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Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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The Lady Eve: What’s The Difference Between Beer & Ale?

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film
My good friend Pete Slosberg sent me this gem, from the classic film The Lady Eve, written and directed by Preston Sturges. The 1941 screwball comedy starred Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck. I remember seeing it when I was a kid (I watched a lot of old movies late at night when I was young) but I certainly don’t remember this beery exchange. One of the main characters is Charles Pike, played by Henry Fonda, and in the story he’s the heir to the Pike Brewing Co. fortune, maker’s of Pike’s Pale, “The Ale That Won For Yale.”

Pikes-Pale

The clip below is about four minutes long, but the conversation doesn’t steer to beer until around the 2:00 minute mark, and lasts for just over a minute.

I’ve also transcribed their beery dialogue from The Lady Eve below. Enjoy.

Stanwyck: “I thought you were in the beer business.”

Fonda: “Beer? … Ale!”

Stanwyck: “What’s the difference?”

Fonda: “Between beer and ale?”

Stanwyck: “Yes.”

Fonda: “My father’d burst a blood vessel if he heard you say that. There’s a big difference. Ale’s sort of fermented on the top or something, and beer’s fermented on the bottom; or maybe it’s the other way around. There’s no similarity at all. [pauses] See the trouble with being descended from a brewer, no matter how long ago he brewed it, or whatever you call it, you’re supposed to know all about something you don’t give a hoot about. [pauses again] It’s funny to be here kneeling at your feet, talking about beer. You see, I don’t like beer. Bock beer, lager beer or steam beer.”

Stanwyck: “Don’t you?”

Fonda: “I do not, and I don’t like pale ale, brown ale, nut brown ale, porter or stout, which makes me ill just to think about it. [hiccups] Excuse me. [pauses again] It was enough so that everybody called me ‘Hopsy’ ever since I was six-years old … Hopsy Pike.”

Stanwyck: “Hello, Hopsy.”

Fonda: “Make it Charlie, will you?”

Stanwyck: [laughs] “Alright, but there’s something kinda cute about Hopsy. And when you got older I could call you Popsy. Hopsy Popsy.”

Fonda: “That’s all I’d need.”

LadyEveLobby2

Fantastical Fictive Beer

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homer-duff
Today’s infographic is a cool new poster from Pop Chart Labs. This one, entitled Fantastical Fictive Beer, shows 71 beers used in various fictional setting: movies, television, etc. I don’t know if they used a post I did a few years ago, Fictional Beer Brands in their research, but our lists are pretty similar. It’s a pretty cool poster.

fantastical-fictive-beers
Click here to see the poster full size.

James Bond Skyfalling For Heineken

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Okay, we’ve been inundated with ads lately, so you probably know that the new James Bond film Skyfall opens today, at least in the U.S. I’ve been a huge James Bond fan since I saw my first one in the theater, which was Thunderball, when I was six. I read all the books, and needless to say, saw every film multiple times. I’ve really been enjoying the reboot with Daniel Craig and will be taking my son Porter to see Skyfall this afternoon. This will be his first Bond film in the theater, though he’s seen a couple of them on DVD. I’m looking forward not just to seeing the movie, but in some ways I’m even more excited that he’s really jazzed to see it and has been talking of little else for the last week. There’s just one tiny problem.

james-bond-skyfall-daniel-craig

Heineken has been associated with the Bond franchise for some time now, but the $45 million deal for Skyfall also requires Bond to actually drink some. Now drinking beer is fine, even for Bond, of course. He styles himself as a hedonist, a man who enjoys the finest pleasures across the board. He soliloquizes on that very subject in the pages of the novel Casino Royale. Especially re-set or rebooted here in the present, where beer is every bit the equal of wine and spirits, you’d not only be unsurprised that Bond drinks beer, you’d be downright shocked if he didn’t. If you read the books, you’d know he’s never restricted himself to martinis but usually drinks the preferred alcohol wherever he happens to be, and has enjoyed beer in several of the novels.

I took a detailed look at this six years ago, when it was rumored that Bond would drink Heineken in Casino Royale — which turned out not to be the case — but which caused all manner of odd denunciations that the character would never stoop so low as to drink that swill reserved for the Hoi polloi. I don’t mean Heineken, I mean beer in general. Journalists, who could have done a little research, just went apeshit. Check out James Bond’s Beer. I’ll wait here.

So as you can see, beer and Bond have been together for quite some time now, just not in the way the media has portrayed it, as usual taking the propaganda and marketing given them at face value and regurgitating it without doing any fact-checking or wondering at how convenient it all seemed. Watching the first Bond film, Dr. No, with my son last weekend, I again noted that in Jamaica he’s talking with Quarrel at a bar and Red Stripe can be seen behind the bar. A few minutes later, fighting in the back room of the bar, Bond is pushed over onto a pile of empty Red Stripe cartons that go flying everywhere. Why they’re empty is a bit of a mystery, but the fact is although he never drinks any, there’s been beer front and center since the very first official film. In the novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, he finally manages to drink some Red Stripe. In fact, he drinks three of them waiting for someone in a cafe.

But in Skyfall apparently he’s seen drinking a Heineken from the bottle, while in bed with co-star Tonia Sotiropoulou. MGM has circulated the still below showing just that.

