Summit Brewing, in St. Paul, Minnesota, commissioned a local artist, Miss Amy Jo, to create a poster celebrating the passage of the Cullen-Harrison on its effective date of April 7, 1933. Eight months before the repeal of Prohibition, the bill allowed the production of 3.2 beer in about twenty states, including Minnesota. I love the retro look of it. It will probably drive historian Bob Skilnik batty, but it’s a cool poster and it’s available for purchase at Summit’s online store.
At the end of January, the Houston Press’ Brew Blog did a map showing a beer for every state that seemed to miss the mark for more than a few of their choices. I ranted about it in my post, The United States of Beer? Apparently I wasn’t the only one, because an alert reader (thanks, David) tipped me that they’ve redone the map, this time calling it The United States of Good Beer, though over at Good, the internet portal that originally created the map and posted it to the Houston Press.
Seeing as the map was done by the paper’s food section, I wasn’t too surprised how embarrassing the first attempt was, but in the new effort they at least reached out to their readers for suggestions. And it shows in the Good Beer Map, which is light years ahead of the first one.
Sadly, Idaho still got left out, despite their being at least 8 breweries and 15 brewpubs in the the state. Surely, someone could picked one of those instead of leaving an empty question mark?
Good’s Food editor Nicola Twilley remarks that after seeing Beer Wars, “It’s clearly time for a beer revolution.” And while I’m sincerely thrilled she’s getting up to speed, I’m constantly amazed that so many “foodies” don’t seem to get that beer is food and have paid it almost no attention whatsoever even as it has undergone such a revolutionary change in the U.S. over the past thirty years. How could so many “food professionals” committed to what they put in their body completely miss that? Most have noticed wine is different now than it was 30 or 40 years ago, but beer … not so much. That’s such a sticking point for me that while I’m glad things are changing, I can’t help but continue to be curmudgeonly about this dichotomy of how the two beverages are treated.
Still, I’m encouraged that they were swayed by people’s comments, admitted mistakes, and forged ahead to create a better map of America’s beer scene.
You can see the new map full size here, and as before it’s easier to read the key on the bigger map.
Don Younger, owner of the Horse Brass in Portland, passed away at the end of January. On Sunday, friends are gathering at his pub for a final send-off worthy of the man himself. My good friend Lisa Morrison — a.k.a. The Beer Goddess — has organized a worldwide toast to Don’s memory for 3:00 p.m. (regardless of time zone, your 3 o’clock) this Sunday, February 13. The details are below:
Whatever you are doing, and wherever you are at 3 p.m. your time on Sunday, Feb. 13, make sure to hoist a glass to Don Younger, the venerable publican of the world-famous Horse Brass Pub, who died Jan. 31.
“In his hometown of Portland, a wake will be in full swing by 3 p.m. at the Horse Brass Pub. Attendees at the time will be raising their glasses to Don. But hundreds, if not thousands, of people around the world who knew Don and loved Don aren’t able to be there in person,” says organizer Lisa Morrison. “So we are having a worldwide toast — a virtual wake, if you will — to help bring us all together, at least in spirit.”
The toast will travel around the world, because it will happen at 3 p.m. in all time zones.
“So, at 3 p.m. your time on Sunday, organize a gathering of your own or just stop what you’re doing. Pour a glass of something you think Don would appreciate. And raise a toast to one of craft beer’s biggest champions and most colorful characters,” Morrison says.
Younger, a true beer pioneer, took the Horse Brass from a one-tap tavern to a beer mecca, consistently named among best beer bars in the world. It is a favorite hangout for brewers, beer geeks, neighbors and visitors alike.
So this Sunday, stop what your doing at three o’clock, and drink a toast to Don Younger.
A self-portrait of Don and me at the Falling Rock during GABF a number of years ago. Here’s to you Don.
This is a weird one. The Houston Press’ Brew Blog did a map showing soft drinks from each state in a post last week called the United States of Soft Drinks. Due to popular demand, they did a new one this week, tackling beer in another post entitled the United States of Beer. After a decidedly unfunny “alcoholics” joke, they apparently “hunkered down all weekend, doing the kind of brutal and difficult work that it takes to determine a fitting beer for every last one of our 50 states.” They’re not all bad choices. I might have chosen Anchor (for its history) or Sierra Nevada (for its size) in California, but Stone Brewing isn’t a bad pick. I imagine many could quibble with the choices of at least some of the other states, too.
But a few others are just embarrassing. Four Loko for Nevada? First of all, it’s not much of a beer, though technically a malt-based beverage and taxed as a beer, certainly it’s not marketed as a beer, and it was recently banned anyway. At any rate, Four Loko was made by Phusion Projects of Chicago, Illinois d.b.a. Drink Four Brewing Company. Then there’s the Epic Pale Ale they show for Utah. That Epic is a beer from … New Zealand. There is an Epic Brewing from Salt Lake City, but their Pale Ale is called Capt’n Crompton’s Pale Ale.
While Budweiser is certainly appropriate for Missouri, there’s an Anheuser-Busch family beer for Kentucky, South Dakota and West Virginia. And while ABI does operate a dozen breweries around the country, none are in those three states. Similarly Miller makes sense in Wisconsin, but there are also MillerCoors beers for Alabama, Florida and North Dakota. And again, MillerCoors does have ten breweries in as many states, but none are located in the three states listed on the map. Pabst Blue Ribbon is listed for Virginia. Pabst, of course, owns no breweries and, as far as I know, doesn’t brew their beer in Virginia. Their headquarters are in Illinois, although the Pabst website lists their home at the bottom of the page as Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the contact page takes you to San Antonio, Texas.
The post details some of what they refer to as the “logic” employed for some of their choices, but I’m not entirely certain logic was in fact used. What do you think of their choices?
