I got an e-mail from Patrick from YouGotBeer.com about his new website, which allows you to send someone a beer over the internet. It seems like a fairly intriguing, if somewhat wacky idea, to buy someone a pint in cyberspace. It’s a simple enough idea. Using PayPal you send whoever you want a gift card that can be redeemed for a pint at specific locations. It still appears to be in its early stages, because there’s a limited number of places, about fourteen chain restaurants/bars/brewpubs. Although the wesbite claims — and I can’t dispute it — those few chains add up to thousands of locations in all 50 states. But if they get more unique places to sign up, it could really turn into something. Who wouldn’t like to see “You’ve Got Beer!” in their inbox, especially when you really could redeem it for a pint of beer.
How Craft Beer Can Save the World
The world’s cup runneth over with living beer traditions. But this vast repository of cultural brewing capital is under attack by global corporations. The top five brewing companies, all of which are American- or European-owned, control 41% of the world market. Perversely, economists and politicians calculate the conquest by industrial breweries as economic growth while the value of small-scale traditional brewing goes uncounted. Much will be lost if this global “beerodiversity” is lost to the forces of corporate-led homogenization.
So begins a very interesting essay at Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), a think tank, which, according to it’s website, “brings together scholars, advocates, and activists who strive to make the United States a more responsible global partner.” The essay, The Perils of Globeerization, is by Chris O’Brien, who first contacted me a few months ago to tell about his beer activism at his cleverly titled Fermenting Revolution website. The essay is heavy on foreign policy, big business, history and local traditions of alcohol. It may seem somewhat radical to the more conservative, but it certainly agrees with my own view of how the world works. His take on the history and economics of brewing, and especially how the dominant breweries are effecting brewing traditions across the globe is fascinating. And perhaps most importantly, there are obvious parallels to the craft beer industry in America, as well.
O’Brien also has just published a new book, Fermenting Revolution, too, which is available from the publisher, New Society Publishers, or from Amazon. The subject matter seems pretty interesting, I’m looking forward to reading and reviewing it.
Dowd on Beer
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.
Stephen Beaumont vs. New York Magazine
Earlier today I got an e-mail from my friend and colleague, Stephen Beaumont:
I like it when consumer magazines publish stories about beer, I really do, even when I don’t write them. But it pisses me off when they accord such a noble and respected beverage about one-twentieth of the respect and consideration they would wine or cognac or gourmet chocolate bars.
Case in point is the new issue of New York Magazine and its panel review of 21 beers. On the surface, it looks like an okay story, but the more you get into it, the more its flaws are exposed. Which is why I’ve written a rebuttal to the piece.
At the most basic, I’m sending you this simply to bring these stories to your attention and get your reaction. At the most, I’d love to spread the message around a bit so that hopefully these kind of review pieces might eventually become the exception rather than the rule.
Amen. This is the same kind of hatchet job I’ve been complaining about a lot lately. Read the original story in New York Magazine first and then Stephen’s rebuttal. Go ahead, I’ll wait. When you come back, I’ve got a few things to add to Beaumont’s wonderful critique.
Finished? Good, here’s a few random observations I can add. First off, the article is titled Ales in Comparison. But of the 21 beers reviewed — the ones “in Comparison” — nine are lagers and four are hybrid wheat styles, meaning more than half are not ales. That would be like having a tasting of eight red wines, nine white wines and four champagnes and calling the whole thing “Red Wines in Comparison.” That would be ridiculous, of course, but it’s exactly what New York Magazine did here in their zeal to be clever.
In his introduction, author Ben Mathis-Lilley claims Budweiser and Stella Artois taste the same. While I’m not a great fan of Stella Artois, on any given day it does taste decidedly different from Budweiser. And though both are adjunct beers, I’ll drink Stella Artois whereas I’d pass on a Bud, the point being they’re different enough that they can’t reasonably be called “taste-alikes” as Mathis-Lilley does.
