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Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer Attacks Continue

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Less than two weeks after the newest Gallup poll showed that beer is indeed the most popular alcoholic beverage reversing last year’s poll which suggested wine was more popular, another attack on beer took place. This despite the fact that beer outsells wine 4-to-1, and has for decades if not longer. Today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a story in the business section entitled Beer sales falling flat as wine, other beverages grow in popularity. Business writer Len Boselovic begins by offering that if the term “Sophisticated Beer Drinker” “leaves an oxymoronic aftertaste on your palate, you have an idea of what beer makers are up against.” That’s his knee-slapping way of acknowledging that his paper along with almost every mainstream media source in the country have been doing an embarrassingly bad job of educating their readers about beer. For some reason his little joke just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s like he’s saying “ha ha, we suck at covering beer and now breweries are having trouble getting people to take beer seriously. Isn’t that funny?” Not when it’s partly your fault, you sanctimonious halfwit. Yeah, I know I lack perspective on this, but I’m just sick to death of the way the media treats beer so badly time and time again and then wonders why it has a poor image.

For support for the piece’s title, Boselovic offers the following:

U.S. beer shipments last year were flatter than a stale ale, falling 0.1 percent according to the Beer Institute. The industry group says shipments to the U.S. market — which accounted for about 86 percent of overall business — declined 2.2 percent to 178.8 million barrels. The drop was offset by a 7.2 percent increase in imports and an 8 percent increase in exports.

Meanwhile, the Wine Institute reports wine consumption grew 5.2 percent in 2005 while the Distilled Spirits Council says sales rose 2.9 percent based on the volume of alcohol sold.

But Boselovic barely mentions that craft beer has shown positive growth near 10% for the past two years and appears to be on track to threepeat this year.

The article also offers the following chart:

 

In it the author makes the blanket statement that “brewers have been losing customers in recent years,” by which he means the big brewers. Craft brewers have not only NOT been losing customers but have been slowly building their business over the last decade. But to mainstream media, especially the bigger outlets covering national or regional areas, the craft brewers are hardly ever on their radar at all. Fourteen hundred individual brewers in countless markets making 65+ different styles of beer and they hardly even rate a mention and are not even taken into account when discussing the beer business as a whole. But notice how every little boutique winery merits a full page profile as the next “it” business and it’s no wonder I’m pulling my hair out.

Apparently so-called “marketing experts” believe the cause of big beer’s decline is “changing consumer tastes” and they say “[d]rinkers are more sophisticated, willing to try something new, and looking for different beverages that are appropriate for different occasions.” Yet the craft beer segment of the industry is literally filled with complex, sophisticated beers in dozens of distinct styles perfect for the ideal circumstance, weather, food, event, holiday, etc. But the mainstream media repeatedly ignores this fact and turns instead to wine and spirits whenever the talk turns to sophistication. So it’s no wonder people can’t connect the two.

Auburn University professor Michael R. Solomon, who specializes in “consumer behavior” trots out this old saw. “When you drink a lot of wine, you’re refined. When you drink a lot of beer, you’re just a beer drinker.” And while he correctly points out that this problem is a perceptual one, he fails to notice that it was the media itself that helped to create this perception and continues to perpetuate it today.

While it’s certainly true that advertising by the major beer companies has done much of the damage to the perception of beer over many decades, the media has certainly been in collusion through the way they’ve ignored craft beer while embracing wine. So it’s really no surprise when this article does in fact suggest that it’s beer advertising that’s at fault and it’s only now that the big breweries are realizing what craft brewers have know for twenty-five years, that consumers “don’t want to be seen as a guzzler, a dumb guy, six-pack drinker. They want to be seen as a connoisseur.”

Jim Forrest, VP of Synovate, a market research firm, states that wine and distilled spirits producers have done a good job of fashioning strategies around occasions to consume their products.” He even mentions that “craft and import beer producers have done the same” yet neither he nor the article’s author mention that the media has all but ignored these “strategies around occasions to consume” with regard to beer while scarcely a holiday goes by without being inundated with stories on the right wine pairing or spirit needed to properly celebrate.

