Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three 

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series at the blog. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification. When the material is lengthy, I break it into several parts; this is part three of three.

The setting here is the early 1870s, when the American temperance movement, which had been derailed by the Civil War, regrouped and renewed its efforts to eliminate alcohol in the United States.

________________________________

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three 

___________________

And so it went in another nine hundred towns in thirty-one (out of thirty-seven) states and the District of Columbia. The tens of thousands of marchers met with but limited success and may have done the cause more harm than good: most men were hostile, and many of the women played to type, thereby reinforcing the common view among men idea that a woman’s place was in the home. “It is easy enough to conquer a man, if only you know how,” one crusader explained.

I wish you could see me talking to some of these saloon men that I would never have spoken to before; I employ my sweetest accents; . . . I look into their eyes and grow pathetic; I shed tears, and I joke with them--but all in terrible earnest. And they surrender. (*1)

The hypocrisy left a bad taste in the mouth of an Ohio man.

“It is a little amusing,” he commented, “to hear one of these women talk to ‘their man’ as they have him cornered behind his bar, and to see how he takes to talk of that sort.”

He listened to one crusader as she “opened out her battery of words,” telling the proprietor that she “loved” him and “always had.”

“I’ll venture a treat,” the man scoffed, “that this same woman never thought of this poor devil of a saloon-keeper before, and if she had met him on the street . . . she would not have spoken to him.” (*2)

Still, there was no doubt that the crusaders placed themselves in real danger. In some communities minor riots erupted and mobs attacked the women. At a march in Pittsburgh, hecklers jeered and threw rocks, paint, eggs, bricks, and beer at the women. One man used a horsewhip to rescue his wife from the crowd.

In Plano, Illinois, the occupants of a saloon removed themselves to the second floor of the building and dumped “the contents of baser toiletware” on the crusaders below. (*3)  In one town, a man exposed himself to a group kneeling for sidewalk prayer.

_________________

*1: Blocker, ‘Give to the Winds Thy Fears’: The Women's Temperance Crusade, 1873-1874 (Greenwood Press, 1985), 43.

*2: Ibid. *3: Ibid., 60.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three 

________________________________

The “Women’s Crusade" of the early 1870s was the inadvertent by-product of an otherwise ordinary evening of entertainment. In the 1870s, lectures and speeches were the most common forms of mass entertainment. Experts of all sorts toured the United States speaking to large audiences on everything from homeopathy to hydropathy; transmigration to trans-Atlantic travel.

Among them was Diocletian Lewis, a physician-reformer with interests in abolition, women’s rights, and temperance. In late 1873, he took the platform in front of a crowd of about a thousand at a hall in Fredonia, New York. There, he touted the virtues of temperance, denounced the evils of liquor, and regaled his listeners with tales of drink-induced woe and degeneracy.

Lewis capped his discourse with an anecdote about how, some forty years earlier, his own mother, married to a drunk, had led a group of her friends into a saloon where they prayed until the bar owner was persuaded to shut his doors and find other employment.

The following morning, a hundred or so women who had attended Lewis’s lecture gathered at a Baptist church to discuss what they had heard. Shortly after noon, the women began marching, first to the bar at the Taylor House Hotel, and from there to the city’s eight liquor retail outlets.

At each stop, the women demanded that the male owners of the establishments abandon their devilish business and then prayed for their redemption. Only one of the men so targeted agreed to find another line of trade.

Over the next few weeks, the Women’s Crusade spread across New York and the midwest. It arrived in Milwaukee in late February when the city’s “gentle raiders” mailed postcards to hundreds of saloons. "Sir,” the cards read, “believing your own conscience must smite you for your criminality in dealing out liquid damnation to our husbands, sons and brothers, we propose to aid that conscience by praying in your gilded hall of vice, next Monday March 2.” (*1)

On the appointed day, the women’s efforts provided plenty of entertainment for the throngs who pushed past them on Milwaukee’s sidewalks, but not much else. No saloonkeepers repented; none shut their doors.

___________________

*1: “The Gentle Raiders,” Milwaukee Sentinel March 2, 1874, p. 1.

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification.

This edition is particularly folly-ish, and prime example of how easily I wander off-track when something interesting catches my brain. Because let's face it: Woodstock had nuthin' much to do with beer. For the record: I was not at Woodstock. Indeed, I was not even aware it was happening. (I was an exceptionally oblivious fifteen-year-old.)

_______

Eight hundred miles east of Milwaukee, four men of disparate personalities and backgrounds were organizing an event that they hoped would make them rich. They planned to hold the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August in rural upstate New York.

The quartet spent the summer of ‘69 lining up acts; researching the merits of temporary toilets; signing food vendors, and scrambling to find a location after their first choice was snatched from them at the last moment. Hugh Romney and the Hog Farm commune agreed to operate a free food kitchen, babysit kids on bad trips, and provide concert “security.” (For that task, Romney informed a Woodstock Ventures representative, he would require “‘fifty cases of seltzer bottles and three truckloads of chocolate cream pies as ammunition.’”) (*1)

By opening day, August 15, 1969, a city-sized swarm of hippies, heads, and freaks had established camp at Max Yasgur’s farm. Outside the site, vehicular traffic overwhelmed the region’s roads and highways.

The cops, fearing the worse, blockaded the parking lots, a decision that exacerbated the chaos and produced the largest traffic jam in New York state history. Thousands of people abandoned their cars and walked the last several miles.

For three days, a crowd estimated at anywhere from 100,000 to a half a million, listened to music, danced, sang, made love, died (two people), and sloshed through odorous mud spawned by torrential rain.

The “official” food supply--hot dogs and hamburgers--ran out almost before singer Richie Havens, who went on first because the opening act was stuck in traffic, plucked a guitar string. “Bring food,” the organizers begged the outside world.

That was easier said than done, thanks to abandoned vehicles and barricaded highways. Locals who knew the back roads delivered carloads of cold cuts, water, soda, and fruit juice, but, given that all the nearby towns combined were not as large as Woodstock City, their efforts fed the encampment’s fringes but not much more.

No matter. Most attendees were beyond caring about food. Kids drank acid-laced kool-aid and water, smoked and ate hash, ingested god-knows what other drugs, and guzzled wine from that basic hippie accoutrement, the goatskin.

Beer was conspicuous by its absence. Art Vassmer, who owned a general store in nearby Kauneonga Lake, sold out his stock of six-packs. Some kids hauled in coolers loaded with beer, but that ran out long before the music did. A local bar owner showed up with a truck loaded with beer.

It sold “like crazy,” less because kids craved beer than because liquid of any sort was welcome on a hot day in August in a temporary city cut off from the outside world.(*2)

Nor did any of the long-haired, mud-soaked trippers care whether the national beverage was available or not. Who needed beer when pot, hash, and acid were as accessible as the air and rain and far more fun?

_______________

*1: Robert Stephen Spitz, Barefoot in Babylon: The Creation of the Woodstock Music Festival, 1969 (New York: The Viking Press, 1989), 90. *2: Joel Makower, Woodstock: The Oral History (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 217.

Part One --- Part Two 

This two-part excerpt concerns the use of music to market beer in the early 1970s.

_____________________

When Harry Jersig called, Sullivan listened. Jersig owned Lone Star Brewing in San Antonio, Texas. The company had done well over the years, mostly because Jersig tended the local market with loving care.

But in the early seventies, Texas was changing and bigger brewers were invading his market. Jersig knew that it was time to rethink his strategy. He hired Barry Sullivan as Lone Star’s new vice-president for marketing.

Sullivan signed on in the fall of 1973, just as the peak of the baby boomers hit their early twenties. There were, Sullivan could see, a lot of potential fans for Lone Star. He could also see, however, that Lone Star’s image needed some work. Jersig had always sold the beer as pure Texas, a down-to-earth beer for hard-working, down-to-earth people. Texas was being overrun by another kind of “people”: young, urban, educated, and relatively liberal. Down-to-earth-hard-working wasn’t going to work on them.