The tasters are described as a “panel of untrained but enthusiastic drinking aficionados.” Well how scientific. Forget for a moment that calling an “enthusiastic” drinker an “aficionado” is probably oxymoronic, but what value is there in the opinion of people not trained to judge and/or evaluate the quality of a beer? Why is is you never see wine evaluated by enthusiastic amateurs, but it’s fairly common for newspaper articles to assemble an unnamed group of people to taste beer with no training and then report their findings as if they were all Robert Parker? Why do they assume one needs no training to evaluate beer? It’s preposterous, of course, and one more reminder of how ignorant the wine and food media is about beer. Wine takes years of training to learn, its nuanced flavors reveal themselves only to the sophisticated, discerning palate. But beer? That swill can be tasted by anybody — no training necessary — just throw a bunch of random bottles in a styrofoam cooler and voilà, you’ve got a story.
Even if I knew nothing about beer, why should I care if another person, equally ignorant, didn’t like a particular beer. In the New York Magazine article, negative descriptors such as “sissy,” “too girlie” or “eh” are used to describe some of the beers. What does that tell me about how they taste? Absolutely nothing, of course, which makes this entire exercise all but meaningless. In the first group of random beers, some of the panelists even correctly described one of the beers which was revealed in an aside as “accurately, according to our moderator.” So if they comment that on one of the beers some of the tasters actually got it right, showing by mentioning it they were surprised, what does that say about how wrong they got all the others? And if they got it wrong most of the time, as I suspect they must have, why report on it at all? What value does having the opinions of people with no training and no proficiency for what they’re tasting being used to educate others about what they taste like? Isn’t that like asking a blind person to describe a color?
And as Beaumont points out, the tasting flights have almost no logic to them and the beers tasted against one another bear no relation to each other, which would make it difficult for the seasoned taster, and all but impossible for the neophyte. It’s a process doomed to fail from the start, and another reason why this tasting is so comical. I’d be laughing except for the fact that some people will probably take this seriously and base their buying decisions on the article in what is otherwise considered an influential publication.
Also, in the article, the author gives the following advice. “Beer-pairing rule of thumb: Match up similar flavors.” Which is the same as saying white wines with fish. While such a rule of thumb may sometimes work, it’s extremely limiting and rigid, and ignores what choosing a contrasting beer might add to the experience.
For one of the beers, the only thing said about it was it “had a funny name.” How condescending. Thanks. That’s very helpful for me if I might want to drink it. But it’s indicative of the tone of the entire piece. There’s very little here that’s actually useful and they seem to have a great deal of trouble taking the subject seriously so I’m left with one final question. Exactly what is the point of this article?
UPDATE: New York Magazine invited Stephen to write a letter to the editor for their next issue. In the hopes of having it carry more weight, he graciously invited other beer writers to also sign the letter. Six of us agreed to sign it. In addition to me and Beaumont, the letter was also signed by Julie Bradford (All About Beer), Lew Bryson, Tom Dalldorf (Celebrator Beer News) and John Hansell (Malt Advocate).
UPDATE (10.27): New York Magazine has now printed Stephen Beaumont’s letter to the editor.
New Binding Website
The Binding Brauerei Group announced today a new website for the U.S. market has been launched. The Binding Group, known as the Radeberger Group in their native Germany, owns several beer brands and imports at least five of them to the United States: Radeberger, Clausthaler, DAB, Krusovice and Tucher.
Radeberger Pilsner is a world class pilsner and brewed in the town of Radeberg, just outside Dresden. The brewery itself is beautiful as is the surrounding area of what was once part of East Germany. If you get a chance to visit Dresden and Radeberg, I highly recommend it. Be sure to order the unfiltered version of their pilsner, a Zwickel, available exclusively at the brewery. It’s wonderful. Radeberger was recently featured as the beer in the sophomoric film Beerfest, which is a shame because the beer is so much better than their association with the film might otherwise imply.
Blast From the Past: Genny Cream Ale
Cans of Genesee Cream Ale were de rigueur when I was growing up in Eastern Pennsylvania in the late 1970s. The simple green can design is emblazoned in my memory of that more simple time. It was certainly one of the favorite beers of my youth — at least in my memory — probably because cream ales are such a light, undemanding style. They fell out of fashion for a number of years, but lately several craft brewers are resurrecting the style as their lightest offering. It’s a much better alternative than making a low-calorie beer or American-style lager. High Falls Brewing, who has owned the brand for many years now, abandoned the all-green design sometime in the 1980s and when I carried it at BevMo in the mid-1990s all that was available were bottles with a paper label. Which is a shame. The beer itself I recall wasn’t great but was certainly serviceable and a decent session choice. It was that plain green can that had us all enraptured, though in retrospect I have no idea why.