Skyfall

Here was a portion of my take on Heineken and James Bond from six years ago:

Propaganda aside, I’m certainly in favor of James Bond drinking beer. If they’re trying to re-invent (or reboot) James Bond — which is my understanding of what the new film represents — it makes sense that a modern Bond would have embraced good beer along with the other pleasures of life today. That would be in keeping with the character’s philosophy. Undoubtedly one of the reasons that Bond was not a beer drinker in 1953 and beyond, when Fleming began writing the Bond novels, was that there were not many good beers widely available worldwide and what was available was not often written about. Remember Michael Jackson’s first beer book wasn’t published until 1977. And American wines were held in no better regard during that time period, either. So keeping Bond’s tastes and preferences rooted in a time fifty years ago, when the diversity and quality of alcohol beverages was vastly different than it is today, doesn’t make sense anymore, if indeed it ever did.

But Heineken? Not Heineken. Bond’s character would never drink such swill. He wouldn’t be a snob about wine, food, clothes, cars and practically everything else and then drink such a pedestrian beer. In fact, in the novel Casino Royale, in Chapter 8, just after ordering champagne, Bond makes the following pronouncement:

“You must forgive me,” he said. “I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It’s very pernickety and old-maidish really, but then when I’m working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.”

So there is absolutely no way someone who would say that would turn around and order a skunked green-bottle of Heineken. Maybe a Thomas Hardy 1968, a Samuel Adams Utopias, a Deus, or a Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus. He’d more likely order something showy, expensive and impressive; something that showed he had good taste. And that would never be a Heineken. Often Bond orders local specialties in the novels and films, and Casino Royale takes place in northern France. The fictional resort town where most of the novel takes place is supposedly near the mouth of the Somme River in the Picardie region, which is only about two hours from Belgium. So while France is not known for its beers, a good selection of Belgian beers would likely be available at the casino and area restaurants. That’s what a beer savvy Bond would order.

To which today I would only add that he’d never, ever drink it out of the bottle! Well, maybe not never, but if he had the choice, he’d do it the proper way, out of a glass because his character is all about knowing what’s the right way to do things and then taking a particular pleasure in doing them correctly. And what self-respecting English gentleman — or for that matter any Brit — would drink Dutch lager over his native ale, especially when his job was protecting the British way of life? It’s unseemly.

To take unseemly a few notches further, Refined Guy reported that Heineken USA will release two special metal bottles of Heineken using James Bond imagery. Known as “Star Bottles, on the plus side, at least the beer won’t get skunked as easily as in the green glass bottles.

heineken-bond-2012

According to the website Bond Lifestyle, Heineken pulled out all the stops for the Amsterdam premiere of the film, with an obscene amount of product placement for the event. And I’m not alone in believing this tie-in is not the best idea, at least the way it’s being done, with many, many pundits weighing in across the globe. But I think an Australian commentator, Lucy Clark, summed it up best in B&T, when she said. “In the golden era, products were chosen because they fitted with the character. The sad thing is that, in the modern era, the character and plot is decided by sponsors.”

So while I’m really looking forward to seeing the film today — and hoping this will be one of those father/son moments that Porter remembers long after I’m gone (as it is for me) — what I hope above all else is that seeing that out-of-character Heineken won’t break the fourth wall for me and make it harder to immerse myself in the experience and just enjoy it. Fingers crossed.

Fermentation Films: A Recap

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film
The Twitterverse was abuzz this morning, and the rest of the day, with a clever little game of substituting a beer term for a word in a movie title to come up with what the hashtag termed a “Fermentation Film.” Usually it’s the adult film world that has the best titles, but there were some pretty clever ones thrown down today by a wide range of people. As far as I can tell, it began around 3:00 p.m. in Great Britain (7:00 A.M. Pacific), before migrating across the pond to the United States. The flurry went on for far longer than any hashtag I’ve ever seen that wasn’t event-based. For nearly ten hours, the beerified film titles kept coming, finally slowing down by the end of the work day, California time.

Below is a list of all of the Fermentation Films tweeted with the hashtag #fermentationfilms, along with the person who came up with it first. I worked backwards, so if you tweeted one and there’s a different name next to it, then your tweet was not the first one with that title. The winner of most duplicated has to be “Yeast of Eden.” I think I saw a dozen of those. I kicked out the duplicates, along with a few that were too close, and also didn’t include a few that either were actual film titles or ones that in my admittedly questionable judgement I didn’t understand or didn’t find worthy. That still left a staggering 440 455 fermentation film titles. [Update: I promised myself I wouldn’t go back, but there were a few new ones I couldn’t bear to leave out, so I updated it. The list is now current through September 26 at 11:00 AM PDT.] There’s a few that still make me laugh out loud and a few that made me groan, but they’re all pretty entertaining. Enjoy.