Music, however, would. And music was something Texas had plenty of in the early seventies. And not old-fashioned Bob Wills-type stuff, but deep country steeped in rock and roll and rhythm and blues. “Woodstock in Western wear.” (*1).

The epicenter of this new country rock was the Armadillo World Headquarters, a cavernous club--it could accomodate fifteen hundred people--on Austin’s south side that began life as a National Guard armory.

The AWH opened in August 1970. Willie Nelson, who had left Nashville for Austin and become a godfather of the new “cosmic cowboy” music, played there. So did Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen, Asleep at the Wheel, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Bonnie Raitt, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. The Armadillo specialized in weird pairings: The Clash billed with died-in-the-wool Texan Joe Ely. Bruce Springsteen and The Pleasant Valley Boys.

This, Barry Sullivan decided, would become the nursery for the new Lone Star. He gave free beer to the groups playing the Armadillo. He hired those same players to record one minute radio jingle, “Harina Tortilla.” When producers from public television began filming sets at the Armadillo and broadcasting them as Austin City Limits, Lone Star underwrote the project.

Outside the Armadillo, Sullivan focused on print and radio. His “art director” was about as far off Madison Avenue as it was possible to get: Jim Franklin was a skinny, bearded young kid who dressed in shorts, t-shirts, and sandals.

Franklin fancied armadillos and one of his first ads for Lone Star consisted of a desolate landscape, where “‘everything was laid to waste and the only things that were left were [Lone Star] longnecks sticking out of the ground and armadillos running around.’” (*2)

The television commercials were just as goofy: A camera crew filmed real Texans as they engaged in “‘bizarre cultural rituals,’” Texas style: seed-spitting and buffalo-chip-tossing competitions, an armadillo beauty contest, a “Ceuero turkey trot.” (*3)

Funny. Irreverent. Completely off the wall. Perfectly suited to baby boomers who’d long since left their parents’ paths. Sales rose by a million cases in 1974. Lone Star, small regional beer par excellence, was hip.

________

*1: Michael Ennis, “The Beer That Made Armadillos Famous,” Texas Monthly 10 (February 1982): 175.

*2: Ibid., 177.

*3: Ibid., 179.

Part One --- Part Two 

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification.

This two-part excerpt concerns the use of music to market beer in the early 1970s, looking specifically at the use of music by Narragansett Brewing in Rhode Island and Lone Star Brewing in Texas.

______________

Barry Sullivan understood the potential for “small” beers; understood that the new generation of beer drinkers had marched down a new road, lured by the beat of some far-off and different drum. More important, however, he understood how to play that drum.

Sullivan was a Canadian-born, major-league hockey player. When he left the ice in 1953, he emigrated to St. Louis to work in sales at Falstaff. He spent time in Missouri and also in Texas, which was one of the brewery’s biggest markets. In 1968, the company sent him to Rhode Island to oversee Narragansett, which had not performed well since Falstaff’s 1965 acquisition.

Sullivan was busy familiarizing himself with the beer and region when Woodstock fell upon the land. Sullivan’s sons, “long-haired” teenagers, insisted that their father take notice of what their generation was capable of doing. (*1)

Sullivan watched the live news coverage of the traffic jam, the rain, the mud---and realized two things. First, long hair and drugs be damned; these were good kids, a medium-sized city’s worth and no trouble. Second, this rock-and-roll stuff was the key to their hearts and minds.

He organized a series of  “mini-Woodstocks” throughout the Narragansett territory. (*2) No fool, he emphasized the music, not the beer, downplaying the Narraganset name to the extent that no beer was even sold at the venues. The focus was the names and their music: Janis Joplin. Santana. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Led Zepplin.

Sales soared. Three years later, Sullivan was back in St. Louis, this time as Falstaff’s national marketing coordinator. But Falstaff’s management, he soon realized, ignored the youth market and the need to rethink marketing strategies.

______________

*1: Michael Ennis, “The Beer That Made Armadillos Famous,” Texas Monthly 10 (February 1982): 119. *2: Ibid., 119.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four 

Part Five --- Part Six --- Part Seven --- Part Eight  --- Part Nine

Welcome to this edition of First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. The material is presented “as is” from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets — [like this] — for clarification. As always, when the excerpt is lengthy, and this one is, I break it into manageable bits and post those bits over the course of several days.

This edition of FDF concerns the early years of the American Homebrewers Association and what is now the Brewers Association, the craft brewing trade group. Much of my research into this topic fell into “insider baseball” information: interesting to those who were involved, and to people with a serious interest in brewing history, but dull as rocks to a more general audience. As a result, almost none of what follows ended up in the book, which was intended for a general audience.

On the other hand, the groups' early histories provide fascinating insight into the creation of a organization from the ground up, particularly the conflicts that ensued between and among the participants. As a result, I think it’s worth posting this (long) series in full.

For more about the founding of the AHA, see my earlier string of First Draft Follies entries on that topic. (The link takes you to part six of the six-part series; it contains links to parts one through five.)

_____________

A Seattle journalist, Vince Cottone, fanned the flames by treating as fact the wholly unsubstantiated rumor that Jim Koch had won the event because he bribed festival-goers with free tickets. It was not true, but Cottone treated it as fact and used the occasion as an excuse to bash the GABF, the AOB, and anyone involved. The preference poll, he complained, “more resembled a cross between a wet T-shirt contest and a corrupt banana republic election than a rational judging of America’s beers.”

The GABF, he concluded, “has lost credibility, at least in the eyes of honest brewers . . . .” (*1) “Besides the winners, who profits from the festival?” Cottone asked. “There seems to be little benefit for most of the bona fide microbrewers whose beers are exhibited.” The only “real bounty,” he complained was “reaped by the Association of Brewers/AHA, for whom it is a money-maker besides being their biggest publicity generator.” (*2)

That was not true either --- years would pass before the GABF turned a profit --- but it was hard to convince outsiders of that. But Cottone missed a larger point: The Consumer Preference Poll was precisely that, a consumer poll. By no stretch of anyone’s imagination could it be regarded as a “rational judging” of new beers.

Professional blind tasting finally arrived at the GABF in 1987, but the damage had been done. Again, poor communication. There was a certain inevitability about the clash between the brewers and the staff at the AOB. No one doubted Papazian’s will, energy, and desire. But he had fallen almost by accident into his role as voice of the brewers, and there were times when he operated as if he were still teaching a homebrew class at the Boulder Free Community School and the microbrewers were his students.

They were not. Grossman, and Maytag, and others had invested everything --- both financially and emotionally --- in a risky venture. Like [nineteenth-century German-American brewers] Jacob Best and Valentine Blatz before them, the new generation of brewers could not afford to relax their vigilance; could not afford to sit back and let matters flow untended. Brewing was a tough world whose denizens arrived at profit only by hacking their way through a thicket of city, state, and federal laws; who struggled with suppliers more sued to filling orders for ten million bottles rather than ten gross.

Still, the AOB provided a home for brewers who otherwise had no place to go. Like many others, Larry Bell, who founded his Kalamazoo Brewing Company in 1985, attended a meeting [of the Brewers Association of America, the old-line brewing trade group for small and regional brewers] but found it “intimidating.”

Worse yet, no one there talked about things that mattered to him. The BAA held its meetings at a “fancy hotel” and the agenda focused on “political stuff, the tax differential, relations with BATF, relations with the wholesalers’ association.” (*3) Bell and others who were just getting off the ground didn’t “have time to deal with” those things. They needed and wanted information about “real life issues,” things like the names of suppliers willing to sell small quantities and how to “troubleshoot [their] cobbled engineering.” (*4)

_______________

SOURCES:

*1: Vince Cottone, “Beer & Loathing In Denver: The Great American Beer Festival 1986,” American Brewer (Summer 1987): 15.

*2: Ibid., 16.