High Falls is now trying to tap into that nostalgia I feel for the brand with a new retro-styled website at www.geneseecreamale.com. It’s a nice site but I don’t think they went back far enough because they’re still showing that damned paper label and a bottle on the main page. It does suffer the problem I have with virtually all big brewery sites — Flash. They’re so over the top with using flash technology instead of HTML that I hate navigating them. Maybe I’m in the minority here because I started hand-coding HTML back in the mid 90s, but I find it very annoying.
Sure, it’s a nice piece of breweriana, made to look older than it is, but where’s the can?
Frankly, this is how I will always remember Genesee Cream Ale. If they really want to tap into nostalgia, they need to bring back this can.
Crooked River’s Stone Mill Pale Ale
Stone Mill Pale Ale, from Crooked River Brewing Co. of New Hampshire, is the newest organic stealth micro from Anheuser-Busch, not that you’ll find any information about it on their corporate website. That’s because like Wild Hop Lager of Green Valley Brewing Co., the packaging reveals no information whatsoever about who’s behind the beer. Both beers are brewed by Anheuser-Busch at either their plant in Fairfield, California or Merrimack, New Hampshire (although I have no independent knowledge of either beer being brewed anywhere but Fairfield).
Similar to Wild Hop Lager in packaging, marketing and secrecy about its origins, the Stone Mill Pale Ale is targeting high end consumers with folksy, farm-friendly images and its organic certification. The only difference I can see is one is a lager and the other an ale. Both Crooked River Brewing and Green Valley Brewing are not real breweries, they’re dba’s owned by Anheuser-Busch. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using a dba, many businesses use them, including many contract breweries.
Until they bought the Hudepohl-Schoenling Brewery in Ohio, Boston Beer Co. was probably the most well-known contract brewery. There were a lot of complaints about them in the early days, especially for Oregon Brewing (their own stealth micro), but for the most part the beer itself didn’t suffer. And by and large the majority of contact breweries are simply one company making their beer at a brewery they don’t own in order to keep capital investment low.
In this case, however, the difference is quite important. Here a giant company is trying to keep that fact a secret as a marketing strategy. They know that many consumers and potential consumers of organic products would likely be reluctant to buy organic beer from America’s biggest beer company. So everything about Stone Mill Pale Ale is calculated to make it appear like a small organic company that cares about organic farming and similar issues.
But another strange thing about this is that there is, or at least was, an actual brewery by the name of Crooked River Brewing in Cleveland, Ohio. They opened in 1994 but stopped brewing in their own facility in 2000. But the label was purchased by Frederick Brewing Co. of Maryland (which itself was just bought by Denver’s Flying Dog Brewery). As far as I can tell, the Crooked River label is still currently being sold. Given the number of attorneys Anheuser-Busch employs, it’s pretty hard to believe they would have missed that their made up name was already being used by another brewery.
In addition, there used to be a Crooked Waters Brewing in Peoria, Ilinois. It was a brewpub that opened in 1996 and closed in November 2000. Then there’s a Crooked Creek Brewery that’s a contract brew made by the Straub Brewery in Pennsylvania. As far as I can tell they’re still in business and making beer, too.
So that’s a strange development. The dba for A-B’s second stealth micro has the same name as a label still being made. I’m no legal expert and I’m not a lawyer but from what I have seen in these types of trademark disputes I can’t see how Frederick Brewing could lose. They appear to own a label that’s been around for twelve years. A-B is using the same name for essentially the same class of goods. That that fact would cause confusion among consumers seems prima facie.
Anheuser-Busch’s Stone Mill Pale Ale.
UPDATE 5.17: The Stone Mill Pale Ale website does now state that they are “in partnership with Anheuser-Busch.” That’s a pretty euphemistic way of saying it is an Anheuser-Busch product. I don’t know the exact nature of the way the dba was set up, but the domain name at least is registered directly to Anheuser-Busch, Inc. Can you have a partnership with a name you made up and created out of thin air? As far as I know, the packaging does not reflect this disclosure, but perhaps new packaging will. Until then, unsuspecting consumers will still not likely know who’s making this organic beer.