They all show remarkable restraint at ignoring their own role in the poor perception beer has after decades of neglect by everyone but a small, loyal cadre of connoisseurs.

Toward the end of the article, things turn decidedly rife with the unintentionally funny. To wit:

The industry hopes to capitalize on more discriminating palates through its Here’s To Beer campaign, an initiative spearheaded largely by Anheuser-Busch. Advertising features Spike Lee and other famous people describing who they’d like to share a beer with.

The Here’s to Beer campaign was, of course, solely created by Anheuser-Busch, not “spearheaded largely by” them as the article incorrectly claims. Originally, the trade organization The Beer Institute was involved but removed their support right after the initial ad ran on Super Bowl Sunday. The other brewers A-B approached about participating in the Here’s to Beer campaign all famously declined.

Judy Ramberg of Iconoculture has the following to say:

Anheuser-Busch realizes it has to grow by increasing its portfolio of specialty products, not by getting more people to drink its flagship brands. The danger is that the specialty brands will lose some of their appeal if drinkers realize who’s making them. “If beer drinkers find out they’re involved in some of these craft beers, they’ll lose all of their cachet,” says Ms. Ramberg, a Heineken drinker.

Well Judy, they’re taking your advice with many of their products, most notably their new organic beer, Wild Hop Lager, which fails to disclose it’s an A-B product on the label. But that’s also a problem for A-B since back in 1997 they stated publicly that “beer drinkers have the right to know who really brews their beer. We, along with many other traditional brewers and beer enthusiasts, object to those who mislead consumers by marketing their beers as ‘craft brewed,’ when in fact their beers are made in large breweries.” Oh, and Judy, Heineken is a terrible choice for a favorite beer. I don’t know why you volunteered that information or why the author included it, perhaps it was to show you were no shill for the domestic beer companies. People who like it generally — at least in my opinion — prefer the illusion of sophistication without going through the long, drawn-out process of actually being sophisticated enough to know how bad it is. So that’s at least in part why I have a hard time accepting your version of reality. But it’s interesting to note that their marketing campaign has worked on even a “marketing expert.”

On the other hand:

Mr. Forrest disagrees, arguing many drinkers don’t connect the dots. He says many people in the industry don’t realize Blue Moon Belgian White is made by Molson Coors, the world’s fifth-largest brewer. Protests from diehard Rolling Rock aficionados notwithstanding, the iconic brew should give Anheuser-Busch a buzz. “From a consumer standpoint, as long as they stay true to what that brand represents … they’ll still have the following,” Mr. Forrest says.

Jim, baby, I don’t know who you’re talking to but I don’t know anybody in the industry (including most beer connoisseurs) who isn’t aware that Blue Moon is a Coors product. It’s only been around for over ten years, so you must think the people in the beer industry are all pretty stupid. I’m surprised you’d condescend to speak to us lower forms of life. Oh, wait, you didn’t. You’re just sharing the results of having studied us mere mortals.

And please Jim, please, explain to me how from any point of view moving Rolling Rock’s production to New Jersey while continuing to say on the label “from the glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe” yet listing the point of origin as St. Louis is staying “true to what that brand represents?” Perhaps that’s how things look in the ivory tower you’ve constructed for yourself, but here on Earth … not so much, Jimbo.

It’s pretty hard not to read these so-called “business experts” without feeling disgusted. I know market research is like the way sausage is made, the less you know the better. My skin crawls every time one of these yahoos claims some insight into the beer industry after floating a few polls or studying some data points they’ve collected. Time and time again the business press reports on beer as if they actually know what they’re talking about but, rarely, if ever, interviews actual people in the industry preferring instead to use analysts as their sources. And if this is how they report on an industry I have some familiarity with, why should I trust anything they have to say on ones I know nothing about? It’s enough to drive me to drink, if I wasn’t already sitting here with a pint of something yummy. Oh, and it’s not Blue Moon. Did you know Coors makes that?

