Thursday’s ad is holiday ad for Michelob, from 1963. Their suggestion, “This year buy him a beer” seems like a good one, though in truth Michelob probably wouldn’t be the one I”d want, but maybe that’s just me. I love how they spin it in the ad copy. They refer to giving Michelob as an “unhackneyed” gift, “whether beer lover or bottle fancier.”
Wednesday’s ad is another holiday one for Schlitz, this one from 1960. She certainly looks ready to party, handing our glasses of beer. I want to be at her Christmas party.
And here’s a better scan of the ad, but smaller.
Tuesday’s ad begins the holiday season for beer ads, and our first this year is for Schlitz, most likely from the 1950s. With the slogan “light refreshment for your holidays,” the ad shows a couple having a few beers by the tree. The woman lounges on a sofa, as the man presumably just gave her a present to open. She certainly looks happy; is it the warm glow of Schlitz or the anticipation of opening a decidedly jewelry box sized gift?
This two-year old SlashFood article showed up in my Paper.li today, retweeted by a brewery I follow. The article, Super Bowl Sunday — The 8th Biggest Beer Day of the Year? questions the list of the top eight “Holidays/Events for Beer.” The list was complied by Nielsen, and as he points out is “combined beer sales from all U.S. outlets (including food, liquor, convenience and drug).” He’s initially is skeptical about why sales for the week following the holiday/event are also tracked, but eventually figured out that’s just how the weeks are tracked. If you want to include a week in which the holiday falls on a Sunday, you have to include the week prior and the week of to get all the relevant sales data. Author Mike Pomranz drew many of his conclusions from his correspondence with Nielsen executives, who naturally have a healthy bias in favor of their own data. As a result, Pomranz may not fully appreciate two additional tidbits about those statistics.
First, Nielsen’s data is almost entirely chain store sales. The big supermarket chains, drug stores, big box stores, convenience stores. As such, it’s a big slice of the pie, but it’s still nowhere near the whole pie. Missing from its numbers are thousands of small independent outlets that sell beer. It works because the sample is the same from period to period and so comparisons and trends can be confidently teased out of the data, and it’s certainly useful, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. What most people outside the industry forget, IMHO, is that it isn’t intended to be all-inclusive. It’s purpose is to identify sales trends and big picture activity. When I was the beer buyer at BevMo, I’d see an endless parade of Nielsen data from various breweries, and each would tell a different story, simply because of the way the information was massaged. There’s so much data that it can be drilled down in endless ways, with each business doing it in a way that was most favorable to their purposes, to show their sales in the best possible light. So it should be taken with a grain of salt. It’s most useful when comparing the same set of data over different periods of time; weeks, months, quarters, years, etc.
But it tends to break down when comparing different time periods, as in this list, because there are so many more factors that the raw numbers can’t capture. Pomranz certainly gives seasonality its due, concluding that “[i]f you were to normalize sales to account for weekly seasonal changes in overall beer sales, the often beer-centric celebration of the Super Bowl would most likely move significantly up the list.” That’s because climate — the weather — plays a HUGE part in beer sales that can’t be overstated. When the thermometer ticks up, beer sales go up. When it’s time to put on a sweater, beer sales plummet. It’s always been very seasonal that way. But even my old bosses at BevMo failed to recognize its importance and would routinely blame me for poor beer sales (or at least not hitting sales goals) when forces out of my control would hurt the amount of beer people bought. I even had one person tell me I was essentially not allowed to blame the weather, which is a bit like saying you can’t explain getting wet by pointing to the rain.
So not surprisingly, the top four holidays all take place during warm months of the year. And while you don’t normally associate Father’s Day with big beer-soaked picnics, just the fact that it’s in June may account for increased sales. Frankly, Easter is likewise one of those holidays that few people have been able to tie in with beer, but as it usually comes in the spring, it could also be a coincidence of the season.
Second, the Nielsen data is for “Case Sales.” In other words, not kegs. And a lot of holiday or event parties include kegs. For example, every year I was with BevMo our number one weekend for keg sales was Halloween. But in the Nielsen data, it doesn’t even crack the top eight. To me, that suggests another one of the limitations of their list. It’s just common sense. You can’t tell me more people drink beer for Easter than Halloween. Again, that’s because the data is imperfect and not comprehensive. It’s just a snapshot of one particular portion of the beer market.
