomfortable with change and seems especially upset that beer with more flavor also is more expensive. Oh, the humanity!

It’s quite funny that the only to beers he mentioned are Guinness and Boddingtons, neither of which are held in great esteem by the beer snobs he so disdains, and both are from fairly large companies, especially Guinness, whose parent company Diageo is one of the biggest beverage concerns in the world. But he manages to mangle just about every assertion he makes in his piece and in the end, I think that must be the point. Shock and awe always creates more of a stir than thoughtful analysis and reason. And like Coulter’s ignorant pronoucements, it works. I should be ignoring what he’s saying but I can’t. The bait is there and I took it. It’s schadenfreude. I can’t look away.

So what is the true meaning of beer? It’s a good question, but not one that’s easy to answer, especially since it means different things to different people. But like it or not, there are probably many millions of people who are afraid of better beer just the way Mike Seate is, ignorantly lashing out at what he doesn’t understand. It’s a common enough strategy for those that cling to their precious status quo. Change is always a little scary. Perhaps all we can do is offer him our sympathy that his ignorance keeps him “doing [his] drinking at home, on the cheap, from a Styrofoam cup,” while the rest of us are above ground, out at one of “those so-called beer emporiums,” enjoying a beer so good it will make you cry out of a “tiny brandy snifter [or] elegant, hand-blown glass goblet.” Ah, now that’s the life.

Allagash Road Trip

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According to Allagash Brewing’s newsletter, beginning tomorrow in San Diego, owner/brewer Rob Tod will be on a beer odyssey of his own as he winds his way from the left coast to the right, ending up in Atlantic City, no doubt with a ring on his finger and no memory of how he got there.

Wine Enthusiast Enthuses Over Dogfish Head

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Well, not exactly. Author Gregg Glaser is squarely in our camp, being the Editor of Yankee Brew News and the News Editor of All About Beer. But it was still terrific seeing his article in a wine magazine, which covers primarily wine, of course, but also spirits. A quick search of their archives and it’s clear Wine Enthusiast does ocassionally write about beer, at least a few times year anyway. The article, Extreme Beer Dinners: Big beer, big food and lots of both, is part of the “Best of 2006” issue and is an overview of some of the unusual beers Sam Calgione makes at Delaware’s Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales. It also mentions his new book, Extreme Brewing, and the many beer dinners Sam has done across the country, including the one he did in San Francisco last November.

This was the label featured in Glaser’s article but I’m running it here again because I love Tara McPherson‘s artwork.

Creative Solutions

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In an effort to discourage driving after a bit too much holiday celebrating, the Police Department of Burlington, Vermont came up with a creative solution. They printed up logo pint glasses with one of four designs — “a police patch, a special response team patch, a K-9 logo or a Bennington Police Department 150th anniversary badge logo” — and then distributed them to area bars and restaurants. The idea, according to an AP Wire story, was that if patrons see one of the police logos on the beer they’re drinking then they might think twice about trying to drive drunk. Of course, I can’t resist asking why they didn’t also put logos on cocktail and wine glasses, too, especially since spirits and wine contain higher concentrations of alcohol and thus would represent a greater danger, at least from the police department’s point of view. But it’s still a pretty clever idea and far better than random checkpoints or other draconican measures. If more police departments took up this idea think of the extra money they could make to support education programs — because you just know they’d be people who would collect the pint glasses.

Picture me on a pint glass.

Freetown Not So Free

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According to the Herald News (in Fall River, Massachusetts) late Saturday, the Boston Beer Co. is rethinking their plans to build a new brewery in Freetown, Massachusetts. The cost now appears to be approximately 60-80% more than originally anticipated. As a result, the company is “mulling over” alternatives such as acquiring an existing brewery or expanding one of the two they currently own. Company spokesperson Michelle Sullivan carefully and diplomatically adds they have “not ruled out the option of building a brewery in Freetown, asserting that the company is still in the evaluation stage.”