Springfield Suds & Sustenance

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There was an interesting article on food and beer in today’s Springfield Journal-Register. It centers around mostly mainstrean fare, but includes a few recipes and local anecdotes about using beer in cooking. Anything that appropriately furthers the idea that beer and food work together perfectly is a good thing in my mind.

Beerfest is Coming: Run, Hide & Disavow

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Listed at the bottom of the poster for the upcoming film, Beerfest, is the tagline From the Comic Geniuses Who Brought You the Phenomenon “Super Troopers.” Super Troopers was a phenomenon? That’s a scary thought. If they treat beer the same way Super Troopers did the police, it’s hard to be enthusiastic for this movie’s release on August 25.

Based on the poster alone, the film seems to be aimed at the same people who enjoy beer commercials about frogs, twins, frat boys, catfights and girls in bikinis. I imagine I’m going to feel about this film the way Canadians must have felt about Bob and Doug McKenzie‘s Strange Brew.

A promotional tour for the Warner Brothers’ movie was in Portland on Sunday, the last day of the Oregon Brewers Festival. Throughout the festival, many people were talking about the film, but nobody had anything good to say about it, and I can’t say I blame them. All of the promotional material, the trailer and the bad puns seem to suggest an embarrasing — at least to those of us who think beer is worthy of respect — cinematic disaster.

This is the plot:

When American brothers Todd and Jan Wolfhouse travel to Germany to spread their grandfather’s ashes at Oktoberfest, they stumble upon a super-secret, centuries old, underground beer games competition – “Beerfest,” the secret Olympics of beer drinking. The brothers receive a less than warm welcome from their German cousins, the Von Wolfhausens, who humiliate Todd and Jan, slander their relatives, and finally cast them out of the event. Vowing to return in a year to defend their country and their family’s honor, The Wolfhouse boys assemble a ragtag dream team of beer drinkers and gamers: Barry Badrinath, the consummate skills player with a dark past; Phil Krundle (AKA Landfill), a one-man chugging machine; and Steve “Fink” Finklestein, the lab tech with a PhD in All Things Beer. This Magnificent Five train relentlessly, using their hearts, minds and livers to drink faster, smarter and harder than they ever have before. But first they must battle their own demons… as well as a bunch of big, blond, German jerks who want to destroy the team before they can even make it back to Munich. Revenge, like beer, is best served cold.

I generally disdain criticism of movies by people who haven’t seen a movie, but here I am doing it myself. That’s because everything I’ve seen so far about this comedy makes it appear that it can only further damage the image of beer in America. There’s some support for that in the write-up at the website Worst Previews. At the end of the trailer itself there is a mock disclaimer saying “no Germans were harmed” and that you should “treat all women with respect.” If you have to tell people to treat women respectfully, that probably signals that the film will do just the opposite, and the trailer does seem to bear that out. Unlike Oregon’s Brewers Summer Games where industry professionals compete in events that have some relation to their jobs, the Beerfest ones appear to be nothing more than juvenile drinking games. These are the sort of games played on college campuses and high school parties with the only goal being to get drunk, and often as fast as possible. I’m sure plenty of people will find that hilarious, because many people seem to enjoy comedies that drag them down to the below slapstick level that appeals to five-year olds and the blissfully uneducated teens and early twenty-somethings. I realize I’m sounding like that old curmudgeon whining about “these kids today,” but I do enjoy the ocassional low-brow teen comedy, especially ones that are smart and witty.

I think what bothers me about everything I know about this film so far is that it appears to be a two-hour beer commercial with all the worst elements that have skewed people’s perceptions of what beer is over the last several decades. Glorifying over consumption, pandering to male sexual urges, misinformation such as the “ice cold” idea or that low-calorie beer has any additional health benefits. The official website even has flying frogs holding a banner.

