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(Not) The Top 10 Cities for Beer Lovers

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travel
I somewhat optimistically assume the slight that beer receives at the hands of our intrepid mainstream media will never get as bad as the last example of it, and yet more often than not I am proved wrong. Take MSNBC’s list today of their choices for the world’s Top 10 cities for beer lovers. Or rather the advertisement pretending to be news, because MSNBC’s list has no discernible author but instead appears to have been compiled and written by Sherman’s Travel, making it more like an infomercial than actual news, though it’s shamelessly made to look exactly the same as any real news item. But maybe it’s a good thing it’s not real news, because as news it’s laughably bad. As travel suggestions, at least it makes a little more sense since the goal is not to educate but to sell vacations. As a consequence accuracy or even logic is not only unnecessary but might get in the way of their ultimate goal. It’s a little sad that MSNBC, which at least is masquerading as a real news outlet, would “partner” with a travel agency to essentially hoodwink their readers into believing an author who knows what they’re talking about is sharing the inside track on beer destinations. But unfortunately the blurring between commerce and the media is all but complete.

Here’s the list Sherman’s Travel offers up as the best ten places worldwide for people who love beer:

  1. Amsterdam
  2. Berlin
  3. Brugge
  4. Burlington (Vermont)
  5. Dublin
  6. Mexico City
  7. Montreal
  8. Portland (Oregon)
  9. Prague
  10. Sapporo

Notice anything funny about that list. It’s not immediately apparent on MSNBC, but when you see them as a straight list then it’s obvious the list isn’t even trying to put them in any kind of order, because they’re alphabetical. There’s already been a lively debate about the order of the choices but I think we can dispense with any further discussions about rankings since there really aren’t any. Viewed in that light, it becomes obvious they were more concerned about a list that was spread out across the globe, the better to sell travel packages, the bread and butter of travel agencies.

But let’s look at their choices and the reasons they give for them.

1. Amsterdam: After listing the best known Dutch beers as “Heineken, Grolsch, and Amstel” (hardly the reason to visit Amsterdam, not that there aren’t good reasons to go) they suggest trying instead “artisanal blends [huh?] and witte (wheat) beers from neighboring Belgium.” Um, wouldn’t it make more sense to go to Belgium and drink there? I’m not planning a trip to France so I can sample the Napa Valley wines.

2. Berlin: Since this is the only German city on the list, apart from mentioning Munich in the introduction, it seems reasonable to assume they think it’s the best city for beer in Germany. There are places all throughout Germany, of course, rich with brewing heritage and Munich alone is a better choice than Berlin, as is almost anywhere in Bavaria.

3. Brugge: While it’s good that there is a Belgian city on the list, sadly there is no beer brewed today in Brugge so it seems an odd choice. Perhaps they have a good airport.

4. Burlington: This one is a bit of a head-scratcher. While I think Magic Hat Brewing does indeed make some very fine beers, and I’ve enjoyed my trips to Vermont immensely, I cannot fathom by what possible criteria this small college town has a better beer scene than San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Philadelphia or any number of other American cities.

5. Dublin: While there is indeed history aplenty in Dublin, it’s all pretty one-dimensionally Guinness, apart from the few recent craft brewers in town. There are lot of great pubs here, but diversity is not this city’s hallmark. And given what Diageo has done to Guinness’ reputation and the beer itself, it’s pretty hard to justify Dublin as one of the ten best, beer-wise.

6. Mexico City: Ha, ha, ha , ha. Mexico City as a beer town. Stop, you’re making my sides split. The article suggests trying “Corona, the signature Mexican brew” could be the height of your trip. Now why anyone even drinks the stuff is beyond me, but that aside why on Earth would you go to Mexico to get one, when every 7-11 and corner liquor store has stacks of it? Well Sherman’s Travel suggests you can try the Dos Equis or the Bohemia, also ubiquitous north of the border. Ridiculous.