*3: Larry Bell, interview with Maureen Ogle, May 2005.

*4: Ibid.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four 

Part Five --- Part Six --- Part Seven --- Part Eight  --- Part Nine

Welcome to this edition of First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. The material is presented “as is” from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets — [like this] — for clarification. As always, when the excerpt is lengthy, and this one is, I break it into manageable bits and post those bits over the course of several days.

This edition of FDF concerns the early years of the American Homebrewers Association and what is now the Brewers Association, the craft brewing trade group. Much of my research into the topic fell into “insider baseball” information: interesting to those who were involved, and to people with a serious interest in brewing history, but dull as rocks to a more general audience. As a result, almost none of what follows ended up in the book, which was intended for a general audience.

On the other hand, the groups' early histories provide fascinating insight into the creation of a organization from the ground up, particularly the conflicts that ensued between and among the participants. As a result, I think it’s worth posting this (long) series in full.

For more about the founding of the AHA, see my earlier string of First Draft Follies entries on that topic. (The link takes you to part six of the six-part series; it contains links to parts one through five.)

_____________

 Nowhere was that more obvious than at the Great American Beer Festival, which, in its early years, stood as a perfect example of the way the Boulder group blundered its way into situations without thinking them through. In 1984, to use one rather horrific example, Papazian and Bradford, moved the festival to capacious Currigan Exhibition Hall in Denver.

The forty-odd brewers who attended could not fill the enormous venue and the five thousand or so paid admissions could not cover the cost of renting and insuring it. The financial loss boarded on the catastrophic. The Association borrowed money to cover not just that loss but basic operating expenses; a board member offered his own house as collateral.

Nor was the event particularly well-managed. Bert Grant arrived at the 1987 festival to find his entire stock of bottled ale buried in cases of ice. He “immediately began yanking bottles out of the ice and onto the table, dripping water everywhere.‘Jesus Christ, we need a bottle warmer not an ice chest,’” he yelled at the young volunteer assigned to his booth. She fled. (*1)

In 1988, the program was miscollated, thereby omitting a chunk of the alphabetical list of attending brewers, and award winners left empty-handed because the medals had not arrived.

The most notorious example of whatever erupted over the GABF’s Consumer Preference Poll, in which festival-goers voted for their “favorite” beer. Sierra Nevada, the golden boy of craft brewing, won honors in the first poll in 1983. The following year, Grant took the top two places and contract brewer Matthew Reich came in third.

But the 1987 festival nearly drowned in rumors that the owners of two breweries purchased bulk quantities of admission tickets and then and doled them out to attendees in exchange for votes. The alleged offenders, Boulder Brewing and Koch’s Boston Beer, placed first and second, respectively, in that year’s consumer preference poll. Daniel Bradford exacerbated the situation with what can only be described as ill-chosen words: “‘Without the bulk ticket sales we would not have made money.’” (*2)

Bradford later retracted the statement, but the damage had been done. Grant told Bradford that unless the awards were withdrawn, he, Grant, would refuse to participate again, and would organize a boycott of the event. Bradford explained that there had been “‘no flagrant disobedience of the rules and guidelines,’” which were, he admitted, “‘terribly flawed,’” for which he blamed himself. (*3)

Had he left the matter there, perhaps the black cloud would have drifted away. Instead he backpeddled, explaining away his comment about the bulk ticket sales as a “whimsical” attempt to “‘lighten the atmosphere.’” (*4)

_____________________

SOURCES: *1: Vince Cottone, “Movement in the Right Direction: The Great American Beer Festival,” American Brewer (Fall 1987): 28.

*2: Ibid., 29.

*3: Ibid., 30.

*4: Ibid.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four 

Part Five --- Part Six --- Part Seven --- Part Eight  --- Part Nine

Welcome to this edition of First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. The material is presented “as is” from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets — [like this] — for clarification. As always, when the excerpt is lengthy, and this one is, I break it into manageable bits and post those bits over the course of several days.

This edition of FDF concerns the early years of the American Homebrewers Association and what is now the Brewers Association, the craft brewing trade group. Much of my research into the topic fell into “insider baseball” information: interesting to those who were involved, and to people with a serious interest in brewing history, but dull as rocks to a more general audience.

As a result, almost none of what follows ended up in the book, which was intended for a general audience. On the other hand, the groups' early histories provide fascinating insight into the creation of a organization from the ground up, particularly the conflicts that ensued between and among the participants. As a result, I think it’s worth posting this (long) series in full.

For more about the founding of the AHA, see my earlier string of First Draft Follies entries on that topic. (The link takes you to part six of the six-part series; it contains links to parts one through five.)

_____________

See also Charlie Papazian's commentary on this entry.

A classic blunder unfolded in the fall of 1986. The Association of Brewers [the new name of the group’s craft brewing arm] planned to hold its annual microbrewery conference in Portland, Oregon, a wise choice given the proliferation of small brewers there.

The schedule included tours of the city’s brewhouses but Papazian announced that without consulting first with the owners, who, no surprise, regarded this as a blatant attempt “to dictate dates and times” that they were expected to host visitors. (*1)

Four Portland brewers faced him down, refusing to abide by Papazian’s schedule and threatening to allow no tours unless he “backed off.” “‘We demanded, and got, a formal apology,” as well as free conference passes for each brewer’s employees.

Still, the damage had been done. The “‘whole thing left a sour taste,’” said Karl Ockert, the brewmaster at one of the four shops, “‘and we felt like it [the conference] had been imposed on us.’” (*2) Papazian, Bradford, and other staff were nothing more than a

“‘pretentious bunch of hypists, presuming to dictate to us when and how we should do them favors. And they’ve appointed themselves as our so-called representatives without any legitimate qualifications. Even their magazine [New Brewer] has no substance. They’re running a scam that’s riding the brewers’ coattails.’” (*3)

Strong words, those, but ones with a kernel of truth. No one at Boulder--not Papazian, not Bradford, not Charlie Matzen--had any qualifications for representing a booming and volatile industry. Neither the AHA nor the [craft brewing trade group] were professional organizations in the conventional sense of the word.

Mostly, Daniel Bradford acknowledged, the Boulder empire was “run by zealots” operating on “passion” and “emotion”; “amateurs doing professional work” and producing a “loosey goosey” mishmash of ideas and ambitions. (*4) The lack of professionalism at Boulder tainted nearly everything the group did, as did a chronic lack of communication that was one part arrogance, two parts naivete, and six parts incompetence spawned by inexperience.

____________

SOURCES:

*1: Vince Cottone, “Beer & Loathing in Denver: The Great American Beer Festival 1986,” American Brewer, Summer 1987, p. 17.

*2: Ibid., 17.

*3: Ibid., 16.

*4: Daniel Bradford, interview with Maureen Ogle, April 28, 2005.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four 

Part Five --- Part Six --- Part Seven --- Part Eight  --- Part Nine

Welcome to this edition of First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. The material is presented “as is” from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets — [like this] — for clarification. As always, when the excerpt is lengthy, and this one is, I break it into manageable bits and post those bits over the course of several days.

This edition of FDF concerns the early years of the American Homebrewers Association and what is now the Brewers Association, the craft brewing trade group. Much of my research into the topic fell into “insider baseball” information: interesting to those who were involved, and to people with a serious interest in brewing history, but dull as rocks to a more general audience. As a result, almost none of what follows ended up in the book, which was intended for a general audience.

On the other hand, the groups' early histories provide fascinating insight into the creation of a organization from the ground up, particularly the conflicts that ensued between and among the participants. As a result, I think it’s worth posting this (long) series in full. For more about the founding of the AHA, see my earlier string of First Draft Follies entries on that topic. (The link takes you to part six of the six-part series; it contains links to parts one through five.)

_____________

See also Charlie Papazian's comments on this segment.

Another Institute-inspired program made more sense, but it, too, backfired and for many of the same reasons. Papazian and the board knew that one way to raise money was to increase the AHA’s membership and thereby earn more revenue from dues and sales of Zymurgy.