Sorry this is hard to read, but this is a full size screen capture. It’s hard to read at the website, too. I guess that’s why they call it the fine print.
Coalition of the Willing Shrinks to One
Back in early February I commented that the Here’s to Beer campaign, which was originally supposed to be a coalition of the nation’s breweries, was only Anheuser-Busch and the Beer Institute. Since this propaganda campaign was so obviously an A-B driven effort, I further commented that I felt this tainted the objectiveness of the Beer Institute. It turns out that they agreed, because it was reported today in a Business Week article that “The Beer Institute trade group yanked its logo off the campaign after the first television ad ran during the Super Bowl. The institute would not say why.” Anybody have a guess?
So the Here’s to Beer propaganda is now officially just an A-B effort. A-B “Vice President Bob Lachky said the company is happy to carry the banner for all brewers nationwide.”
From the article:
“The reality of it is, this program really doesn’t need brewer support,” Lachky said. “We kind of always envisioned this thing as being an Anheuser-Busch-led initiative.”
That must be why he spent a great deal of time flying around the country trying to convince other brewers to “set aside their differences and fight the common enemy of wine and spirits” and craft brewers. It’s called spin because that sounds so much better than not telling the truth or saying they were wrong.
As I’ve said before, the funny thing is that the basic idea of promoting beer is a good idea. It’s just that A-B is the absolutely worst company I can imagine to take on this task. They could make decent beer but instead make a highly engineered food product. You don’t ask Wonder Bread to teach people about what great bread is. It’s too bad the Brewers Association doesn’t have the kind of money needed to do television ads, because I can envision a group of regional breweries doing pretty effective PSAs. A concerted effort that taught people what good beer really is would have enormous long term benefits for craft brewers as a whole. But TV is a game only giants can play, so that’s not really feasible at this point.
Also from the Business Week article:
While brewers are sitting out the campaign, Lachky said Anheuser-Busch is focusing its efforts on beer wholesalers. Next week, the company will launch a Web site called http://www.herestobeermarketing.com* that will offer beer wholesalers free promotional materials.
“The thing we learned as we went along is that the real audience of this is the beer distributor,” Lachky said.
I guess going directly to their consumers didn’t work very well, so they decided on the distributors instead. At least they’re already motivated to sell beer, after all that’s their job. But it sure seems like all they’ll accomplish is promoting their own brands. I’m sure all the A-B houses will embrace this program — they’ll probably all but have to — but I can’t imagine the Coors, Miller or independent distributors will have much incentive to use A-B produced marketing materials. But that’s said sight unseen, so who knows. It will certanly be interesting to see what they come up with.
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*Note: the website is not only not up right now, but the domain name has not even been registered. Business Week listed the new domain as herestobeermarkerting.com and I assume they meant herestobeermarketing.com without the errant “r.” Just to make sure, I checked both spellings and neither one has been registered. But it does strike me as odd that a week before its announced launch in a major business magazine, I could still have registered the domain name myself.
One Month Later: Wild Hop Lager Website Still Down
At the end of March, someone posted a comment that the Wild Hop Lager website was down. This was a couple of days after I did a phone interview with Bob Scowcroft, Executive Director of the OFRF about the nature of the donation they were to receive “with every purchase of Wild Hop Lager,” as the website indicated.
Since that time I’ve been checking periodically and it’s remained down for at least a month now. Today, it still only says “This page is temporarily down. Please check back later.” Now I don’t know the official period of time something continues before it’s no longer considered “temporary” but in internet time, a month is an eternity. I certainly thought there would be something put up in its place by now. Perhaps the strategy for Wild Hop Lager is changing, but what’s taking so long? Who knows?
A screen capture of the original Wild Hop Lager website that has been down for a month. If you’re having trouble reading the text, click on the image to view the screen capture full size.
Off to Seattle for CBC
I’m off this morning to Seattle for the 2006 Craft Brewers Conference. As a result, there may be no new posts until I return on Saturday evening.