7. Montreal: Okay, I’ll buy this one. I’m not sure it quite makes my personal top ten list, but it would be close and given how bad some of the other choices are, this has obvious merits.

8. Portland: No question Portland should be on the list, and probably near the top.

9. Prague: Okay, I’ve got nothing against Prague but here’s how the articles sells it. After giving the dubious reason that it’s inexpensive it’s “also home to the original (and many would say better) Budweiser.” Um, Prague is the home of Budvar? Did I miss a meeting? Did the town of České Budějovice merge with Prague? Given that it’s at least 40 miles south as the crow flies, I’d say that’s a bit of a stretch.

10. Sapporo: The reason they chose this Japanese town is because you can “purchase [beer] from vending machines on the street.” Now that’s a reason to spend fourteen hours on an airplane, so I can buy a can of beer from a vending machine. No thanks.

What a joke this list is, and as much for what they left off as what they chose. There’s not one British city, not even London, where ale is king. How is that possible? And several (Berlin, Burlington, Mexico City and Sapporo) have absolutely no business being on this list. MSNBC should be embarrassed to lend their name on something this grotesque. I’d be curious how much it costs to pretend your advertisement is news.

What’s That Smell? Fermentation or Incompetence?

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newspaper
The “smell of fermentation?” More like the smell of incompetence, as respected wine writer Thom Elkjer bumbles wildly through a new beer article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, apparently angling to become the Sergeant Schultz of beer. His first impression upon entering the Russian River Brewery is the stainless steel tanks and the “smell of fermentation.” When I read his article, the only scent I get is of his ignorance.

The article is titled Artisan brewers thrive in the Wine Country and in it he profiles Russian River Brewing Co. of Santa Rosa and Anderson Valley Brewing Co. of Boonville, and also talks more generally about craft beer in the Bay Area.

He begins by sampling Russian River Brewing’s wonderfully complex Damnation and spits out the sample into the floor drain, thus missing half the beer’s flavor! That’s only the first outrage in what I believe quite possibly may be the most ignorant piece of writing on the subject of beer that I’ve read all year. I’m glad that the Chronicle is once more writing about beer after Linda Murphy, the one wine writer that knew something about it, left in August. But there are so many mistakes and insults in Elkjer’s feature article that I almost feel embarrassed for him. And the Chronicle likewise should feel embarrassed for doing such a disservice to its many beer-loving readers.

There are so many things to call attention to in the article that I could spend all day on it, but I’ll confine myself to just a few and leave it to others to discover the rest.

He claims that early craft brewers originally “went into the commercial business to make a fresh, draft version of their favorite bottled import.” But most early craft brewers made a pale ale or amber ale as their flagship beer, while a majority of imports were still lagers. To be sure there were some pale ales — Bass Ale springs to mind — but they were a relative minority. Imports certainly “inspired” many early brewers, but for a variety of reasons making ales was a much more cost effective way to start a microbrewery in those days.

Elkjer goes on to describe “stout and ale” as some of the “time-honored categories” to describe “their beers — just as winemakers do.” I’m pretty sure wines are usually described by the primary grape or the region (appellation) they come from. Wouldn’t that mean that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale should be called “Cascade Ale.” And when did ale and stout become distinct categories? They’re not, of course, and I can’t even bring myself to insult my readers by explaining this.

After reporting how Vinnie Cilurzo is embracing Brettanomyces to create many of Russian River’s bolder beers, unlike winemakers who generally hate the stuff, he says its odor reminds “most people of barnyard manure.” So is he saying Vinnie’s beer using that yeast tastes or smells “shitty?” I think the more common description of Brett is “horse blanket” or similar allusions and while I accept that many people find it off-putting, I’ve never considered scatological descriptors. I think that’s a little insulting, frankly.