Thus the “road shows.” The Institute created a package of programs with titles like “The World of Beer”; “Advanced Homebrewing”; and “The Good (Bad) Beer Clinic.” A host group, such as a homebrew club, paid travel expenses for Papazian, who presented the selected topic. These events promoted homebrewing and the AHA’s various wings and arms and, in theory, attracted new dues-paying members.

A typical road-trip was Papazian’s appearance at a Washington, D. C. event co-sponsored by the AHA and a local brewing club, Brewers United for Real Potables (BURP). A “standing-room-only crowd” of over a hundred people jammed a hotel meeting room to hear Papazian discuss homebrewing and watch two Pennsylvania men, identified only as Suds and Dregs so as to protect their jobs, taste BURP members’ beers. The two tasters expressed their disappointment at the “crass commercialism” of the event, a reference to booths where suppliers sold malt and hops, t-shirts, and books.

But the crowd was enthralled by Papazian, who made homebrewing “so easy that one wondered by anyone would buy beer.” “‘The question isn’t how hard it is,’” Papazian assured the audience, “‘It’s how easy it is.’” No word on whether he advised the troops to relax and have a homebrew. (*1)

Vintage Papazian and a classic example of the Institute’s modus operandi: Wow the crowd with beer. Attach a face to homebrewing and emphasize the hobby’s simplicity. Last but not least, make sure a major newspaper (in this case, the Washington Post) covers the event.

But to outsiders--anyone who was not ensconced in Papazian’s inner circle--the jaunts looked like grandstanding and, worse, as though Papazian was touring the globe on the AHA’s dime. He was not. The host group paid Papazian’s travel expenses and the “jaunts” were anything but. He had to meet, greet, speak, hobnob, trying to persuade people to jump on the homebrew wagon.

Still, the travel left Papazian and the AHA “open to criticism that he was spending money on himself.” (*2) Even AHA board members challenged Papazian’s absences from the office; some resented what looked like the glamorous life of trips to Europe, to New York, Los Angeles. But Papazian refused to budge, arguing that “expanding the base was more important than his reputation.”

Eventually the directors decided that each board member must attend at least one “offsite conference outside Boulder” so that they could learn “what kind of work was being done” at the events. One trip, and even the most skeptical board member agreed that Papazian’s road trips hardly constituted pleasure tours.

Then there was Papazian’s book. During the 1980s, royalties provided Papazian with most of his personal income. But even that played against him, again because of poor management. Advertisements for Joy of Brewing appeared in nearly every issue of Zymurgy, but the AHA never profited from any of its sales. Nor did the organization profit from Papazian’s later books, all of them written on what amounted to company time.

“We talked openly about the possible conflict,” one board member said later, but talk is not the same thing as action and once again the AHA and the Institute allowed negative perception to fester. “We could have done a better job with PR,” Matzen admitted.

______________

SOURCES: *1: All quotes from Angus Phillips, “Home Brew is Best, Say Purists,” Washington Post, September 30, 1984, p. C3.

*2: Charlie Matzen interview with Maureen Ogle, June 8, 2005. All remaining quotes are from Matzen interview.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four 

Part Five --- Part Six --- Part Seven --- Part Eight  --- Part Nine

This edition of FDF concerns the early years of the American Homebrewers Association and what is now the Brewers Association, the craft brewing trade group. Much of my research into the topic fell into “insider baseball” information: interesting to those who were involved, and to people with a serious interest in brewing history, but dull as rocks to a more general audience. As a result, almost none of what follows ended up in the book, which was intended for a general audience.

On the other hand, the groups' early histories provide fascinating insight into the creation of a organization from the ground up, particularly the conflicts that ensued between and among the participants. As a result, I think it’s worth posting this (long) series in full.

For more about the founding of the AHA, see my earlier string of First Draft Follies entries on that topic. (The link takes you to part six of the six-part series; it contains links to parts one through five.)

____________________________________________________________________

See also Charlie Papazian's commentary on this blog entry.

Translated into action, the IFBS consisted of two things: First, New Brewer, a glossy magazine geared to microbrewers, with articles on everything from marketing, label design, and trademark law, to water treatment, hop varieties, and yeast. Second, an annual conference devoted entirely to microbrewing.

All of it--the beer festival, the expanded conference, and especially the new magazine--represented a huge risk. Non-profit organizations must file a mission statement. The AHA’s informed the world that it existed for “literary and educational purposes, in order to benefit homebrewers of beer and all those interested in homebrewing.” (*2) A generous soul could construe the beer festival as “educational” for homebrewers. A conference devoted in part to educating would-be commercial brewers stretched the meaning of the mission.

But it also represented insomnia-inducing financial risk --- which is why Papazian dived into the expanded mission. In late 1982, the AHA boasted a mere 2,500 members. Their $12.00 membership fee, which included a subscription to Zymurgy, brought in a mere $30,000 each year, hardly enough to pay Papazian’s salary, a pittance at $300 a month (the equivalent of about $600 today), let alone Bradford’s wages, printing costs, electricity, and rent.

A more conservative person would have pulled the reins, and a less ambitious man would have given up and shut the doors. Papazian knew how to stretch a dollar --- he was notorious among his friends for his frugal ways --- and his grasp was exceeded only by his ambition.

So he forged on, creating new programs, adding new activities. Unfortunately, these ventures more often than not won Papazian more enemies than friends and so counted as mixed blessings.

Consider the “Affiliated Business Membership,” introduced in 1983. The ABM was a new AHA membership category aimed at homebrew shop owners and the companies that supplied them with goods and materials, such as carboys, hop packets, yeast, rubber tubing and the like. Papazian described the ABM as “a way for businesses to increase their sales of homebrew products with carefully researched information about products, equipment and brewing techniques.” The AHA, he explained

has already devoted substantial amounts of time and energy to researching what is best for the customer and business. We wish to share this information with you. (*3)

Lovely. Wonderful. Just one problem: this was precisely what the HWBTA had been doing for years. The homebrewing trade didn’t need another trade organization, and shop owners and supplies manufacturers resented the implication that Charlie Papazian knew more than they did about what was “best for the customer and business.”

In the end, the Affiliated Membership earned zero dollars for Papazian’s group and confirmed the general mistrust that many HWBTA members felt toward the Boulder contingent.

Patrick Baker had already discovered that. After Papazian founded the AHA, Baker, who belonged to both the HWBTA and the AHA, urged members of the trade group to hold their annual meeting at the same time and place as the AHA so that shop owners could attend both. His suggestion “got nowhere,” because, his fellow retailers told him, “they just didn’t trust Charley [sic], and didn’t want to deal with the AHA.” (*4)

_______________

SOURCES:

*1: “The Institute for Fermentation and Brewing Studies,” Zymurgy 6, no. 2 (Summer 1983): 2.

*2: Corporate statement published on each masthead page starting with volume 3, no. 1, Spring 1980.

*3: “Affiliated Business Membership--An Open Letter,” Zymurgy 6, no. 2 (Summer 1983): 2.

*4: Patrick Baker, response to email interview with Maureen Ogle, June 17, 2005.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four 

This edition of FDF concerns the early years of the American Homebrewers Association and what is now the Brewers Assocation, the craft brewing trade group. Much of my research into the topic fell into “insider baseball” information: interesting to those who were involved, and to people with a serious interest in brewing history, but dull as rocks to a more general audience. As a result, almost none of what follows ended up in the book, which was intended for a general audience.

On the other hand, the groups' early histories provide fascinating insight into the creation of a organization from the ground up, particularly the conflicts that ensued between and among the participants. As a result, I think it’s worth posting this (long) series in full.

For more about the founding of the AHA, see my earlier string of First Draft Follies entries on that topic. (The link takes you to part six of the six-part series; it contains links to parts one through five.)

