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The Primo Return of Primo

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primo-new
This was first reported back in late November during what I’ll continue to call “The Great Ennui of Late ’07” when the Bulletin was looking pretty sparse. I’m returning to the new year reinvigorated, or at least willing myself to try, and so I’m trying to catch up on old news people have sent in, and this comes to me by way of my island connection, a regular Bulletin reader living in Hawaii. Thanks Doug. It seems the old iconic Primo Beer brand has returned as of December, so far in kegs only. Bottles will be back sometime in April.

primo-shirt

First, a little history. Primo Beer was originally made by the Honolulu Brewing & Malting Co., which was founded in 1898. After Prohibition ended, it was renamed the Hawaii Brewing Co. and by the 1950s became the best-selling beer on the islands. In 1963, Schlitz Brewing bought the brand, building a new brewery in ‘Aiea, and they continued making Primo until closing it in 1979. At its height, the Hawaiian brewery produced over 400,00 barrels per year. A few years later, in 1982, Stroh Brewing bought the brand and changed the label as well as the formula, trying to sell the brand outside Hawaii in several states. With mixed success, sales grew and then fell again, and eventually Stroh stopped making Primo in either 1997 or 98 (accounts differ on this point). A year or two later, Pabst acquired the brand, along with several others brands from Stroh’s and they are the current owners of the brand.

So last year, Pabst made the decision to bring back the label. And that makes sense, Primo was one of those iconic brands that people couldn’t help but associate with Hawaii. Using a silhouetted image of King Kamehameha, who in 1810 united the Hawaii Islands under his leadership of the Kingdom of Hawaii, was a genius marking move and the bold Hawaiian shirts made in the 1960s-70s with the Primo label continue to be collector’s items right up to the present.

The new Primo is being launched by the Primo Brewing Co., a division of Pabst Brewing. A new recipe was created by brewmaster Phil Markowski, who justly won fame and fortune for his beers at the Southampton Publick House on Long Island, New York.

The beer itself is being brewed by a craft brewery on the island of Kauai, Keoki Brewing, who initially will brew around 200 kegs each month. Once bottled production starts up, that will be handled stateside by Pabst in Irwindale, California. But since Pabst doesn’t own any breweries, that means Miller Brewing — who does own a brewery in Irwindale — will be contract brewing the beer for Pabst. According to a press release, “the draft and bottled versions will be distributed by Paradise Beverage Co.”

It will be interesting to see if they can successfully revive the brand. I imagine it will be great as a tourist beer and for locals looking to support a well-known local brand, at least as far as the draft beer is concerned. The bottles stateside may prove trickier, especially after the initial novelty wears off, as it inevitably will.

primo-btl

Beer Can Table

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An interesting blog called Modern Mechanix, which appears to consist largely of showing how in the past we used to view the future, at least in old science hobby magazines. The one I stumbled upon was from the August 1936 edition of Science and Mechanics and featured this table made entirely from beer cans.

According to the magazine article, it took 420 cans of Pabst to make the table and chairs, which were soldered together over ten days by a Bernard Dier of Chicago, Illinois. I imagine it was much sturdier than if we made it now since these cans would have been a thicker, sturdier metal than the all-aluminum cans of today.

 

Drinking Beer In Our DNA

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First a little good news to ring in the new year. According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, a thirst for alcohol may indeed be hardwired in our DNA. And perhaps more importantly, unlike some other mammals, we appear to be predisposed to drink it in moderation, in direct contradiction with claims of neo-prohibitionist propaganda. According to an article by Natalie Angier in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune (via the New York Times News Service), “[t]he holidays are a time of multicreedal spirituality and festivities, and alcohol has been a fixture of celebration and religious ritual since humans first learned to play and pray.”

From the Tribune article:

“As far back as we can look, humans have had a love affair with fermented beverages,” said Patrick McGovern, an archeological chemist at the University of Pennsylvania. “And it’s not just humans. From fruit flies to elephants, if you give them a source of alcohol and sugar, they love it.”