Elkjer next explains that Russian River is not the only brewer making this type of beer, and mentions Tomme Arthur, too, before dropping this bombshell. “There are, for example, more than 400 different beers made at Belgium’s Trappist monasteries.” Wow, that’s a lot of different beers made at a grand total of seven — count ’em — seven Trappist breweries in the world (6 in Belgium, 1 in The Netherlands). Some very simple fact-checking would likely have revealed this error, but it suggests a lack of follow-up or research, along with a careless disregard for the subject matter.

The author then talks about the history of hops in northern California’s past, explaining how hops were once “roasted” throughout the region. I don’t know what they did with the hops after they roasted them — assuming they didn’t catch on fire — because they’d be all but useless in making beer. While I can’t say some hop pellets have never been put in a frying pan for a few seconds to get some different qualities out of the hops in dry-hopping by some eccentric brewer, generally speaking nobody in their right mind roasts hops. There are far better and safer ways to get roasted flavors in your beer. But to Thom, “[r]oasted hops are one of the two essential ingredients in most beer (the other is malted barley).” I’m not sure what happened to the yeast and water, perhaps they’re not as essential?

And apparently it’s not just beer that Elkjer is ignorant about, he’s not so hot at math, either. In discussing the alcohol (a.b.v.) in Russian River’s beers, he claims Deification at 6.35% is “around twice the average of mass-produced beers.” Budweiser weighs in at 4.9%. You do the math, does that add up? He later refers to a 5.5% beer as a “session beer,” which he also defines as a beer to drink “during a long meal.” I didn’t realize “length of meal time” was one of the criteria you should use in choosing the right beer pairing for your dinner.

Later, he reveals the target demographic for “session beers” are “women as well as immigrants” and that’s who microbreweries are focusing on appealing to. Now, do female immigrants want a beer that’s twice as low-alcohol since they’re both “women as well as immigrants” or are they just twice as likely to want one? It’s amazing how dismissive and insulting that sounds, but frankly that’s how the whole things strikes me. This just seems to be written by someone who all but hates what he’s writing about.

But there’s more condescension around the next corner where Elkjer writes off brewpub food as “simple, hearty and well matched with the beverages,” implying, of course that the “beverages” are simple, too. Oh, and if you spend the entire day drinking beer, by all means learn from the adults, your betters, and, as Elkjer suggests, “do what the wine tasters do: rent a limousine or choose a designated driver.” Thanks Thom, that would never have occurred to me, what a thoughtful suggestion. We beer folk are such simple people, we sure do need your sophisticated guidance, by golly.

Elkjer ends his article, at least online (in the paper I believe it’s probably a sidebar), with a list and short description of wine country craft breweries, though curiously he omits Dempsey’s in Petaluma, among others. Here are just a couple of his comments:

Bear Republic has “a goofy gift shop.”

Calistoga Inn Restaurant & Brewery is a “real restaurant that happens to make 400 barrels of beer.” So the other brewpub restaurants aren’t “real?”

Now apparently Thom Elkjer is a very well-respected wine writer who writes for numerous wine magazines and newspapers, including, according to his biography on WineCountry.com, “Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Country Living, VINE Napa Valley, and WINE.” He’s also written several books about wine. But from some simple searching, I can’t find another instance where he’s written about beer before and, if that’s true, boy does it show. But as some of my own critics have pointed out, the fault lies more properly with the editors, the publication handing out the assignment rather than the author. And that certainly may be true to a certain extent. Because I, too, would probably not turn down an assignment that paid well in a prominent publication, even if they asked me to write about something outside my area of expertise. But I also would have done a lot of research, fact-checked the piece to death, and asked people who did know the subject to look at it first. I would have gone over it with a fine tooth comb if for no other reason than simply to not embarrass myself and also insure that it wasn’t the last assignment I ever got from the publication.

Elkjer’s piece, on the other hand, is so riddled with simple, laughable errors and insulting, dismissive rhetoric that I’m truly perplexed that his article moved from the editor’s desk to the copy editor and on the printing press without somebody noticing something might be amiss. I know these are busy people. I know they have deadlines. I know they don’t know jack about beer. But how do you miss insulting “women and immigrants” by reinforcing stereotypes and suggesting they both prefer low-alcohol beers. I need look no farther than my own wife to know how wrong that stereotype is. And by now isn’t it fairly common knowledge that while wine tasters spit out the samples, beer aficionados do not?