_________________________________________________________

For Charlie Papazian's comments on this entry here and here.

And what the AHA needed in early 1982 was someone to manage the million details that combined to produce the first Great American Beer Festival. Papazian planned the event to coincide with the annual homebrewing competition and the second “conference” on both homebrewing and microbrewing. "In sponsoring this event,” wrote Stuart Harris, the Zymurgy reporter who covered microbrewing,

the American Homebrewers Association hopes to bring public attention to the micro-brewery industry and provide a forum where brewers and would-be brewers may exchange ideas and information about the industry. (*1)

The GABF was not the nation’s first national beer festival. That honor belongs, most likely, to the German Alps Festival, which began in the early seventies in the Catskills. By the late seventies, it was attracting 300,000 people who sampled well over a hundred brands of domestic and imported brews.

The GABF was, however, the first beer event designed to showcase American beer in general and the new “micro” brews in particular. The debut proved a modest affair, which was about all that Papazian and his tiny crew could manage. The festival featured “1000 gallons of lagers, ales, stouts and porters,” a handful of “small” brewers, and ran just four hours on the Friday night of the first day of that year’s conference. (*2)

Papazian sandwiched the event in between the annual homebrewing competition and the brewing conference which, by the spring of 1982, had grown into a two-day affair. The organizers devoted day one to commercial brewing, with panels on packaging, bacteria control, and marketing and legal issues that small brewers could expect to face. Michael Lewis from UC-Davis spoke.

So did Michael Jackson, joined by David Bruce, who was single-handedly reinventing the British brewing-pub.That last exemplified Papazian’s ability to see around the curve in the road: brewpubs were about to become the Next Big Thing in small American brewing.

Whatever niggling doubts Papazian had about the wisdom of these new ventures were laid to rest in November, 1982, when he attended the annual meeting of the Brewers’ Association of America. (*3) He knew few people at the meeting, and although some of the small brewers welcomed his presence, he felt “uncomfortable” and “out of place.”

But he was nothing if not a genius when it came to seeing opportunity, and he came away convinced that regional and small beermakers were “doing their own thing,” and that “their thing” was “totally irrelevant” to the homebrewers and microbrewers he had met at the AHA conferences. (*4)

It was true that the AHA annual conference had become a “focal point” for homebrewers thinking about investing in commercial brewing. It’s not so clear that the new brewers themselves agreed with Papazian’s claim of ownership to their industry, or his assessment of the BAA as irrelevant.

The two most successful microbrewers, Ken Grossman and Fritz Maytag, for example, both joined the BAA because they regarded themselves not as homebrewers grown large but as real brewers and so part of the larger industry. The BAA’s membership may have shrunk, along with its budget, but [the BAA's director] Bill O’Shea, in his late seventies and in failing health, continued to provide what service he could for his dwindling troops: lobbying, good relations with behemoths like Anheuser-Busch, and keeping abreast of new tax laws and regulatory burdens. What the BAA needed in the early eighties was new blood; men like Grossman and Maytag provided it.

Charlie Papazian understood nothing of that. He regarded microbrewing as an “extension of homebrewing,” and therefore a logical extension of the AHA. (*5) Tax issues? Labeling laws? Relax and have a homebrew.

___________________

SOURCES:

* 1: Stuart Harris, “Update,” Zymurgy 5, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 18.

*2: Advertisement for 1982 conference and competition, Zymurgy 5, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 20.

*3: The Brewers Association of America was organized in the early 1940s to represent the nation's small, regional beermakers.

*4: Charlie Papazian, interview with Maureen Ogle, April 27, 2005.

*5: Charlie Papazian, “How Many Apples Does It Take to Make a Pie?,” Zymurgy 5, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 2.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four 

Part Five --- Part Six --- Part Seven --- Part Eight  --- Part Nine

Welcome to this edition of First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. The material is presented “as is” from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets — [like this] — for clarification. As always, when the excerpt is lengthy, and this one is, I break it into manageable bits and post those bits over the course of several days.

This edition of FDF concerns the early years of the American Homebrewers Association and what is now the Brewers Association, the craft brewing trade group. Much of my research into the topic fell into “insider baseball” information: interesting to those who were involved, and to people with a serious interest in brewing history, but dull as rocks to a more general audience. As a result, almost none of what follows ended up in the book, which was intended for a general audience.

On the other hand, the groups' early histories provide fascinating insight into the creation of a organization from the ground up, particularly the conflicts that ensued between and among the participants. As a result, I think it’s worth posting this (long) series in full.

For more about the founding of the AHA, see my earlier string of First Draft Follies entries on that topic. (The link takes you to part six of the six-part series; it contains links to parts one through five.)

_______________________________________________________________

For Charlie Papazian's commentary on Part 3, see here and here.

Bradford entered the Boulder circle almost by accident. He had grown up in New England, where his family had lived for sixteen generations, being descendants of William Bradford, Mayflower passenger and first governor of Plymouth colony. That ancestry endowed him with an intuitive sense that his own life and the present were but small parts of a past much larger than himself. It also left him with a strong desire to break free of his New England roots and make his way in the world as unimpeded by the Bradford name as possible.

In 1968, he graduated from high school and headed to Boulder to attend the University of Colorado. There the maelstrom that was the United States in 1968 “descended upon” him starting with his dormitory: His roommate was a Japanese-American kid whose best friend was a black kid whose own best friend was a member of the SDS. (*1) Bradford plunged into campus politics--the demonstrations and shut-downs that were normal for that time--studying history in the classroom and hanging out with graduate students and professors during his free time. I

n 1977, BA and MA in hand, he headed for Ann Arbor with the idea of getting a PHD in history and entering the academy. Sadly, like all too many graduate students, he collided immediately with the reality of academia: infighting, back stabbing, bitching, whining, and complaining. This was not the rarefied world of ideas he had imagined when he’d manned the barricades back in Boulder and dreamed of changing the world.

Distraught to the point of breakdown, Bradford embarked on a two-year trek through his own soul and most of Europe. Eventually he returned to Boulder, at loose ends and no more certain of what he wanted to do than when he had left.

A friend who worked at a Denver publishing company suggested that Bradford become a literary agent. She knew a homebrewer who was trying to publish a book on the subject and needed an agent. He was, by his own admission, “clueless” about what agents did or who they were, but it sounded as good as anything else.

The author was, of course, Papazian, who wanted to push Joy of Brewing to the next level. Bradford compiled a list of publishers, headed for New York, and, after a daunting number of rejections and almost to his own surprise, succeeded in selling the work to a major publisher.

His energy impressed Papazian, who decided he was just what the AHA needed, especially if the organization hoped to host a national beer festival, which was how the New Englander ended up on the payroll early 1982 as the organization’s first employee.

Bradford was a good choice. Like Papazian, he loved “getting people in a room and having a good time”; loved the idea of providing ways for others to “express their own passions.” He was also, and perhaps more importantly, the “kind of guy who didn’t understand ‘no.’” And last but not least, Bradford knew nothing about beer or brewing and so had no turf to protect and no agenda to promote except whatever the AHA happened to need at the moment.

__________

SOURCE:

*1: Daniel Bradford, interview with Maureen Ogle, April 28, 2005. All quotations in the entry are from the interview. Bradford is publisher of All About Beer.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four 

Part Five --- Part Six --- Part Seven --- Part Eight  --- Part Nine

Welcome to this edition of First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. The material is presented “as is” from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets — [like this] — for clarification. As always, when the excerpt is lengthy, and this one is, I break it into manageable bits and post those bits over the course of several days.

This edition of FDF concerns the early years of the American Homebrewers Association and what is now the Brewers Association, the craft brewing trade group. Much of my research into the topic fell into “insider baseball” information: interesting to those who were involved, and to people with a serious interest in brewing history, but dull as rocks to a more general audience. As a result, almost none of what follows ended up in the book, which was intended for a general audience.