And in fact, one year later, in 2010, the very same Nielsen chart for the subsequent year has the Super Bowl now in 7th place, with Halloween in 6th, and Easter and Father’s Day no longer registering.
So while I think we can mostly agree on which holidays or events are the biggest in terms of beer drinking, even if the order they’ll fall in will vary slightly, it’s best not to rely too heavily on incomplete data that’s not intended to be all-encompassing of the total beer market in America.
I just finished my family’s Thanksgiving feast, enjoyed with a 2000 magnum of Our Special Ale from Anchor Brewing that I found nestled in the back of one of our refrigerators. Boy am I stuffed. Before the tryptophan kicks in and I’m found drooling on the sofa, I wanted to take a moment to wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving.
I’m incredibly thankful that people come here to read what I write, see what I share and drink what I drink. Thank you from the bottom of my pint glass.
Happy Thanksgiving!
And I love the mash-up Chicago’s Piece Brewery did with this Thanksgiving scene and their growlers.
Thursday’s Thanksgiving Day ad is for Budweiser. I’m not sure when the ad originally ran, but clearly it’s from a time when sensitivities toward Native Americans weren’t particularly keen. That’s based on the ad copy, which after the headline — “America’s Earliest Thanksgiving … Was For Corn” — is the following:
With joyous chants and throbbing tom-toms, the Indians celebrated each bountiful harvest of maize. How the red man would marvel to see the part his native grain plays in the nutrition and individual prosperity of modern America!
Later in the ad, the copy connects corn to “its neighbor, barley,” adding. “For, from America’s costliest barley comes Budweiser to adds its distinctive, delicious taste to the fine flavors that make such a world of difference between merely eating and really dining.” Curiously, no mention of rice, though.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
Today, 30 years ago, Don Feinberg and Wendy Littlefield launched Vanberg & DeWulf, one of the first companies to specialize in importing Belgian beer to the United States. Originally, they conceived of the company as a way to keep visiting Belgium on a regular basis and see the many friends they’d made when they lived there for three years after college, not realizing they’d be part of a larger movement popularizing Belgian beer in the states. At the time, here’s what they were thinking.
We lived in Belgium for three years right out of college and began importing so that when our companies transferred us to the States we would still have an excuse to return to see our friends and visit the places we loved. What began as a hobby turned into a career, and we have a decades-long wacky, improbable fascination with the culture of the country and its brewers.
As my friend Tom Peters from Monk’s Cafe in Philadelphia put it:
Toast to the pioneers of bringing Belgian beers to the US. Don Feinberg & Wendy Littlefield have been bringing us the likes of Duvel, Boon, Dupont, Scaldis and other top-flight Belgian ales for the past THIRTY YEARS! They were at least a decade ahead of the times. Their portfolio helped me start offering Belgian beer in Philadelphia way back in 1985. Without their efforts Monk’s Café probably would not exist, nor any of the other Belgian beer bars that came along later.
Like many bars and beer establishments, they’re taking part in the Coast-to-Coast Toast tonight, lifting a glass of Belgian beer to Vanberg & DeWulf, and especially to Don and Wendy, for their three-decade efforts.
When I spoke to Wendy last week, she said they expect about 350 places to participate in the toast, and around 200 have even signed-up on the Eventbrite page, where you can see if there’s one going on in your neighborhood. For a full list, by state, of the more than 350 events that were known as of yesterday, check out that list at their C2CT website.
Even if you can’t make it out — I’m staying in and toasting with the missus, for example — toast them in the comfort of your home. It should be easy enough to find one of the great beers they import. Any beer from the following Belgian breweries will fit the bill.
You can also find a list of all 30 of the beers in their portfolio at their C2CT website.
In addition, Don and Wendy have partnered with Untappd, the foursquare of beer. I confess I’ve only been using Untappd for a couple of weeks now, since I finally scrapped my Android for an iPhone 4s. But so far I really like it, in the same way I enjoy checking into Foursquare for absolutely no reason. It’s just fun. Anyway, check in today (and for the next 30 days) with any of the thirty beers in the Vanberg & DeWulf portfolio and you’ll earn a special Belgian beer badge.
In addition to the badge, you’ll also be entered into a contest to win a trip for two to Belgium, courtesy of the Belgian Tourist Office and Delta Airlines.