You can see the map full size here, and it’s easier to read the key on the bigger map.
This week’s work of art is an original oil painting done sometime between the 1920s and 40s. Known only as “Beer Company Oil Painting.” The painting is 28″ x 23″ and can be yours, from Inkwell, for only $2,250.
It’s a pretty cool painting, but it’s a shame we don’t know more about it, especially what brewery may have commissioned it. I picked it today because the old man is wearing distinctive red and green Christmas colors and has a vaguely Santa look to him, what with the white hair and the pipe. But that hat has to go, it makes Santa look like a cab driver.
When the Brewers Association redefined “craft beer” a few years ago, it was viewed with controversy and downright scorn by more than a few people. It’s certainly understandable that the BA needs to define what it means to be a craft brewer, because after all that’s their charter. They’re a trade organization for the craft brew industry. They have to be able to define what it means to be a member and to determine who can and cannot be a member. The new definition took a long time to be agreed upon, and even today not everyone does, even within the organization among its members. Some former members were kicked out at the stroke of a pen, so to speak, when they no longer fit the new definition. I personally have mixed feelings about how it’s currently defined and believe it needs further tweaking. But I’m not actually prepared to launch into that discussion right now. Someone else has, however.
Danner Kline is one of the founders of Free the Hops, the grassroots organization that successfully got the Alabama state legislature to raise the maximum a.b.v. allowed from 6% to 13.9% and continues to work toward bringing “the highest quality beers in the world to Alabama.” Kline has his own take on the craft beer definition, What Is Craft Beer?, that appeared in the Birmingham Weekly last Thursday. It’s worth a read, and it’s worth thinking about and discussing, as it will have to change again, especially if the effort right now to change the numbers for breweries in the Unites States Congress is successful.
Today’s art is a cartoon by Barbara Shermund, who contributed regularly to the New York, Esquire and other high profile magazines. In fact, she did 597 cartoons that appeared inside the New Yorker and 8 covers, too. This unnamed cartoon was created in 1945, May 24 to be exact, and this is a color film copy transparency that’s housed at the Library of Congress, in the Prints and Photographs Division. It was published in the January 1946 issue of Esquire. A bunch of socialite types sit around listening to what appears to be a classical pianist. Who knows what the audience is drinking, if anything, but the pianist has a bottle of beer sitting on the edge of the piano, along with a glass full of beer.
Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum has the following short biography of Shermund.
Painter, illustrator, etcher, cartoonist. Born in San Francisco, CA on June 26, 1899. Shermund studied at the CSFA. As a contributor to the New Yorker and Esquire, she spent most of her career in NYC. She died in September 1978 in Monmouth County, NJ.
But perhaps the best account of Shermund is by Michael Maslin, another New Yorker cartoonist, at his blog Ink Spill, entitled Revisiting Barbara Shermund, that begins with this:
Born in San Francisco in 1899 to artistic parents (her father was an architect), Ms. Shermund studied at The California School of Fine Arts before heading east, at the age of twenty-six, to New York. She told Colliers that her initial visit east became permanent “after she had eaten up her return fare.” In June of that very year, she made her debut at the four month old New Yorker with a cover of a young woman sporting a hip hairdo, eyes closed, resting her arm over a railing, against a black sky peppered with stars. In a year’s time her cartoons, many if not most of which were written by her, were appearing in nearly every issue of the magazine.
You can see her eight New Yorker covers and three of her other cartoons as the magazine’s Cartoon Bank. And she has another in the Cartoon America exhibit at the Library of Congress.
And below is another drinking-related cartoon she did for the New Yorker in 1938.
You’ve probably heard that in the age of e-mail, FedEx and UPS the U.S. Postal Service has been losing money. A lot, and for a long time now. According to the Washington Post, on Thursday, Senator Tom Carper (Democrat-DE) introduced legislation to save the post office, the Postal Operations Sustainment and Transformation (POST) Act of 2010. The bill includes a laundry list of changes designed to help stop the fiscal bleeding and turn things around. It would eliminate Saturday deliveries, for example, and as Postmaster General John E. Potter explains it, “it alleviates our retiree health benefit burden while bringing resolution to the pension overpayment dilemma we’ve faced.” I don’t know what that means, but it’s not important for my purposes.
The most important part of the POST Act is that it would also “revise current prohibitions against USPS shipping wine and beer.” Opening up the post office to shipping beer seems like a great idea to me, especially given the problems with UPS and FedEx in that regard. The Postmaster General is in favor of the bill, as many of the items contained in it are apparently ideas that have been suggested before. Curiously, William Burrus, president of the American Postal Workers Union, is against allowing beer and wine shipments, but I can’t really understand why. He just wonders aloud if “allowing the Postal Service to ship beer and wine and closing small post offices while the organization is losing billions really the answer?” To which I can only answer yes, why not? What can it hurt, and it would most certainly give the post office a competitive advantage. Why would he be against trying anything reasonable? The Postmaster General stated the bill seeks “to more closely align our costs and the needs of our customers.” Well speaking as one of their customers, I need to get beer so it would make my life simpler if beer could be legally and reliably shipped through the USPS. I’m certainly willing to give up Saturday deliveries in exchange for the potential to have my mailman bring beer the other five days of the work week.
The results are in, the winners for the 2010 Great American Beer Festival have been announced. I’ll post the full list here as soon as I get a chance, along with breakdowns of the medals. For now, you can see the full list here. One quick cool stat for California; 4 out of the 6 big awards for brewery of the year in different size categories were won by California breweries.
Marketwatch recently had a fun little video from the Great British Beer Festival about “U.S. independent beer brewers outpac[ing] their U.K. cousins and gain[ing] market share.” Interviewed in the video are UK beer writer Pete brown and also Bob Pease, COO of the Brewers Association.