This is or should be, I think, a source of much embarassment to the San Francisco Chronicle. Their newspaper is smack dab in the middle of one the most exciting places on Earth for craft brewing, where there are countless innovations taking place right under their noses. Yet the largest news organization in the Bay Area remains blissfully ignorant of what’s going on all around them, or even that it’s going on at all. More and more people are discovering craft beer in all its wonderfully varied diversity despite the Chronicle’s best efforts to keep their readers in the dark. And that may be the saddest commentary of all.

Snarky, Yes; Prejudice, No

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Stan over at Appellation Beer put me on to this. In Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, drinks writer Eric Felton, in reviewing Maureen Ogle’s Ambitious Brew, says the following in his concluding remarks:

It was a taste that favored bland beer, and the brewers bowed to that public preference until the microbrewery revolution that got going in earnest about 20 years ago. Ms. Ogle tells that story with appreciation for the new school of brewers but without the snarky prejudice against the big corporate beer companies that is so common to today’s beer snobs. It is one of the virtues of her history of American beer that Ms. Ogle isn’t afraid to admit admiration for the bold risks and ambitions of the capitalists — then and now — who have made beer their business. [my emphasis]

Now I’m a self-avowed beer snob. Do I have a “snarky prejudice against the big corporate beer companies?” Let’s look at what that means.

Snarky is defined by the O.E.D. as “sharply critical” and I am certainly that with regard to most of corporate America, but yes, especially the big beer companies. And Merriam-Webster defines it as “sarcastic, impertinent, or irreverent in tone or manner.” I’m certainly often sarcastic and irreverent, though I don’t believe I’m impertinent (which they also define as “not restrained within due or proper bounds especially of propriety or good taste” or “given to or characterized by insolent rudeness.”). I don’t really believe the relationship between critic and the object of criticism should be restrained by any bounds or should avoid being rude under some circumstances or that any company necessarily deserves to be treated within “proper bounds.” I don’t mean to suggest one should go out of their way to be impertinent but we likewise shouldn’t shrink from it if appropriate. So by the more common definitions, impertinence aside, I am often snarky, and quite proud of it. What’s wrong with drawing attention to things I believe to be false, misleading, etc. That’s what journalists are supposed to do in reporting to the public. The media should “comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” But more often today’s media does just the opposite, promoting the agenda of their advertisers, who are almost always businesses.

But now let’s look at prejudice. That’s a much more loaded word. Here are its most common meanings:

  1. an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.
  2. any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable.
  3. unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, esp. of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious, or national group.

prejudice. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1). Retrieved November 01, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/prejudice

And the O.E.D.’s main definition is a “preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or experience.”

So prejudice is based on forming an opinion, and usually an “unreasonable” one, “without knowledge, thought or reason” or “without experience.” Now is that why so many beer snobs do not care for the big beer companies? Is is that we just don’t “get them?” If only we’d experience them by drinking their products, think about them, or learn the true message of capitalism they’re bring to the world then we’d stop our misguided criticisms of big business. Only then perhaps we could celebrate their “bold risks” and admire their deeds.

What utter nonsense. Beer snobs don’t like the big beer companies precisely because we have experience with them. Our opinions are based on a thorough knowledge of what they’re up to, we can reason that their business practices often harm smaller business. Experience has shown us that the bigger beer companies have been putting the smaller ones out of business for decades. I should admire such predatory instincts as they decimate this country’s brewing heritage with their ambition and their bold risks (which are not actually usually that bold given government subsidies, lobbying efforts, etc.)? I know that the big companies are capable of brewing more flavorful beers but choose not to and then deceive the public with advertising designed to disguise that fact and in fact try to destroy the image of all beer so they can sell the more cheaply made industrial equivalent they sell in its place. How admirable. Am I being snarky. You bet I am. But this is not a beer snob’s prejudiced opinion, it’s an opinion based on experience, knowledge, thought and is utterly reasonable under the circumstances.