McGovern and other archeologists have unearthed extensive evidence of the antiquity and ubiquity of alcoholic beverages. One of the oldest known recipes, inscribed on a Sumerian clay tablet that dates to nearly 4,000 years, is for beer. Chemical traces inside 9,000-year-old pottery from northern China indicate that the citizens of Jiahu made a wine from rice, grapes, hawthorn and honey.

Humans may have an added reason to be drawn to alcohol. Throughout antiquity, available water was likely to be polluted with cholera and other dangerous microbes, and the tavern may well have been the safest watering hole in town. Not only is alcohol a mild antiseptic, but the process of brewing alcoholic beverages often requires that the liquid be boiled or subjected to similarly sterilizing treatments. “It’s possible that people who drank fermented beverages tended to live longer and reproduce more” than did their teetotaling peers, McGovern said, “which may partly explain why people have a proclivity to drink alcohol.”

What I find most interesting about this is that for much of mankind’s history, because of poor sanitation, drinking alcoholic beverages was safer than water, which led to such labels as “liquid bread” for beer. Without understanding why, people discovered that they were better off with booze than bacteria. But even after drinking water became safe as our understanding of the world increased, people still enjoyed a pint from time to time. Of course, there’s the social lubricant aspect that remains prevalent today, which still may be an aid to reproduction. But as for promoting health, hardly a month goes by without another new claim that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol has a previously undiscovered health benefit. I find it reasonable and altogether ironic that these two reasons for or benefits from drinking, which have literally been around since the dawn of civilization, are not only still with us but are largely unchanged since we crawled out of the muck and first stood erect. As if the lessons of prohibition weren’t obvious enough, we are a species who drinks. And no amount of proselytizing or preaching can change that. To which I can only reply, cheers to that!

 

D Is For Drunk

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Back in the early 1990s, I wrote a book on bars in the county where I was living at the time, The Bars of Santa Clara County, A Beer Drinker’s Guide to Silicon Valley. In addition to the reviews of over 500 bars, I included several appendices, one of which was a collection of slang terms for being drunk. It’s amazing just how many of these there are, especially when viewed historically as our language has changed and evolved. I finally got around to converting the original list and thought today the most appropriate time to publish it again online. I have nearly 3,000 colloquialisms listed alphabetically. Please have a look and let me know if there are any you know of that I’m missing. I’ll give credit to you for any I don’t have listed when I add new submissions. Please let me any and all information you have about it, such as if it’s local, regional, etc. and where geographically it’s used, it’s origin (if you know) and stuff like that. Just post a comment or send me an e-mail with any new drunk words you know. Thanks, and happy new year.

D is for Drunk

 

Happy Repeal Day

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Today is the 74th anniversary of the repeal of national Prohibition in the United States. Bob Skilnik has, naturally, the most complete account at his Beer In Food blog. His piece is called “National Prohibition; Its REAL Anniversary” and goes into great detail about the history swirling about at that time. It’s definitely worth a read.

In addition, Eugene, Oregon bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler has been leading an effort to make December 5 a holiday and he’s also set up a Repeal Day website. And Dewar’s is also running a Repeal Day promotion to celebrate the day (and sell some whisky, of course). Seems like a good idea to me, we can never have too many holidays to remind us what a bad idea Prohibition was, especially with the neo-prohibitionists of today trying so hard to bring about another one.

 

Revelers enjoying the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.
 

Van’s Ned Flanders

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John Foyston had a nice piece in the Oregonian yesterday about one of my favorite — and perhaps most underrated — beers to be poured at the Oregon Brewers Festival. It was certainly my favorite the year it appeared, 2006, and as this story attests, people are still talking about it. The beer is Ned Flanders, a sour beer based on the style Flemish Red Ale, of which Rodenbach Red and Duchesse De Bourgogne (another fave of mine) are perhaps the best known examples. I chose it as my buzz beer of the festival that year. Van Havig, then the brewer at Rock Bottom in Portland (and now a regional brewing manager) put quite a bit of effort into the beer, aging it in five different kinds of barrels and then blending it back together. Responding to a question from Foyston, Havig lays out the full story of this beer, and it’s a fascinating account filled with history and chutzpah.

van-havig ned

Will the real Ned Flanders please stand up? Van Havig and his inspiration for Ned Flanders Sour Red Ale.