On the other hand, the groups' early histories provide fascinating insight into the creation of a organization from the ground up, particularly the conflicts that ensued between and among the participants. As a result, I think it’s worth posting this (long) series in full.

For more about the founding of the AHA, see my earlier string of First Draft Follies entries on that topic. (The link takes you to part six of the six-part series; it contains links to parts one through five.)

______________________________________________________________

Also see Charlie Papazian's commentary on this entry, as well as photos and a video (how cool IS the internet?).

The laid-back tone and calculated amateurism concealed a more complex agenda. Papazian laid his cards on the table in the Winter 1980 issue of Zymurgy.

An article written by Matzen and titled “Small Breweries Revive” described five “small” breweries --- the term “microbrewery” had not yet taken hold --- New Albion, Boulder, DeBakker, Sierra Nevada, and Cartwright. Matzen also interviewed Bill O’Shea at the Brewers Association of America [the trade group for small regional brewers]. O’Shea reported that he’d been “getting calls from people all over the country wanting information about starting small, family type breweries.’” (*1)

With that one piece, Zymurgy laid claim to ownership of not just homebrewing but the “real beer” movement. And if anyone doubted his intentions, Papazian upped the ante in May 1981, when the AHA hosted “The American Homebrewers Association Third Annual Homebrew/Mead Countrywine Competition and Conference.”

Papazian held the event at Chautauqua Park, an 83-year-old community education center just outside Boulder, a grand setting for the AHA’s first major event, which included a Friday night reception and the beer competition. The main event, however, was the conference, which featured, among others, Michael Jackson and Fred Eckhardt. (The next issue of Zymurgy added Jackson’s name to Eckhardt’s and [Paul] Freedman’s as an “advising editor.”)

The centerpiece? A ninety-minute session whose title, “The Small Commercial Micro-Brewery in America--Its Revival,” obscured its content. Panelists included Jack McAuliffe of New Albion and representatives from Boulder Brewing and Cartwright Brewing of Portland, Oregon. They showed slides, discussed their journey from home to commercial brewing, and answered questions from an audience that was less interested in the “revival” than in how to get in on it themselves. Topics ranged from paperwork and regulatory woes (Tom Burns from Cartwright warned that state governments caused more headaches than the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) to bottling equipment and finances (the “typical” small brewery could be started with “a relatively modest” $100,000 investment). (*2)

everal months later, Papazian, who had left his teaching job to work fulltime in beer, solidified his intent to travel in large circles: He flew to England, where he joined Jackson at CAMRA’s tenth annual Great British Beer Festival. Papazian served as a judge in three categories and met Roger Protz, who edited CAMRA’s renowned Good Beer Guide. He also came home inspired to create an American version of the GBBF. The plan pushed the AHA into questionable activity, give its mission statement.

But Papazian being Papazian, the idea also shifted almost immediately from idea to reality, propriety be damned. The AHA, he told Zymurgy’s readers, had “become a focal point for the microbrewery movement in the United States,” and that alone “warranted a re-evaluation of the Association’s role in devoting its efforts on behalf of the microbrewer.” (*3)

“In sponsoring this event,” Zymurgy announced,

“the American Homebrewers Association hopes to bring public attention to the micro-brewery industry and provide a forum where brewers and would-be brewers may exchange ideas and information about the industry.” (*4)

But accommodating the new mission forced Papazian to dip a tentative toe into professionalism, something he had thus far resisted. [So far], the organization had relied on volunteers and friends. They wrote and produced the magazine and staffed the board of directors.

[Now that was not enough.] Papazian moved operations out of his back porch and into a small space on Pearl Street in downtown Boulder, just west of the Pearl Street Mall, a bustling ribbon of hip entrepreneurial energy and so a fitting neighborhood for his ambitions. He also hired Daniel Bradford, the organization’s first paid employee other than himself.

_____________

SOURCES:

*1: Charles Matzen, “Small Breweries Revive,” Zymurgy 3, no. 4 (Winter 1980): 16.

*2: Stuart Harris, “Small Breweries Revive: A Resurgence of Traditional Beer,” Zymurgy (Special Issue 1981): 8.

*3: Charlie Papazian, “How Many Apples Does It Take to Make a Pie?,” Zymurgy 5, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 2.

*4: Stuart Harris, “Update,” Zymurgy 5, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 18.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four 

Part Five --- Part Six --- Part Seven --- Part Eight  --- Part Nine

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification. As always, when the excerpt is lengthy, and this one is, I break it into manageable bits and post those bits over the course of several days.

This edition of FDF concerns the early years of the American Homebrewers Association and what is now the Brewers Association, the craft brewing trade group. Much of my research into the topic fell into "insider baseball" information: interesting to those who were involved, and to people with a serious interest in brewing history, but dull as rocks to a more general audience. As a result, almost none of what follows ended up in the book, which was intended for a general audience.

On the other hand, the groups' early histories provide fascinating insight into the creation of a organization from the ground up, particularly the conflicts that ensued between and among the participants. As a result, I think it's worth posting this (long) series in full.

For more about the founding of the AHA, see my earlier string of First Draft Follies entries on that topic. (The link takes you to part six of the six-part series; it contains links to parts one through five.)

_________________________________________________

NOTE: Charlie Papazian is providing commentary on and photos for this series. See his remarks about this entry.

In April, 1980, [Charlie] Papazian and [AHA co-founder Charlie] Matzen traveled to Minneapolis for the annual meeting of the Home Wine and Beer Trade Association (HWBTA), which represented the interests of shop owners and their suppliers. Retail shops provided the most important outlet for Zymurgy [the AHA newsletter], and it behooved Papazian to cultivate friends and acquaintances in the group.

The event was skewed toward the international: Joe Goodwin, chairman of CAMRA, and two British homebrewing experts were scheduled to speak. The event also featured the first International Beer Competition, so-called because the HWBTA’s membership included Canadians, a homebrewing contest organized by Jay Connor, co-owner with Byron Burch of Great Fermentations, [homebrewing] supply shops in northern California.

Papazian won Best of Show and first prize for his Pale Ale, wins that likely surprised the Californians in attendance. Whenever an issue of Zymurgy arrived at Great Fermentations Nancy Vineyard and the rest of the staff would “shake [their] heads” over the brewing information which was, by the Californians’ standards, stone age in its technical competence. (*1)

But that was part of the philosophy bordering on mystique cultivated back in Boulder. Nearly every issue repeated his admonition to “Relax. Have a homebrew.” When a reader wrote to Zymurgy to share with others a technique he used during brewing, Papazian responded with a slap on the wrist in the form of a detailed and complicated scientific correction, but then negated his own advice, and the reader’s concern for detail, [by dismissing] science and complexity.

“Let’s try keep our homebrewing simple but knowledgeable, concerned yet not worried and above all relaxed. Have a homebrew!” (*2)

“A much larger market exists” for shop owners, Papazian argued in another issue, “if the average person can be convinced that he/she can make a consistently better, less expensive beer than those sold commercially, and that homebrewing is not a ‘mystique’ meant only for ‘eccentrics.’” (*3)

Have fun. Keep it simple. Relax. Have a homebrew. Papazian’s Joy of Brewing also focused on fun; never mind that its pages were riddled with inconsistencies and errors, including one procedure which, if followed, would cause the carboy used in the task to explode. Even the Boulder brewing competitions were “primitive” affairs compared to the sophisticated events organized by homebrewers in California. (*4)

___________

SOURCES:

*1: Nancy Vineyard interview with Maureen Ogle, June 6, 2005.

*2: Professor Surfeit, response to Herb Vadney, Zymurgy 3, no. 4 (Winter 1980): 22.

*3: “Sharing Information is Good for the Homebrewer . . . And Good Business,” Zymurgy 3, no. 3 (Fall 1980): 4.

*4: Byron Burch, interview with Maureen Ogle, June 16, 2005.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification. The excerpt is long, so I'm breaking it into manageable bits and posting those bits over the next few days.