Here’s an overview of some of their other accomplishments, and Lew Bryson has a nice tribute he did for a local Philly distributor.
Don Feinberg and Wendy Littlefield were the first to import Duvel, Rodenbach, Affligem, Boon lambics, Blanche de Bruges to the USA. They were the first Americans inducted into the Belgian Brewers Guild in its 500-year history. Ever and always they have represented beers from independent family-run breweries. They were the publishers of the first US edition of Michael Jackson’s The Great Beers of Belgium. They founded Brewery Ommegang on a former hops farm in Cooperstown in 1994. Ommegang was the first US brewery dedicated to all bottle conditioned, cork-finished, Belgian-style beers. They introduced the 750 ml format to the US craft beer scene, and built the first farmstead brewery in the US in a century.
I first met Don and Wendy about fifteen years ago when I worked for BevMo. At that time they were not just importers, but had recently founded and built Ommegang in upstate New York, a partnership with Duvel Moortgat and others. I saw and talked to them both for a number of years after that, but then I didn’t see them for a time after Duvel bought them out at Ommegang and they moved to Chicago. Happily, I was reunited with them when the Craft Brewers Conference took place in Chicago two years ago and I attended a Dubuisson (Bush) beer dinner where we had a chance to really catch up, before heading to the Publican for a nightcap or three. I love their passion for what they do, and how much they love and value their relationship with Belgian culture and its brewers. I hope I remain half as passionate for what I do after thirty years. They’re a great example of just how much fun you can have when you really and truly love what you do.
Happy Anniversary Don & Wendy, here’s to thirty more years of great Belgian beer!
Our 58th Session should be a fun one. Our host, Phil Hardy from Beersay, is apparently hoping for an old-fashioned Christmas this year, and at the top of his list is Charles Dickens’ immortal classic A Christmas Carol. Hardy is attempting to merge the two, which, as Dickens himself said of the goal of his novella in the preface. “I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.” We should all aspire to such heights. The basic idea, which by now you must have guessed, is to write about the beers of Christmas past, present and future, or as Hardy tells it in his announcement post, A Dickens of a Topic for December 2011:
A Christmas Carol
The idea for me was based loosely around the visits of three ghosts to Ebenezer Scrooge, but relayed in a post about the beers of Christmas past, present and future.
What did you drink during Christmas holidays of old, have you plans for anything exciting this year and is there something you’d really like to do one day, perhaps when the kids have flown the nest?
Do you have your own interpretation, was Scrooge perhaps a beer geek?
Or maybe it’s all one day. What will you drink Christmas morning, Christmas afternoon and what will you top off the holiday with that evening?
Just a few examples there, but the idea was to keep the topic as open as possible to allow you free rein to write about a subject with a seasonal twist in whatever way the title grabs you.
My own favorite interpretation of A Christmas Carol is the Bill Murray film Scrooged, which I watch each year without fail, tearing up at the end … every … single … time. There, now you now; I’m a sentimental old fool.
Acid rain. Drug addiction. International terrorism. Freeway killers. Now more than ever, it is important to remember the true meaning of Christmas. Don’t miss Charles Dickens immortal classic; Scrooge. Your life might just depend on it…
Or maybe not, but just to be sure, why not write your Dickensian blog post anyway, and post it up on Friday, December 2.
Monday’s ad is a 1955 Halloween ad for Ballantine Ale. Showing an apparently impressed jack-o-lantern who just tried some beer, he’s declaring “that Ale brother!”
Today is the 4th annual holiday celebrating brewers around the world, International Brewers Day, which I created in 2008. While I haven’t been able to put as much effort into it as I might have liked, someday I will. In the meantime, some parts of the international brewing community are carrying on with celebrations, most notably in Australia. For now, a quiet celebration involving beer and any brewer you happen to encounter today is in order.
You could see the original idea, the plan and why I chose July 18 at the old International Brewers Day website, but unfortunately it’s currently down. I’ll have to get that moved and back up again one of these days.
Here was my original driving thought:
Brewers have given so many of us the pleasure of their artistry and enriched our lives with their beer since civilization began. So I think it’s time we recognized their efforts by celebrating their lives, their commitment and their craft. We’re all beer people, but without the brewers what would we be drinking?
Did I mention that hugging brewers is a big part of the holiday?
As the old Czech saying goes:
“Blessed is the mother who gives birth to a brewer.“