Turkey & Beer Day Tomorrow

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Unlike many people, I always have beer with my turkey dinner. Lately, it’s Anchor’s Christmas beer. I like a good spicy beer with the myriad flavors of turkey, cranberry, stuffing, mashed potatoes and so forth. Pike’s of Seattle used to also make an excellent spicy beer, Auld Lang Syne, which I also liked for Thanksgiving but they stopped making it quite some time ago. But there are almost as many pairings as there are people, and few can really be said to be wrong as long as they’re well-thought out and manage to contrast or compliment the meal.

A survey of the recent news regarding Thanksgiving reveals that a number of sources are finally recommending beer with the Thanksgiving meal. Ten years ago that would have been a veritable rarity but now that suggestion seems to be everywhere and it’s told with a seemingly welcome relief. Relief that people can stop trying to put a square peg in a round hole, trying in vain to force wine to work with a meal it has little business being involved in. The varied tastes in the average Thanksgiving meal yield so much more easily to beer — as in fact does most food, but that’s for another day — than wine that you just know something other than common sense has been driving the wine pairing suggestions for years.

First, the Associated Press (AP) had a story that many outlets picked up under various titles, such as “Craft beers join Turkey Day table,” “Have a beer with Thanksgiving dinner,” and the vaguely insulting “Thanksgiving dinner — and beer?” But the article itself it surprisingly well-done.

There’s also “A Thanksgiving Toast,” a nice editorial in the L.A. Times giving a historical perspective for drinking beer at the Thanksgiving meal. And the Boston Globe has a similar theme in “Ale, ale, the gang’s all here.” Then there’s this piece from Canada called “It’s not Thanksgiving without beer.”

Likewise, Eric Hjerstedt Sharp, writing in the Ironwood, Michigan Daily Globe about Thanksgiving myths, has the following to add:

—Not tee-totalers by any means, the major beverage aboard the Mayflower was beer, primarily because the alcohol kept the bacteria from spoiling the drinking water. However, they continued to brew and drink beer after they landed and settled.

Scripps News has an article entitled “Choosing the best beer for a holiday dinner.” And while I could take issue with some of the author’s ignorance, she also has some good suggestions for the novice, too, so in the holiday spirit I’ll let it pass.

Tim Cotter, writing for The Day in Connecticut, suggests two fine beers to try with your turkey, Ommegang Abbey Ale or Allagash Grand Cru, in his column entitled “Turkey Beers.”

At Epicurious, there’s article called “Thanks for the Brews, Beers for Thanksgiving day,” by Marty Nachel, author of Beer for Dummies.

And there’s also “The beer nut: Giving thanks for good beers” at the Daily News in rural Massachusetts.

This year, the Brewers Association launched its own campaign called “The Year Beer Goes With the Bird” whose aim to show the advantages of pairing beer with your Thanksgiving meal this year. Some of their suggestions:

Traditional Roast Turkey: The roasted and caramelized skin matches well with amber ale, a strong golden ale or an amber lager in the Vienna style.

Smoked Turkey: If your local brewery offers a smoked beer, that can serve as a compliment to smoked turkey as well. Look for a porter, Scotch ale or amber ale in the smoked style.

Cajun Turkey: Celebrated beer writer and New Mexico resident Stan Hieronymus suggests a malty IPA to go with his favorite Cajun turkey recipe. For a malty alternative that will stand up to the heat, try a dark bock or strong Scotch ale.

The recipes on the left are also on the Brewers Association website and are courtesy of my good friend, beer cook Lucy Saunders.

And here’s in an interesting piece of history in itself. It’s an article by Michael Jackson from the Washington Post from November of 1983 called Beer at the Thanksgiving table. And here’s a more recent one on the same subject by Michael’s friend, award-winning beer writer, Carol Smagalski, entitled “Elegant Beer for the Thanksgiving Table.”

And then, of course, there’s my friend Lisa Morrison’s award-winning piece, “This Thanksgiving, Beer Is For The Bird” in which challenges her readers to “Try Serving Well-Crafted Local Beer At The Table, Pilgrim.”

And in case you thought this was a new idea, here’s an ad from 1946 extolling the virtues of beer with turkey by the National Brewing Co. of Baltimore, Maryland.