This edition of the Follies concerns Gus Busch and the fallout from his purchase of the St. Louis Cardinals.

__________________________

August Busch was not the least bit confused. Angry perhaps, but not confused. He fielded his own team at the hearings: an Anheuser-Busch vice-president plus the company's legal counsel and its advertising manager, the corporation's tax attorney, and an extra lawyer for good measure.

Perhaps the numbers provided comfort as Senator Johnson seized the opportunity to attack Busch face to face. August Busch and Anheuser-Busch, Johnson said, constituted a "selfish" interest that had "openly and without shame . . . prostituted and exploited" the national pastime by making it the "handmaiden and adjunct of the brewing business." (*18) The "Anheuser-Busch-Cardinal combination" posed a "great menace" to the "minor leagues," and a "very grave menace to the small brewing industry . . . ."(*19)

"Stop using the Cardinals as a prop and a stunt to popularize and advertise one specific brand of beer," demanded the senator. (*20)

To his credit, Gus Busch stashed his temper in his hip pocket and stuck to the facts. "Gentleman, I am not a lawyer," he told the senators, but even his untrained eye recognized that Johnson’s bill had "all the appearance and the intent of a discriminatory and punitive law." (*21)

Moreover, Busch added, the Senator was "in error" when he accused Gus Busch and Anheuser-Busch of trying to evade, avoid, or hide tax liabilities and his charges "completely distort[ed]" the legal and tax relationship between Anheuser-Busch and the St. Louis Cardinals. (*22)

With that introduction, Gus handed the proceedings over to the tax attorney, who systematically demolished Johnson’s charges of tax irregularities. Then Gus took the witness seat again, this time to dismantle Johnson’s claim that Anheuser-Busch was destroying minor league baseball and monopolizing the nation’s beer business. In the year since Anheuser-Busch had purchased the team, Busch explained, the Cardinals had signed agreements with five minor league teams and "revived" a sixth that had shut down for lack of money. (*23)

More to the point, Busch argued, if minor league baseball was in trouble, it could hardly be the fault of Anheuser-Busch, which had only begun buying radio time a few weeks earlier at the start of the 1954 baseball season. For the previous eight years, another brewery (Griesedieck Brothers) had broadcast the team’s games on seventy-seven different radio stations, nineteen of them located in cities with minor league teams.

And, Busch added, when Johnson and minor league club owners protested the Cardinals’ purchase of radio air time, the Cardinals organization had promptly canceled all its radio contracts, a move that had provoked an angry uproar and the threat of lawsuits from the affected station managers.

Last but not least, Busch told the committee, Anheuser-Busch sold a grand total of 7.8% of the nation’s beer. "So much," he concluded, "for the charge about so-called beer monopoly." (*24) And so much for Edwin Johnson’s attempts to embarrass August A. Busch, Jr..

The day after Busch’s testimony, Senator Johnson announced that he was abandoning his attempt to apply the antitrust laws to the St. Louis Cardinals.

But Johnson was no doubt pleased to see that even the hated Commie pinkos joined him in denouncing Gus Busch. [The magazine] Soviet Sport denounced Busch’s ownership of the Cardinals and his decision to trade Enos Slaughter to the New York Yankees. "This," pronounced the Communist commentator, "is a typical example of beer and beizbol. The baseball bosses care nothing about sport or their athletes, but only about their profits." (*25)

________________________________________

SOURCES: *18: Senate Subcommittee on the Judiciary, Subjecting Professional Baseball Clubs to the Antitrust Laws, 83d Cong., 2d sess., 1954, 71.

*19: Ibid., 73.

*20: Ibid., 74.

*21: Ibid., 96.

*22: Ibid.

*23: Ibid., 105.

*24: Ibid., 11.

*25: “Moscow Paper Critical of ‘Beer and Beizbol,’” New York Times, May 25, 1954, p. 30.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four

This edition of the Follies concerns Gus Busch and the fallout from his purchase of the St. Louis Cardinals. _____________________________

A Senate subcommittee opened hearings into the matter in March. Johnson’s cause was lost almost the moment the gavel landed.

The first witness was Stanley W. Barnes, speaking on behalf of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice. Barnes got right to the point: as far as the Attorney General was concerned, Senate Joint Resolution 133 appeared to be a "discriminatory" and virtually unenforceable proposal and Justice planned to oppose any effort to enact said resolution. (*9)

Johnson gamely carried on, accusing August A. Busch, Jr. of tax fraud, condemning Busch’s "lavish and vulgar display of beer wealth and beer opulence," and attacking the company’s decision to parade the "magnificent" Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales at Busch Stadium and at the Cardinal’s spring training park in St. Petersburg, Florida. (*10) Anheuser-Busch, Johnson also told his audience, had recently snatched the number one rank away from Schlitz Brewing, and "the reason for it is the ownership of the Cardinal Baseball Club." (*11)

Joseph H. Garagiola, catcher for the Chicago Cubs, showed up at the hearings, although it was not immediately clear to him or to anyone else why he’d been called. Perhaps it was because he’d played for the Cards back in the forties and had lived in St. Louis his entire life.

In any case, Senator William Langer, the North Dakota Republican who presided over the hearings, quizzed Garagiola about his baseball history, the shoulder injury that had caused him to rethink his career in sports, and his current plan, which was to exit baseball and go into sports broadcasting.

After a long series of often confusing questions (and even more confusing answers that may have led the audience to wonder if Joe had injured his head rather than his shoulder), Garagiola’s (tenuous) connection to the Anheuser-Busch matter finally came out: The catcher had talked to one Harry Renfro about switching from baseball to radio or TV. Renfro worked for d’Arcy Advertising, and d’Arcy handled the advertising for Anheuser-Busch.

Therefore, announced a triumphant Senator Johnson, Harry Renfro was actually "doing a fancy bit of tampering with [Garagiola's] contract," and Garagiola himself had come close to violating one of baseball’s sacred rules. (*12)

"Could I say what my thinking is,?" the frustrated ballplayer asked after Johnson finally wound up his confusing and wholly inaccurate assessment of the conversation between Garagiola and Renfro. (*13)

Oh, Johnson replied, "[y]ou could not be held in anyway to blame for anything that may have happened, but I cannot say that for Mr. Renfro, I cannot say that for the Anheuser-Busch people because they knew very well what they were doing." (*14)

The obviously baffled Garagiola kept trying to persuade Johnson otherwise, but finally gave up and let Johnson ramble on.

"I am still confused," said Joe as he prepared to leave the witness chair. (*15) "You do not know whether you are on the air or up in the air," replied Senator Harley Kilgore (D-West Virginia). "Joe, we want to thank you very much," added Senator Langer. (*16)

"I am thoroughly confused," replied Garagioloa. (*17)

______________________________

Sources:

*9: Senate Subcommittee on the Judiciary, Subjecting Professional Baseball Clubs to the Antitrust Laws, 83d Cong., 2d sess., 1954, 4.

*10: Ibid., 18.

*11: Ibid., 24.

*12: Ibid., 55.

*13: Ibid.

*14: Ibid.

*15: Ibid., 65.

*16: Ibid.

*17: Ibid.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four

The edition of the Follies concerns Gus Busch and the fallout from his purchase of the St. Louis Cardinals.

____________________

Gus Busch was all smiles and good humor then--and a good deal less cheerful ten months later, when Senator Edwin C. Johnson, Democrat from Colorado, rose on the Senate floor to engage in that time-honored profession: Busch-bashing.

"Mr. August A. Busch," Johnson informed his colleagues, "is using the St. Louis Cardinals to promote the monopoly of Anheuser-Busch over his competitors in the brewing industry" and "ruthlessly and deliberately annihilating minor-league baseball in a large area of the Midwest."(*3) Baseball, "America’s great national game" and symbol of "everything that is clean and wholesome," meant nothing to Gus Busch except as it provided him with a "cold-blooded, beer-peddling" "opportunity to sell" more Budweiser. (*4) Until and unless Busch was stopped, baseball would be ruined.