  1. Acetaldehyde Ventura, Pet Deconcotion (beerblog)
  2. Acetobacter The Future (ctrl-malt-delete)
  3. Ale Dogs Go To Heaven (Collin Simula)
  4. Ale of Despereaux (HomeBrewing.com)
  5. Ale Rider (infamous rascal)
  6. All Quiet on the Secondary Fermentation (All About Beer)
  7. All the Brewmasters Men (Chris Heier)
  8. Alpha Grog (BillF)
  9. An Altbier to Remember (Bull City Homebrew)
  10. American Brewty (Sierra Nevada Beer)
  11. The Andromeda Strain (Sid Boggle)
  12. The Angelic Fermentation (Adam Vavrick)
  13. Annie Hallertau (Brookston)
  14. Any Given Krausen (Armando Garcia)
  15. Anything Gose (Brad C.)
  16. Apocalypse Brau (Meredith Whitfield)
  17. Apollo 13%AA (Chris Heier)
  18. Apple Pulp Fiction (Kevin Bagshaw)
  19. Arsenic and Belgian Lace (Jessica Vander Velde)
  20. Arsenic and Old Lacing (Lisa Grimm)
  21. The Attenuation Commandments (Simon H Johnson)
  22. The Autolysis Strikes Back (Chris Heier)
  23. Backdraught (JP)
  24. Ballast Point Blank (Abe Froman)
  25. The Bamberg Club (Lisa Grimm)
  26. Barley and Friends (Ramblin’ Road)
  27. Barley and Me (Beer n’ Loathing)
  28. Barley and the Beast (Beer Kristine)
  29. Barley Legal (StarCitySuds)
  30. Bar Trek (Eclecticmess)
  31. Bar Wars (Cloten)
  32. Battlestar Malolactica (Beerburgersbees)
  33. Beauty and the Yeast (Andy Parker)
  34. Beer and Loathing in Las Vegas (Brooklyn Pour)
  35. Beetlegueuze! (The Beer Jesus)
  36. The Big Chelan (Beer Kristine)
  37. Big Fat Gypsum Wedding (Beerburgerbees)
  38. The Big Lebrewski (Jon Page)
  39. Big Trub In Little China (Alistair Reece)
  40. Black Hop Down (Mike Sawicki)
  41. Bock, Scotch and Two Smoking Rauchbiers (Chris Heier)
  42. Bock to the Future (Bill Benedict)
  43. Bock Trouble in Little China (Lisa Grimm)
  44. Bond, Lovibond (Brookston)
  45. Bottleship (Marshal Jhakov)
  46. Boys in the Mt. Hood (Beer Kristine)
  47. Bravehop (Justin Stewart)
  48. Breakfast Stout at Tiffany’s (Bruce_F)
  49. The Breakfast Trub (Sid Boggle)
  50. The Brett-fast Club (Beer Kristine)
  51. Brett First at Tiffany’s (James Campbell)
  52. Brew Day Afternoon (John Williams)
  53. BrewDog Day Afternoon (Dave Morton)
  54. BrewDog Millionaire (Oscar)
  55. Brewer’s Millions (paramnesiac)
  56. Brew Lagoon (Tim Bluhm)
  57. The Brews Brothers (Kevin Bagshaw)
  58. Brewstand by Me (Brad Nixon)
  59. Brewster Cogburn (Martyn Cornell)
  60. Brewsters Billions (Cloten)
  61. Brewty and the Yeast (Joshua Adams)
  62. Bride of Firkinstein (Beer n’ Loathing)
  63. Brite Tank, Big City (Steve)
  64. Broadcast Brews (Citra Loves Sorachi)
  65. A Brux Tale (Tommy Kelley)
  66. The Bucket Grist (Pierre Lachaine)
  67. The Buy Centennial Man (ctrl-malt-delete)
  68. Cantillon up the Khyber (Denzil Vallance)
  69. Cape Beer (Alicia Coulter)
  70. The Carboy in the Plastic Bubble (BevacquaFan)
  71. Carboy Wash (Jeremy Teel)
  72. Carboys Don’t Cry (Joel Kennedy)
  73. Carboys in the Hood (HomeBrewing.com)
  74. Carboyz N Tha Hood (Steve)
  75. Cassavablanca (Dave Morton)
  76. Casualties of Wort (Ethan)
  77. Catcher in the Rye Malt (Alicia Coulter)
  78. Centennial Man (Adam Vavrick)
  79. Charlie Wilson’s Wort (HomeBrewing.com)
  80. Chasing Amylase (Spencer O’Bryan)
  81. Children of a Lesser Quad (Jeremy Danner)
  82. Children of the Barley (Gary Valentine)
  83. Chill Hazed and Confused (Kevin Kozlen)
  84. Chocolat Malt (Lonerider ATL)
  85. Citizen Racking Kane (Brad Nixon)
  86. Citizen Strain (Sid Boggle)
  87. Citramancer (Adam Vavrick)
  88. A Citra Named Desire (BOAB Brewhaus)
  89. City Slicker II: The Legend of Brewer’s Gold (Mike Sawicki)
  90. Clan of the Cave Beer (hashtag_ninja)
  91. Clash of the Titan IPA’s (Matthew McGavic)
  92. Clear and Present Pilsner (James Laska)
  93. A ClockWit Orange (Texas Brewnette)
  94. A Clockwork Oranjeboom (mark pitsch)
  95. A Clockwort Orange (Oscar)
  96. Coal Miner’s Lauter (Jack Highberger)
  97. Conan the Beerbarian (Boozy Beggar (Seth))
  98. The Conicals of Riddick (ctrl-malt-delete)
  99. Cool Ship Luke (Mike Tinker)
  100. The Cylindroconicals of Narnia (ctrl-malt-delete)
  101. Dances with Worts (All About Beer)
  102. Dark Crystal (Dominic Driscoll)
  103. Dark Lord Knight Rises! (Indy Brew Chef)
  104. Das Boil (Alistair Reece)
  105. Das Reinheitsgebot (StarCitySuds)
  106. Das Wort (Jeremy Teel)
  107. Dead Barm (Phil Mellows)
  108. Death Of A Saaz-Man (Craft Beer Monger)
  109. Debbie Does Decoction (Kevin Kozlen)
  110. Debbie Does Diacetyl (Luke Otter)
  111. Debbie Does Dunkelweizen (Armando Garcia)
  112. The Debittered Black Knight (Austin B Harvey)
  113. Decoction Haunted Hill (ctrl-malt-delete)
  114. Diacetyl Another Day (ctrl-malt-delete)
  115. Dial M for Malt (Brow_Down)
  116. Dieacetyl Hard (Mike McGuigan)
  117. The Dirty Krausen (Citra Loves Sorachi)
  118. Dogfish Head Afternoon (mark pitsch)
  119. Don’t Tell Mom the Brewmasters Dead (Marc Rea)