Should wine snobs appreciate Gallo, Wild Turkey and Blue Nun, too? Is the only reason they don’t because they’ve failed to admire the bold risks and ambitions of the capitalists who have made wine their business? Is the reason I don’t like Wonder Bread because I don’t admire the bold risks and ambitions of the capitalists who have made bread their business?

I realize Felton writes for the business focused Wall Street Journal and he probably can’t help being a cheerleader for big business. The Wall Street Journal is, after all, owned by Dow Jones, making it in effect big business itself. But he sincerely pisses me off when he accuses the good beer community of not supporting big business because we’re ignorant of their boldness, their risk-taking ambitions, or because they’ve made beer their business, too.

Beer snobs celebrate what’s best in beer and that’s not usually the core brands of the largest beer companies. We’ve tasted them and tasted them to come to that conclusion. The best beer snobs I know will taste any beer and make a sober assessment of its quality as a beer, regardless of who made it. But like anything, the more you taste the different products of a brewery over and over again, certain patterns tend to emerge. Brewery A tends to make very good beers. Brewery B does not. Those are not prejudices but realistic impressions that are created over time. And from time to time, Brewery A makes a dud and B brews up a winner and beer snobs are the first to admit it when that happens.

Eric Felton is, quite simply, full of it, and is being quite snarkily impertinent himself. He’s certainly jumped to an unreasonable and unsupportable opinion about beer snobs — now that’s prejudice.

Union Tribune Profiles Jeff Bagby

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San Diego’s Union Tribune yesterday featured an engaging profile of award-winning Pizza Port brewer Jeff Bagby. Since I’m usually railing against coverage in the mainstream media, I want to point out that the Tribune’s columnist Peter Rowe (who frequently writes about beer) did an excellent job on the article. In addition to the profile, he also had tasting notes for some of Bagby’s beers, and — unlike the San Francisco Chronicle — listed all the GABF medals won by local breweries then finished up with a list of upcoming beer events in San Diego. Well done, and congratulations Jeff.
 

Dave Keene, from the Toronado, with Jeff Bagby, at the recent Port Brewing Beer Dinner that was held at the Cathedral Hill Hotel by beer chef Bruce Paton.

Anchor Profiled As Successful Small Company

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Last week, USA Today profiled Anchor Brewery in their Inside Money section as a stellar example of a successful small company with no desire to grow larger and larger like the trap so many other successful companies fall into. The story is in conjunction with the publication of a business book on small companies, Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big by Bo Burlingham, an editor at Inc. magazine. On the same day as the Anchor profile, USA Today also has an article about Burlingham’s new book entitled To grow or not to grow? Some companies decide to stay put. Both are written, naturally, from a business perspective but are a good, positive pieces for craft beer. It’s certainly nice to see that for a change.

AP’s Beer by the Numbers

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Last week, quite a number of papers ran a short little filler item from the Associated Press that just listed the following statistics regarding the beer industry and U.S. consumption.
 

  • 1,409: The number of breweries — ranging from brewpubs to national brewers — operating in the United States.
  • 306: The number of breweries in California last year, putting the state first in the country. Mississippi was last with one.
  • $82 billion: The U.S. sales volume for beer last year. Craft beer — beer typically made in small batches by regional or local brewers — accounted for $4.3 billion.
  • 21.3 gallons: The amount of beer consumed per capita last year in the United States. New Hampshire led all states with 31.1 gallons. Nevada, North Dakota, Montana and Wisconsin rounded out the top five. Utah was last at 12.2 gallons.
  • 48: The percent of all beer sold in metal cans last year in the United States. Glass bottles followed at 42 percent and draft beer was at 10 percent.
  • 84.1: The market share held by major U.S. breweries and noncraft regional brewers. Imports have 12.4 percent and craft brewers hold 3.4 percent.