Chocolate’s Popularity Began With Beer

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A new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a government journal, has determined that ancient Mesoamericans, as long ago as 3,100 years, were using cacao — the stuff chocolate is made from — in a beverage that bears a remarkable similarity to beer. Pottery vessels not unlike the one below recently discovered in Honduras have been found to have residues inside them from cacao plant. It is believed that the beer-like drink was a status symbol used during celebrations in the ancient society.

From a Reuters article:

One of the researchers, anthropologist John Henderson of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said cacao beverages were being concocted far earlier than previously believed — and it was a beer-like drink that started the chocolate craze.

“What we’re seeing in this early village is a very early stage in which serving cacao at fancy occasions is one of the strategies that upwardly mobile families are using to establish themselves, to accumulate social prestige,” Henderson said in a telephone interview.

I think this is part of the process by which you eventually get stratified societies,” Henderson said.

The cacao brew consumed at the village of perhaps 200 to 300 people may have evolved into the chocolate beverage known from later in Mesoamerican history not by design but as “an accidental byproduct of some brewing,” Henderson said.

The style of the 10 small, elegant serving vessels suggests the cacao brew was served at important ceremonies perhaps to celebrate weddings and births, the scientists said.

 

The Pour on Cask

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Eric Asimov had another great beer piece yesterday at The Pour, this one was an overview on cask-conditioned beers. Personally, if I have a choice I always go with the cask version. In fact last night while out with some old high school buddies, I enjoyed Sara’s Ruby Mild on cask at Magnolia and later Moonlight’s Sublimmminal at the Toronado. Yum.

 
And here’s some general information on casks.

The parts of a beer barrel.

 

Cask Sizes:

  • Pin: 4.5 gallons
  • Firkin: 9 gallons
  • Kilderkin: 18 gallons
  • Barrel: 36 gallons
  • Hogshead: 54 gallons
  • Puncheon: 72 gallons
  • Butt: 108 gallons

 

The Crime of Beer Consumption

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A Bulletin fan (thanks Jim) sent me this link to a an article by Jascha Hoffman in the New York Times, in fact it was from the Magazine section’s Idea Lab this past Sunday and was titled Criminal Element. It’s a very interesting and provocative read, especially if, like me, you’re a fan of economic theory and the kind of oddball ways economics can be used in new ways, in the mold of the recent book Freakonomics. It centers on an idea by Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, an economist at Amherst College, that eliminating the lead from gasoline caused crime rates to fall in the 1990s.

Reyes found that the rise and fall of lead-exposure rates seemed to match the arc of violent crime, but with a 20-year lag — just long enough for children exposed to the highest levels of lead in 1973 to reach their most violence-prone years in the early ’90s, when crime rates hit their peak.

Such a correlation does not prove that lead had any effect on crime levels. But in an article published this month in the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, Reyes uses small variations in the lead content of gasoline from state to state to strengthen her argument. If other possible sources of crime like beer consumption and unemployment had remained constant, she estimates, the switch to unleaded gas alone would have caused the rate of violent crime to fall by more than half over the 1990s.

What an interesting theory that …. hey, wait a minute. What was that? “[O]ther possible sources of crime like beer consumption!?!” WTF! Since when did drinking beer become a source of crime? Where are those statistics? I’ve heard of hardcore heroin addiction leading to crime to support a drug habit, but beer? I don’t think so. If anybody out there has access to more than just the abstract of the article I’d love to run down where she got this idea. All I can find is that “beer consumption” is one of eleven “state-level variables” listed in the article’s appendix and that the information on “Beer consumption is from the Brewers Almanacs, published by the Beer Institute. It is measured as consumption of malt beverages in gallons consumed per capita.” But how does mere consumption lead to crime? Curiously, there’s no mention of spirits or wine consumption leading to crime, just beer, despite the fact that hard liquor was a permanent fixture at every high school and college party I ever attended. Has the demonization of beer just become so internalized and taken for granted that academia doesn’t even need to justify it? Frankly, I’m flummoxed. Am I missing something or just over-reacting as I’m so often accused? I’ve never resorted to crime to support my beer habit? How about you?