I realize people can be entertained by all manner of things, and certainly have the right to laugh at whatever they want. I’m sure Warner Brothers knows its audience. They’ve been doing this successfully for a long time now. But I just can’t abide the idea that beer will once again be dragged through the mud in the name of entertainment. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to lift up beer and get it the respect I believe it so richly deserves. A film like this has the potential to undo so much of what so many of us have been trying to do for good beer that I just want to sit down and cry.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I take these things too seriously. Maybe I’m a lone nut shouting at the wind. Maybe this is what America wants, is yearning for. After all, my finger is so rarely on the pulse of America’s tastes. But to me this just has disaster for the beer industry written all over it.

 

 

If you want to see the trailer for yourself, here it is in a variety of formats and sizes:

Quicktime:

  • Super Hi-Res
  • Hi-Res
  • Med-Res
  • Lo-Res

Windows Media Player:

  • Super Hi-Res
  • Hi-Res
  • Med-Res
  • Lo-Res

Connecticut Gives 21st Amendment Thumbs Up

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The Day, an independent newspaper headquarted in, of all places, New London, Connecticut, has a review in today’s paper of 21st Amendment’s Watermelon Wheat beer in a can. Author Tim Cotter has a nice little story about fruit and spices used in beer and apparently Pete Slosberg gave him a can of Shaun’s Watermelon Wheat during a recent visit to Connecticut. The paper also ran a one of my photos of Shaun and Nico that I took during our Ball Plant tour, which was nice.

Tim’s Tasting Notes:

After popping open the can I passed it around the house to see if anyone could detect a whiff of watermelon. Everyone recognized something fruity but no one was able to nail it as watermelon. I took one sip from the can and then poured it into a glass. The wheat left the beer cloudy in the glass. The taste grew on me, and about halfway through the watermelon flavor was unmistakable. I like my watermelon straight from the fridge — as cold as possible — and I wish I had chilled this can more. All in all, a refreshing summer brew.

Beer of the Times: Wheat

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Eric Asimov has a good article in today’s New York Times about wheat beers, well-research with lots of history. The Times also did a tasting of wheat beers, and here I think they made a few key gaffes. They stated from the outset that they were “looking for American versions of Bavarian-style brews” but tasting director Bernard Kirsch added “a few German sleepers.” That Bernie, what a cut-up. And they found that “as expected, the American wheat beers were all over the map, with brewers taking great liberties with the style.”

But here’s the thing. Not all of the beers they tasted were in fact Bavarian-style hefeweizens. Now is that the brewer’s fault or Bernie’s fault for the beers he chose? Either on purpose to confuse the panel or through ignorance of the style, he picked several non-German-style hefeweizens, inlcuding Widmer Hefeweizen. Widmer is in fact an American-style hefeweizen that is a completely separate style for GABF judging. Widmer defined that style, a fact panelist Garrett Oliver was well aware of. But when the panel dismissed Widmer, they said it “bore little relation to the style.” Of course it did, it was a different style.

So when Garrett’s own Brooklyner Weisse was chosen as the winner of their tasting, he “was unembarrassed by the panel’s unanimous approval.” Frankly, I think he should have been, at least a little bit. Generally speaking I think it’s a bad idea to sit in judgment on a panel in which one of your own beers is present. If you’re judging at the Great American Beer Festival you can’t even judge a category in which you’ve entered a beer, even if the flight you’d be judging doesn’t include your own beer. I’m sure he can be objective and personally I feel quite certain he was. Unfortunately, it’s all about the perception of impropriety. A few years ago, I judged at a beer festival sponsored by a brewery. When one of that brewery’s beers was chosen as the winner of a particular category, they disqualified themselves to remove that very perception.