  120. Don’t Tell Mom The Baby Citra’s Dead (ctrl-malt-delete)
  121. Double Diamonds Are Forever (Brookston)
  122. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hop Bomb (Brookston)
  123. Dry Hop (Chris Johnson)
  124. Dry Hop 2 (Chris Johnson)
  125. Dry Hop With A Vengeance (Chris Johnson)
  126. Dry Hop 4: Live Free or Dry Hop (Chris Johnson)
  127. Dubbel Impact (New Belgium Brewing)
  128. Duck Rabbit Soup (Meredith Whitfield)
  129. Dude, Where’s My Caramel Malt? (kortney)
  130. Easy Radler (Richard Hamilton)
  131. Edward Saazerhands (Jeremy Danner)
  132. 8 Gyle (ctrl-malt-delete)
  133. Eis Age (Jeff Merriman)
  134. Eisbock to the Future (Dave Morton)
  135. Empire of the Tun (Tucker Craig)
  136. The Empire Strikes Bock (Nick)
  137. Endless Summerfest (Dave Mulligan)
  138. The English Papazian (Chris Heier)
  139. Enter the Flagon (Robert Norman)
  140. Eraserheadretention (Russ)
  141. Ernest Goes to Beer Camp (Kevin Kozlen)
  142. Falconers Flight of the Phoenix (Bob Weden)
  143. Fantastic Vorlauf (ctrl-malt-delete)
  144. The Fast and The Furious [Surly Brewing] (Isaac Sparling)
  145. Fatal Attenuation (Citra Loves Sorachi)
  146. The Faucet Shank Redemption (Brad Nixon)
  147. Fermenting Nemo (Abe Froman)
  148. The Ferminator (Christopher Graf)
  149. Ferris Brewers Day Off (Phil Gallagher)
  150. Fever Pitch (David Bishop)
  151. A Few Good Ales (Fabricio Cannini)
  152. The Fining (Martyn Cornell)
  153. Firkinstein (Beer n’ Loathing)
  154. Fight Trub (ctrl-malt-delete)
  155. (500) Hops of Summer (Liberty Village Beer)
  156. A Floculation of Dodos (Dave Morton)
  157. Flocculation The Musical (Daniel)
  158. For a Few Gravity Points More (Brad Nixon)
  159. Frankensteinecker (Jeremy Danner)
  160. Friday The Thirteenth Degree Plato (Bull City Homebrew)
  161. From Beer To Eternity (Bill Fowler)
  162. Full Fermentation Jacket (Martyn Cornell)
  163. Full Metal Steam Jacket (Brookston)
  164. Gentlemen Prefer Blonde Ales (Bruce_F)
  165. The Germinator (infamous rascal)
  166. G. Heile-Men (mark pitsch)
  167. The Girl Who Played With Firkins (Jordan)
  168. The Girl With The Flagon Tattoo (Gregg Speirs)
  169. The Glucose Chainsaw Massacre (ctrl-malt-delete)
  170. GoldingsEye (Brookston)
  171. Goldingsfinger (Brookston)
  172. Gone With the Wort (Brookston)
  173. Good Dry Hopping (Joel Kennedy)
  174. Goodhellas (infamous rascal)
  175. The Good, The Bad and the Barley (Brett Jones)
  176. The Good, the Bad and the Fuggly (Dominic Driscoll)
  177. Gorillas in the Grist (Jeremy Danner)
  178. Gose Busters (rossthefireman)
  179. Grain Expectations (Martyn Cornell)
  180. Grain Man (Gregg Speirs)
  181. Grains of Paradise Canyon (Alicia Coulter)
  182. Grains of Paradise Lost (Bob Weden)
  183. Grainspotting (Steve)
  184. Great Flocculations (ctrl-malt-delete)
  185. The Great White Hop (Kevin Kozlen)
  186. Green Flash Gordon (Texas Brewnette)
  187. The Green Hop Mile (Kevin Bagshaw)
  188. The Grist of Wrath (Tommy Kelley)
  189. Grist Tracy (Chris Heier)
  190. Guess Who’s Coming to the Beer Dinner? (Neil Witte)
  191. The Gueuze Brothers (BryanDRoth)
  192. Gueuzebusters (Martyn Cornell)
  193. Gueuze Morning Vietnam! (SteveC.)
  194. The Gueuze, the Bad, and the Ugly (Rachael Weseloh)
  195. Gueuze with the Wind (Timothy Robert)
  196. The Hallertau of Steve (Rimmy.)
  197. Hard Cider House Rules (StarCitySuds)
  198. Harold and Malt (Kevin Kozlen)
  199. Harold & Maudite (Craft Beer Monger)
  200. Harry Porter & the Chamber of Saisons (Jordan)
  201. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallertau (Lisa Grimm)
  202. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Rauchbier (Stacey Butler)
  203. Harry Porter and the Sorcerer’s @StoneBrewingCo (MellodyBrewing)
  204. Hellesboy (Lisa Grimm)
  205. Hellesboy 2, The Golden Barley (Tucker Craig)
  206. Henry: Portrait Of A Cereal Killer (Adam Vavrick)
  207. The Hersbrucker Proxy (Dan Griffiths)
  208. Homebrew Bound (Marc Rea)
  209. Hopageddon (Beer Kristine)
  210. Hopback Mountain (Kevin Kozlen)
  211. The Hop Back of Norte Dame (Alicia Coulter)
  212. Hopback To The Future (Ten Inch Wheels)
  213. The Hopfather (Beer Notes)
  214. Hop Gun (Jessica Vander Velde)
  215. Hopocalypse Now (Eclecticmess)
  216. The Hoppit (Lonerider ATL)
  217. Hoppy Gilmore (Rob Thomas)
  218. Hops and Glory (Beer Kristine)
  219. The Hops of Wrath (Brookston)
  220. The House of Isinglass (Gregg Speirs)
  221. How I Brett Your Mother (ctrl-malt-delete)
  222. How IPA Won the War (Lisa Grimm)
  223. The Hunt For Red Oktoberfest (Alistair Reece)
  224. The Hunt for Red Hoptober (Jordan)
  225. I Know What You Brewed Last Summer (Davey Welch)
  226. I-Krausen (Cheshire Brewhouse)
  227. I’m Gonna Git You Suckeromyces Hard (Mike McGuigan)
  228. InArrogant Basterds (Jeremy Teel)
  229. In Brews (Abe Froman)