N.Y. Times Reviews Ambitious Brew

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Friday’s Book Section of the New York Times reviewed two new beer books, including Marueen Ogle’s Ambitious Brew. The gave it a decent review, but perhaps more importantly it’s great to see the Times actually review books about beer. That’s certainly a sign that “the times they are a-changin’.”

New York Magazine Letter to the Editor

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A couple of weeks ago, New York Magazine did a tasting of several unrelated beers and published their findings. Stephen Beaumont wrote an essay decrying the article and I likewise threw in my two cents, adding some random complaints.

The magazine, to their credit, invited Stephen to write a letter to the editor and he graciously invited some other beer writers to also sign the letter, in the hopes of having it carry more weight. The issue for the week of October 30 has printed his letter in their Letters to the Editor section, and I’ve also reprinted it below.

Ales in Comparison

As writers and editors who specialize in beer, we’re always delighted to see our preferred beverage receive coverage in the mainstream press, even when the story doesn’t involve any of us. Really, we are. But we’re dismayed when said story fails to treat such a noble drink with the respect it deserves, as was the case in Ben Mathis-Lilley’s “Ales in Comparison” [“Strategist: Taste Testing,” October 16]. Would New York Magazine assemble a random group of “enthusiastic” art lovers to critique the latest show at the MoMA? Would it publish a review of a haphazardly selected group of wines, sherries, ports, and champagnes, dismissing one as “girlie,” another as “sissy,” and a third simply because it has “a funny name”? Again, likely not. Yet this is exactly what Mathis-Lilley does, presumably because beer’s egalitarian reputation makes it somehow okay. Please, continue publishing stories about beer. There is a wealth of choice out there, and consumers no doubt appreciate all the guidance they can find. But before you commission your next article, please take a look at the methodology involved and ask yourselves, “Would this be acceptable were the topic fine wine, theater, or the city’s latest culinary hot spot?”

—Stephen Beaumont, writer, worldofbeer.com; Julie Bradford, editor, All About Beer; Jay Brooks, writer, brookstonbeerbulletin.com; Lew Bryson, writer, lewbryson.com; Tom Dalldorf, publisher, Celebrator Beer News; John Hansell, publisher, Malt Advocate

Will it do any good? Who knows, but you do what you can, fight the good fight and hope for the best.
 

J-Schools and “Happy Amateurism”

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I’ve been writing quite a bit lately about journalists in the mainstream media who write about beer yet appear to know virtually nothing about the subject. I’ve had a few of my own theories about this phenomenon but I recently came across another one that I hadn’t considered in a book I happened to be reading. The book was 100 Ways America is Screwing Up the World by John Tirman. Number 99 on Tirman’s list is “‘Professional’ Schools, by which he means medical schools, law schools and the one that caught my attention — journalism schools. Here’s his general take on J-schools:

And journalism schools — what is it exactly they teach? What is it that one can learn that will improve skills as an investigator or writer that other disciplines cannot provide? Journalism schools do not and cannot teach problem-solving skills — critical thinking — as well as the social sciences or humanities or natural sciences.

Okay, I think it’s pretty clear he’s no fan of modern journalism. But it was the next sentiments Tirman expressed that really got me thinking about this issue. I hadn’t considered it before, but it makes a lot of sense. Here’s his analysis of the problem:

More than half of the new hires in newsrooms hold undergraduate degrees in journalism. There is an ethic among many in this field of “happy amateurism” — that one can report on anything using certain standard methods. You need not know anything about the covered topic, which means you’ll be at the mercy of people purporting to know — usually the well-heeled who can afford fancy P.R. operations.