Now I like Garrett Oliver and think he’s done as much to promote good beer as any living human could, especially in regard to advocating beer and food. In that area he’s been the leading expert. If he’s giving a seminar, talk or dinner I always try to attend. They’re invariably very worthwhile events, with much good beer education to boot. So this seems like a strange faux pas for him. He’s been involved with many of the Times’ tastings in the past and I suspect when they asked him, he felt he couldn’t say no. I honestly felt connflicted about posting anything negative about Garrett, because I do hold him in such high regard. Ultimately, I had to mention it because to not do so would have been to compromise my position on this issue even though I knew that Garrett is one of those rare people who could walk above such controversy and be objective under the circumstances. So I think he either should have removed his own beer from the tasting (which for business reasons I imagine might have been difficult) or excused himself for this tasting, even though very few people, and no one who knows Garrett, would have a problem with it.

Three of the beers they gave poor marks to were, according to the panel, “well past their prime” which I take to mean out of code, past their pull date, in other words no longer in a condition to drink. This is undoubtedly the fault of a distributor or retailer as beer should be pulled from the shelf once it’s past its code date. And Bernie should never have accepted samples of this type. Perhaps they weren’t clearly marked and I don’t know the method Bernie used in collecting his samples. But unless he got them from the brewery itself, in my opinion, the Times should not have penalized the brewers who made these beers with a bad review because they got an old sample.

They did at least like my favorite of the style, Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier. It’s especially good on draft though the bottled beer is excellent, as well.

AP Discovers Wild Hop Lager

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Yesterday’s media ran a story by AP entitled “Organic beer sales grow, Anheuser-Busch enters market.” The article itself is fine, mostly comprehensive and well-written. But what struck me was the phrase A-B “enters market” (my emphasis) because I started writing about Wild Hop Lager on March 23. To my mind, almost four months later is not exactly a scoop by the mainstream press.

One statement in the article was quite interesting regarding sales of organic beer:

While organic beer sales are still minuscule in the overall beer industry, they are rising fast. North American sales of organic beers grew from $9 million in 2003 to $19 million in 2005, according to the Organic Trade Association.

That’s slightly better than doubling sales growth in two years’ time, which is pretty impressive.

S.F. Chronicle Recommends Wits for Summer

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Okay, they’re not exactly going out on a limb recommending whites as a refreshing summer beverage but it’s still nice to see the San Francisco Chronicle mention them. The usual suggestions generally range from white wine to zinfandel so even talking about beer is a good step. Their choices, while mainstream wits, were still good choices and included Hoegaarden, Unibroue Blanche de Chambly — though their new Chambly Noire is fantastic — and Ommegang Witte.

One strange disconnect is that even though these beers are all wonderful — though Hoegaarden used to be better — they are all Belgian or Belgian-style beers and the focus of the Chronicle’s piece was about the 4th of July holiday. Given that it’s also American Beer Month it would have been more appropriate to choose more American beers (even though the BA abandoned it). I don’t mean to sound jingoistic here, but that only makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s not like there aren’t plenty of American beers that could have been celebrated, too. Chronicle wine writer Linda Murphy is one of the mainstrean writers who is at least trying to highlight beer more — she is one of the good guys — so I want to encourage her rather than complain too much. And perhaps most importantly, she actually likes craft beer, itself a rarity among wine writers.

Murphy finishes with a little mini-story about Pierre Celis and his role in the resurrection of the style. Unfortunately the end of the story was Pierre’s return to Belgium which it appears now is happily not the final chapter. Celis is returning to Texas to start another brewery here in the states, which is great news for those of us who find the man charming and his beers a delight.
 

Me at last year’s GABF with brewing legend Pierre Celis, who single-handedly revived the style Hefeweizen in the 1960s.

Not Sneering

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belgium
There was a decent article about beer and food pairing in today’s St. Petersburg (Florida) Times called “Don’t Sneer at Beer.” It starts out a little bizarre and I found the headline off-putting, but perhaps the author’s assuming people don’t know you can eat … and drink beer, too. His first sentence. “This may come as a shock, but you can drink beer and eat food at the same time.” Happily, he talks about Belgian beers and how well they work with cheese and many other foods. There’s some decent information for the uninitiated and does a better job than others I’ve read.