  230. Indiana Jones and the Last Glissade (Hoplanta)
  231. Indiana Jones & The Last Grande Cru-sade (Dave Morton)
  232. Indiana Jones and the Tripel of Doom (kortney)
  233. Inherit The Wort (Craft Beer Monger)
  234. In the Heat of the Mash Tun (Brookston)
  235. The Iron Cask (StarCitySuds)
  236. The Isinglass Menagerie (Jeremy Danner)
  237. It Came from Malted Barley (Chris Heier)
  238. It’s a Wonderful Lite (DPW)
  239. Jackie Nut Brown (Jason Budday)
  240. James Blonde (Jeff Merriman)
  241. John Tucker must Diacetyl (StarCitySuds)
  242. Judge Brett (Chris Heier)
  243. Kevin And Perry Go Sparge (ctrl-malt-delete)
  244. Kissing Jessica Stein Beer (Nicholas Guarracino)
  245. Kölschbusters (__beertooth)
  246. Kolsch Encounters of the Third Rind (Sierra Nevada Beer)
  247. Kolsch Runnings (Alistair Reece)
  248. A Krausen Splendid Suns (Ten Inch Wheels)
  249. Kvass Gordon (Lisa Grimm)
  250. Lactobacilli, Robot (ctrl-malt-delete)
  251. Lacto to the Future (Jeremy Danner)
  252. A Lager Of Their Own (Collin Simula)
  253. Lager Than Life (Andrew Emerton)
  254. The Lauter King (Craft Beer Monger)
  255. A League Of Cicerone (Adam Vavrick)
  256. Left Hand That Rocks the Cradle (Matt Drummond)
  257. Little Krausen The Prairie (ctrl-malt-delete)
  258. Lock, Stock, and Two Aging Barrels (Matt)
  259. Look Who’s Brewing Now? (Marc Rea)
  260. The Lord of the Beers: Fellowship of the Cicerones (Chris Heier)
  261. The Lord of the Beers: The Two Trippels (Chris Heier)
  262. The Lord of the Beers: The Return of the Bud (Chris Heier)
  263. The Lord of the Ringwood (Lisa Grimm)
  264. Lord of the Ryes (Jordan)
  265. Lost Encounters of the Third Tier (Danny A.)
  266. The Lupuliners (Mike Sawicki)
  267. A Mad River Runs Through It (Adam Vavrick)
  268. Malt, Hops & Two Firkin Barrels (pdtnc)
  269. Maltlock (Wade Reid)
  270. The Maltose Falcon (StarCitySuds)
  271. Mandy Does Maris [Otter] (Russ)
  272. A Man for All Saisons (Neil Witte)
  273. The Man with the Golden Ale (Andrew Ignatz)
  274. The Man with the Goldings Gun (Martyn Cornell)
  275. The Man With Two Grains (Grainne Walsh)
  276. Marley and Mead (Christian Williams)
  277. Mary Proppins (Jeremy Danner)
  278. Märzen Attacks! (Citra Loves Sorachi)
  279. M*A*S*H (James McIntyre)
  280. Masher and Commander (Joel Kennedy)
  281. Mash Me If You Can (BillF)
  282. Mashmen (BillF)
  283. Mash of the Titans (Robert Norman)
  284. Mashraker (Andrew Ignatz)
  285. Mashtun Impossible (kyle)
  286. The Mash Tun in the Woods (Chris Heier)
  287. Meet the Floccers (Jeremy Danner)
  288. Me, Myself & IPA (Bob Weden)
  289. Menace II Sobriety (Adam C.)
  290. Men In Black IPA (Men In Black IPA)
  291. Men in Bock (Jennifer Pesek)
  292. Midnight Carboy (Beer Notes)
  293. The Milling Fields (Kevin Kozlen)
  294. The Miracle of Morgan’s Kriek (Bruce_F)
  295. The Missouri Hot Breaks (Martyn Cornell)
  296. Monty Python & the Holy Ale (Cheryl b)
  297. Mr. Smith Gose To Washington (Nicholas Guarracino)
  298. Mrs. Stoutfire (Patrick Delahunty)
  299. The Munchener Candidate (Brookston)
  300. My Blue Paddle Heaven (Eclecticmess)
  301. Natural Born Millers (Adam Vavrick)
  302. New Glarus When it Sizzles (Citra Loves Sorachi)
  303. 9 1/2 Weeks of Lagering (Russ)
  304. Ninja Turtles: Secret of the Brews (Marc Rea)
  305. Northern Brewer by Northwest (Brookston)
  306. Oast of Hop Street (Alistair Reece)
  307. The Odd Dubbel (Peter Culos)
  308. An Officer and a Lauter Tun (BillF)
  309. Of Briess and Men (Jeff Merriman)
  310. Of Saccharomyces And Men (Martyn Cornell)
  311. Old Gueuzers Young Teasers (Joanna)
  312. Oliver Grist (Rachael Weseloh)
  313. One Brew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (infamous rascal)
  314. One Fining Day (Kevin Bagshaw)
  315. 127 Sours (Jordan)
  316. On the Wurterfront (infamous rascal)
  317. Orval-y Girl (ctrl-malt-delete)
  318. Pale Ale Rider (StarCitySuds)
  319. The Pellicle Brief (David Bishop)*
  320. The Perks of Being a Hopflower (John Williams)
  321. Perle Harbor (Brookston)
  322. Pint Club (Cloten)
  323. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Perle (Brookston)
  324. Pirates of the Carrageenan (Dave Morton)
  325. Pitch Black (pdtnc)
  326. Planet of the Ales By Tim Burtonisation (Beerburgersbees)
  327. Pirates of the Carbonation (DPW)
  328. Polestar Wars (Matt Drummond)
  329. The Propagation (Adam Vavrick)
  330. Pulp Fermentation (Craft Beer Monger)
  331. Raging Boil (Tommy Kelley)
  332. Raiders of the Last Hops (Kief Wahoo)
  333. Raiders of the Lost Sparge (Brookston)
  334. Raising Amarillo (Brookston)
  335. The Rauch (Nicholas Guarracino)
  336. Rebel without a Gueuze (infamous rascal)
  337. Reservoir Dogfish (StarCitySuds)
  338. Revenge of the Pilsners (Kris Fruin)
  339. Robo-Hop (Craft Beer Monger)
  340. The Rocky Hallertau Picture Show (Beer Kristine)