That’s exactly the way beer is reported in many instances. A lot of stories originate with press releases from the big breweries, the ones with large marketing budgets. A reporter is then assigned to write the story who appears to know little, if anything at all, about the subject and often seems to do no discernible research. I have always suspected that the way beer is reported extends to other subjects, too, but since I don’t know much about those other disciplines I have no way of knowing. Because if they’ll assign reporters with no knowledge of one subject, why wouldn’t they do the same thing for other topics. So it makes a lot of sense that the problem is the process itself. I mean, it would be simple-minded and ridiculous to suggest there was a conspiracy against beer so this theory goes a long way in explaining why beer is so poorly covered by the media.

Happy amateurism may not explain everything but it seems a very viable start. Unfortunately, if Tirman’s assertion that this is a trend that’s essentially growing as older reporters retire and are replaced by J-school graduates then this problem is only going to get worse unless we can collectively figure out a way to get beer the respect in the media we think it deserves.

Dowd on Beer

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I must confess until a week or so ago I’d never heard of William M. Dowd and his Dowd on Drinks column. He’s got ten blogs — seven of which have something to do with alcohol — under a business umbrella he calls Circle 7 Associates. Based on his resume it appears most of his writing is about wine and spirits, which may explain why I’m not familiar with him. His writing is apparently very widely distributed by both the New York Times News Service and the Hearst News Service. His website lists dozens of newspapers and websites that carry his work. But one of his blogs is “Dowd’s Brews Notebook” and purports to cover beer. And here’s where I think his knowledge is on thinner ice.

The last time I mentioned Dowd was when he wrote that “startled gasps” would occur to being told James Bond might actually drink beer. He was one of the legion of media duped by Heineken (and the film company) that Bond drank beer in Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale, and only in that novel. Both claims were not true but no one in the press questioned the propaganda.

In his latest missive, on the very same day it was published, Dowd took the ABC story about Miller’s new chocolate beer and re-worked it, using some of the same phrases and not attributing the original story. I don’t wish to suggest it rises to the level of plagiarism, because it doesn’t. Rather Dowd appears to have taken the ABC story and re-wrote a smaller part of it using some of the same quotes and using some of the same specific language in his piece, all without ever mentioning the original story. Maybe that’s okay legally, since it’s certainly different enough but is seems to me a little unseemly at best.

For example, here’s his first sentence. “Fans of unusually flavored beers are largely limited to small craft products.” The ABC story was the first time I’d ever heard craft beer described or defined as “unusually flavored” and it was this phrase that first put me on the trail of Dowd’s story origin. The original press release Miller released the previous day has none of the language in the ABC piece. Dowd then goes on to describe Miller’s chocolate beer and mentions Anheuser-Busch’s Michelob Honey Lager and Michelob Amber Bock as competing beers. These are the same beers also mentioned in the ABC story, though it would have made more sense to compare A-B’s new chocolate and vanilla-flavored beers, which I sampled at the A-B event in Denver at the end of last month. But Dowd appears to have only one source for this story, and it didn’t talk about those beers.

To be fair, there are original bits in his piece when he mentions Miller’s medal for this beer last year and at the end, when Dowd does acknowledge that Miller didn’t invent chocolate beer, listing Samuel Adam Chocolate Bock and Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout as earlier chocolate beers.

But I think the larger problem here is another drinks writer who appears quite fluent with wine and spirits trying to write about something he is not quite as expert on as his main oeuvre. A quick glance at his recent beer musings reveal he’s writing about many of the top stories and has some generally decent content, but it all seems somewhat rehashed. Now I realize I’m always complaining that wine writers don’t write about beer so perhaps I shouldn’t be complaining here. And I am glad he is writing about beer since, unlike most beer writers, he appears to have access to the mainstream press. But in the last two pieces I noticed by Dowd, he’s regurgitated two beer stories and added little to the stories. And he appears to be selling himself as an expert on beer when he describes himself as a “veteran newspaper journalist and editor as well as a competition judge and writer in the fields of food, restaurants and alcoholic beverages.” And while he may be doing a better job than many wine and food writers, he’s still got a long way to go before we “fans of unusually flavored beers” can consider him an expert on beer.