  341. Romancing the @StoneBrewingCo (Alicia Coulter)
  342. Room At The Top-Fermenting (Sid Boggle)
  343. A Room With a Brew (Bob Weden)
  344. Saison Golden Pond (Dave Morton)
  345. Saison of the Witch (Nate Nolan)
  346. Sauvin Private Ryan (Nate Nolan)
  347. Saving Private Reinheitsgebot (James Laska)
  348. Saving Private Rhizomes (Mike Sawicki)
  349. Saving Private Rye (FV7)
  350. Saving Private Stock Ryan (DPW)
  351. A Scanner Dunkelweizen (rossthefireman)
  352. Schaefer’s List (DPW)
  353. Schindler’s Grist (ctrl-malt-delete)
  354. Schlitzizen Kane (StarCitySuds)
  355. School of Bock (rossthefireman)
  356. Sexy Yeast (Christopher Graf)
  357. Shandyman (Jeremy Danner)
  358. She’s Reinheitsgebotta Have It (John Porter)
  359. The Shiner (Meredith Whitfield)
  360. The Silence of the Lambics (ctrl-malt-delete)
  361. Singin’ in the Grain (DPW)
  362. Six Degrees of Plato (Brookston)
  363. SlumDogfish Head Millionaire (Jeff Pelletier)
  364. Some Like it Hopped (Cameron Lang)
  365. Some Like It Hoppy (Brookston)
  366. Some Like it Hot Side Aeration (Brad Nixon)
  367. Sofie’s Choice (Marshal Jhakov)
  368. Some Like it Sour (Win Bassett)
  369. Sorachi Ace Ventura: Brett Detective (Kevin Kozlen)
  370. Spargeicus (Steve)
  371. Spargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Tucker Craig)
  372. Spatencus (Texas Brewnette)
  373. Splendor in the Mash (Norman Benson)
  374. Spongebob Yorkshire Squarepants (Ten Inch Wheels)
  375. Stanges in the Night (Beer By BART)
  376. Starsan Troopers (Oscar)
  377. Star Trek: the Next Fermentation (Alicia Coulter)
  378. Star Warsteiner (Ethan)
  379. Star Worts (StarCitySuds)
  380. Star Worts: A New Hop (Thomas Johnson)
  381. Stomp the Yard Glass (StarCitySuds)
  382. Stout of Africa (Bayou Beer Society)
  383. A Streetcar Named Decoction (Brookston)
  384. A Streetcar Named Dimethyl Sulfide (All About Beer)
  385. Super Mega Yeast vs. Uber Octopus (Craft Beer)
  386. Tank Gose (Lisa Grimm)
  387. Terms of En-Beer-ment (Stacey Butler)
  388. That Thing You Brew! (Andy Hille)
  389. There’s Something About Beta-Amylase (ctrl-malt-delete)
  390. There’s Something About Malting (Brookston)
  391. There Will Be Brett (Bull City Homebrew)
  392. Three Floyds and a Baby (Kevin Lansing)
  393. There Will Be Trub (SnailTrax)
  394. 3:10 to Yakima (Bull City Homebrew)
  395. Tim Burton Union’s Nightmare Before Christmas (David Kenning)
  396. A Time to Mill (Cole Lundquist)
  397. To Heffe and Heffe Not (Norman Benson)
  398. Tomme (Kim Sharpe Jones)
  399. Tomme Boy (Cheryl b)
  400. Top Tun (Kim Sharpe Jones)
  401. TransPorter (Patrick Delahunty)
  402. The Treasure of the Sierra Nevada (Brookston)
  403. The Trippels of Belleville (New Belgium Brewing)
  404. Trouble with the Cuvée (BryanDRoth)
  405. Trubber (Gregg Speirs)
  406. Trub Romance (Neil Witte)
  407. True Grist (Shane O’Beirne)
  408. Twelve [Golden] Monkeys (Cheryl b)
  409. 28 Days Lauter (Jeremy Danner)
  410. 24 Hour Parti-Gyle People (ctrl-malt-delete)
  411. 2001: A Spalt Odyssey (Craft Beer Monger)
  412. The Unbearable Lightness of Brewing (Brad Nixon)
  413. The Unbearable Lightstruck of Being (John Porter)
  414. Union Jack CIty (Armando Garcia)
  415. Up in Rauch! (Doug Ellertson)
  416. Up in the Airlock (BevacquaFan)
  417. Vatman (Jeff Merriman)
  418. V for Vorlauf (Brad Nixon)
  419. Voyage To The Bottom Fermenting Of The Sea (Sid Boggle)
  420. Wayne’s Wort (Beer Notes)
  421. War and Yeast (Wolfbrau)
  422. Wedding Cold Crashers (Andy Parker)
  423. The Wedding Mashers (Nicholas Guarracino)
  424. Weekend at Breweries (John Williams)
  425. Weisse Guys (JP)
  426. The Weiss the Wit and the Hefeweizen (Chris Heier)
  427. Westmallerats (ctrl-malt-delete)
  428. Wet Hop American Summer (Matt)
  429. When Harry Met Saccharomyces (Brookston)
  430. When Sparge Attacks (Marc Rea)
  431. Where The Wild Hops Are (Kief Wahoo)
  432. Where the Wild Yeast Are (Alistair Reece)
  433. Whitelabs Can’t Jump (David Bishop)
  434. White Men Can’t Hop (Davey Evans)
  435. The Wild Bunch (Christopher Graf )
  436. The Willamette Man (Lisa Grimm)
  437. Wise Gueuze (Richard Hamilton)
  438. Withnail and IPA (Dan Griffiths)
  439. The Wizard of O.G. (Brookston)
  440. The Wizard of Saaz (Citra Loves Sorachi)
  441. The Wizard of Sparging (Liberty Village Beer)
  442. Wort and Peace (kortney)
  443. Wort Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (Alistair Reece)
  444. Wort Games (Lisa Grimm)
  445. Wort Locker (FV7)
  446. Wort of the Worlds (Justin)
  447. Wyeast Earp (BevacquaFan)
  448. Wyeastern Promises (Justin)
  449. The Yeast Count of Monte Cristo (Kevin Bagshaw)
  450. Yeast is Yeast (Sid Boggle)
  451. Yeast Of Eden (Ten Inch Wheels)
  452. Yield of Dreams (Gary Valentine)
  453. You Cantillon Take It With You (Jeremy Danner)
  454. You Only Lager Twice (Brookston)
  455. You’ve Got Malt (Neil Witte)

* As far as I can tell, this was the first Fermentation Film title to be posted on Twitter, making David the originator of today’s fun.

Heineken James Bond Ad

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007-2 heineken
I know I should be complaining that the Ian Fleming character James Bond would never drink Heineken — and I have in the past — but this new commercial for Heineken, which debuted today, is too much fun. I’ve been a huge Bond fan since my dad took me to see Thunderball in the theater when I was six. So this is an especially fun ad since it features items, and people, from previous Bond films. How many can you spot?

The Formula For Beer

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film
I have my Tivo set to look for the keyword “beer” and recently it taped the 1933 comedy film What — No Beer?, which I hadn’t watched until now. The plot of the film is essentially about two people who think they can get rich by being the first to sell beer just as prohibition is ending, if they can just figure out how to make it. There’s a funny scene where the two stars — Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante — discuss how it’s brewed.

Elmer J. Butts (Buster Keaton): “How do you make beer?”

Jimmy Potts (Jimmy Durante): “Oh, I got the formula. An old German wash woman gave it to me. Take 5 gallons of water, 1 cup of malt extract, 3 spoonfuls of hop, 1 small cup of yeast. Mix in one large crock.”

Sounds pretty easy. I wonder why everybody doesn’t do it. It’s a goofy, if only occasionally funny, movie but worth it just to see the brewing scenes.

WHAT-NO-BEER

Here’s the plot summary from the iMDb:

Although he has never met her, Elmer Butts loves Hortense secretly and from afar. He dreams of making a million dollars so he can buy her a Rolls automobile and marry her. With prohibition apparently on the verge of ending, Elmer’s friend Jimmy Potts gets an idea to make them both rich by opening a brewery just before the legalization of alcoholic beverages. Their timing is off, and the police raid them, but their inept brewing has created a beer with no alcohol, so they are let off. But it has also resulted in a cheaply made beer, and bootlegger Spike Moran realizes that he can vastly increase his profits by partnering with Elmer and Jimmy. But none of them reckons with the competitor, another bootlegger, gangster Butch Lorado. Butch has a girlfriend … Elmer’s dream girl, Hortense.

Anatomy Of A Propaganda Piece

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anatomy-of-murder
With Alcohol Justice promoting it, I just knew there had to be more to the CNN story Movies May Increase Binge Drinking in Teens. The article is based on a study published in the journal Pediatrics with the more benign title Alcohol Consumption in Movies and Adolescent Binge Drinking in 6 European Countries. But either way, Hollywood is, of course, the bogeyman. The study “surveyed 16,500 students ages 10 to 19 from Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Scotland.”

The students were asked how often they drank five alcoholic beverages during one sitting [interesting a European study has adopted the ridiculous U.S. definition of “binge drinking”], and about the types of movies they watched. Participants were given a list of 50 movies to choose from, which included many top box-office hits from the U.S. The number of drinking scenes was tallied for each movie.

I don’t have the resources to pay to see the whole study, so I don’t know what films are on the list, but the first thing I have to wonder is how many of those films are age-appropriate for 10-year olds? Many Hollywood blockbusters would be at least “PG-13” (so no 10-12 year olds allowed) or “R” (no 10-17 year olds allowed). Are there many movies with “drinking scenes” that are “G” or that every parent would find appropriate for their 10 through 19 year old child? There’s also no breakdown of how many kids were 10, 15, 19, etc., but I have to believe there’s a vast difference between the effect of watching a film on a ten-year old and a young adult, age 18 or 19. The researchers apparently also considered other so-called “risk factors,” and somehow accounted for each “teen’s levels of rebelliousness or sensation-seeking, peer drinking levels, family drinking patterns, affluence and gender.” That’s a lot of data on 16,500 kids, and almost none of it could be considered the “hard facts” type.

The overall results were that “27% of the sample had consumed >5 drinks on at least 1 occasion in their life.” So roughly 1 out of 4 of the “kids” had consumed 5 drinks at least once, and possibly ONLY once, in their life. And of those 16,500, some of the “kids” were legally allowed to drink 5 beers if they wanted to. In Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, the minimum age for drinking is 16. In Poland and Scotland it’s 18 (though once source I have says it’s 16 in Poland). In Iceland it’s 20. So for at least half the countries where the kids were surveyed, they were permitted to drink at least beer 4 out of the 10 ages of “kids” in the study.

For five-sixths of the countries, at least some of the ages of children surveyed were likewise legally allowed to drink alcohol. Like the age breakdowns, there’s no information available (at least to me) about how many of those surveyed were from which country. Given all the supposed control factors they accounted for, the legal age at which people in the surveyed countries are permitted to drink alcohol seems nakedly absent and, at least to my way of thinking, a rather important omission.

And one last comment about their methodology, such as it was. To determine each film’s — I don’t know, “quotient,” “unworthiness” or whatever — “the number of drinking scenes was tallied for each movie” by the researchers. But is the sheer number of times there’s a scene of people drinking in any way relevant? Is there no context to each scene? Are there not positive and negative ways to portray drinking alcohol? I already know the answer to that one, as obviously the researchers are convinced that ANY depiction of people drinking alcohol they consider wrong, but of course a second’s thought will reveal that to be patently nonsense. Just counting how often people are seen drinking alcohol in a film really tells you nothing about how influential it will be, or indeed, if it registers anything at all. Shown being consumed responsibly, it could just as easily be a positive influence.

Personally, I’m much more concerned about my kids seeing casual violence in films than drinking. But there, as well as in America, research continues to claim that there’s a direct “link between drinking in movies and adolescent alcohol consumption habits.” This latest study’s conclusion likewise claims that the “link between alcohol use in movies and adolescent binge drinking was robust and seems relatively unaffected by cultural contexts.”

But in the last paragraphs — well after most people probably stopped reading — was what I’d been thinking as I read this, that “even though the European study shows a strong association between what is seen on the movie screen and binge drinking, it cannot show cause and effect.” Like Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder, not everything is as it seems.

And despite the tone of the story up until that point having been confidently certain, as expressed in the headline’s more movies, more binging (or better mo movies, mo binging), it may not be as certain as they would have you believe. Here’s the smoking gun.

It may be that binge drinking teens seek out movies that have alcohol scenes, or it could be that seeing scenes of alcohol use in movies makes them more likely to binge drink. More research is needed to confirm these findings.

I continue to be troubled by the wide range of ages surveyed, because in my experience those are the ages when people change more in a shorter period of time than at any other time in their entire life. The conclusion suggests that to combat this scourge, parents should “go to the movies with [their kids] and discuss what you’re seeing. What you say matters more than what one TV show or one movie says.” In other words, be a parent. So is this a problem of parenting or the movies? Should movies be stripped of adult content because kids might watch them? That does seem to be a common strategy by neo-prohibitionist groups, especially with regard to advertising.

In the end, this seems like yet another study riddled with more questions than answers. But, as is typical, those questions — if the media raises them at all — are buried at the end of the article, well after the average person has given up reading and has moved on to something else. What we’re left with is a “survey” (and we all now how teenagers always tell the truth about what they’re doing) of kids in six varied nations (with different minimum drinking ages) who are of widely different ages (from a childlike ten to a young adult 19) who appear to binge drink more (or at least once) if they see Hollywood blockbuster movies (or it may be teens who drink prefer those movies). Tell me again how exactly that’s news?