Johnson then introduced Senate Joint Resolution 133, which would subject any baseball club "affiliated with the alcoholic beverages industry" to antitrust laws, legislation from which baseball was otherwise exempt. (*5) And in case anyone misunderstood his intent, Johnson added that S.J.R. 133 "was aimed specifically at” August A. Busch and his “beer-baseball combination in St. Louis." (*6)

Johnson’s timing was no coincidence. Baseball’s antitrust exemption had been affirmed just three months earlier in a Supreme Court ruling. Johnson seized on that as a way to leverage Busch out of baseball: if the Cards lost their exemption from antitrust laws, they would also lose access to the reserve clause, which prevented players from jumping ship the minute their contracts expired. Johnson regarded the reserve clause as the "very cornerstone of organized baseball," without which it could not exist, and so believed that the threat of an antitrust suit would be enough to persuade Gus Busch to sell the Cards. (*7)

Nor was Johnson’s motive hard to understand. When he was not serving as senator from Colorado, Johnson presided over the Western Baseball League (WBL), an organization of midwestern and western minor league clubs. In 1953, WBL member Wichita had earned six thousand dollars from radio broadcasts of its games. In 1954, however, it stood to earn zero dollars because the airtime had been purchased by the St. Louis Cardinals.

"Six thousand dollars may seem like peanuts to some," Johnson observed, "but it is the difference between local baseball or no local baseball in Wichita." Because of the Anheuser-Busch "invasion," Johnson added, "it is my considered judgment that the Western League will not operate in 1954." And he, Edwin C. Johnson, would be out of a job. (*8)

___________________________________________

Sources:

*3: Congressional Record, 83d Congress, 2d sess., 1954, 100, pt. 2: 2116, 2119.

*4: Ibid., 2115, 2117.

*5: Ibid., 2115.

*6: Ibid, 2116.

*7: Senate Subcommittee on the Judiciary, Subjecting Professional Baseball Clubs to the Antitrust Laws, 83d Cong., 2d sess., 1954, 8.

*8: E. C. Johnson to August A. Busch, Jr., February 9, 1954, quoted in Senate Subcommittee, Subjecting Professional Baseball Clubs, 103.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four

This edition of the Follies concerns Gus Busch and the fallout from his purchase of the St. Louis Cardinals. __________________________________

All told, 1954 was not a particularly good year for Gus Busch, and not just because of his pricing blunder. [He'd raised the prices of his beer; sales plunged.] He spent part of that year wondering if he’d made a mistake investing in baseball, [namely] the St. Louis Cardinals, which he had bought in 1953.

This was a risky move. Baseball attendance nationwide had suffered in recent years, another victim of [the new technology of] television as viewers chose to stay home and watch rather than take themselves out to the ballpark. In theory at any rate, a corporate parent like Anheuser-Busch could suffer empty seats with more patience than other owners: the advertising would reach consumers whether they were sitting in easy chairs at home or hard seats back of the outfield.

Gus Busch scoffed at the notion that he’d bought the team only for its sales-pitch potential, but he and everyone else knew that it wouldn’t hurt to have Anheuser-Busch signs plastered all over the infield and scoreboard. The new owner knew little about baseball but he dived into this new adventure with the same gusto with which he grabbed everything else in life; this was a man, after all, who hated to lose.

"'We hope to make the Cardinals one of the greatest baseball teams of all time,'" he assured St. Louisans and anyone who cared. (*1)

Never mind that Griesedieck Western Brewing (cousins of the Falstaff Griesedieck) owned the radio and TV contract for the 1953 season. Never mind that state laws banned the sale of beer at the ball parks where the Cards’ farm teams played. (Four months later the Texas legislature legalized the sale of beer at that state’s ballparks.)

Minor details, those, and not enough to dampen Gus’s enthusiasm. He even traveled up to Milwaukee in April to enjoy a joint celebration with Fred Miller, whose company had just helped negotiate (and pay for) the purchase of the Boston Braves. Miller had been named to the new Milwaukee Braves board of directors and he hosted a luncheon for city officials, Braves president Lou Perini; Ford Frick, the commissioner of baseball; Warren Giles, president of the National Baseball League, and Miller’s good buddy Gus Busch.

A bemused Gus posed for pictures with the group, standing behind the seated Fred and with his hands on Miller’s shoulders, as if to say "Down, boy, down!" In the center of the luncheon table sat a cake decorated with small figures of two baseball players, one in a Cards’ uniform, another dressed as a Brave, foreheads touching, leaning into an imaginary shouting match as a tiny "impassive" umpire stood nearby. (*2)

________________________________________

Sources: *1: "'Sporting Venture,'" Time 61 (March 2, 1953): 46.

*2: "Welcome Braves to Beer Capital," Modern Brewery Age 49 (May 1953): 14.

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four

Part Five --- Part Six --- Part Seven --- Part Eight 

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. This edition is a true folly and a prime example of why my first drafts are so damn long: I research what is intended to be a minor point, become fascinated by this minor point, and next thing I know, I've written an embarrassing amount of completely extraneous text.

The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification. The excerpt is long, so I'm breaking it into manageable bits and posting those bits over the next few days.

_____________________________________________________________

A different music-and-drugs scene unfolded in and around San Francisco. Since the 1940s, physicians, psychiatrists, and others had been experimenting with the therapeutic possibilities of LSD, but in the 1960s, some northern Californians began investigating the drug as a source of creative work.

In 1961, Myron Stolaroff founded the International Foundation for Advanced Study, where he and others studied on the effects of LSD on volunteer participants. Stolaroff, an engineer and the first employee hired by Alexander Poniatoff (who founded Ampex Electric, a pioneer in the development of electronic recording devices), tested the drug on Douglas Engelbart; Stewart Brand, who later created the Whole Earth Catalog; Bob Sackman, who co-founded Sun Microsystems; and more than three hundred others, including faculty from Stanford and San Francisco State College, physicians, and other middle-class professionals.

The experience filtered through the minds, offices, and designs of the men and women laying the groundwork for the nation’s computerized future. Ken Kesey forged another kind of drug scene. In the early sixties, Kesey participated in university-sponsored experiments with psychoactive and psychedelic drugs. He smuggled LSD out of the lab so he could share it with friends.

His gatherings, first in Palo Alto and then nearby La Honda, attracted other young men and women interested in “alternative” thinking: Jerry Garcia and Allen Ginsberg showed up. So did Neal Cassady, Larry McMurtry, and Hunter S. Thompson (who brought along his buddies, the Hell’s Angels). Hugh Romney, later known as Wavy Gravy, [dropped in] for acid-laced venison stew, but in 1965 he headed south to a mountaintop overlooking the San Fernando Valley where he founded Hog Farm, one of the most important and long-lived of the sixties’ communes.

California’s allure destroyed San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, a longtime hangout for beats, poets, artists, serious young men, celebrities, and drop-outs. In the mid-sixties, an influx of tourists, “topless bars” and kids drove up the area’s rents and “destroyed” its “Bohemian” character. (*20)

One resident complained that North Beach had deteriorated into a bastion of “‘commercialism.’” (*21) He and others shifted their base of operations to Haight-Ashbury, prized for its cheap housing and enlightened mix of lesbians, “marijuana users,” people of “artistic bent”; “‘hippies,’” “‘heads,’” and “beatniks”; “crusaders for all kinds of causes,” and homosexuals, “artistic gentlemen” who took “tremendous pride” in refurbishing the area’s dilapidated real estate. (*22)

[But] one North Beach devotee headed to a different San Francisco neighborhood.

[At which point I finally got where I was headed, namely to Fritz Maytag and the founding of Anchor Brewing. See Chapter Seven of Ambitious Brew.]

___________________________________

Sources:

*20: Lew Bryson, “Fritz Maytag.” (Lew originally provided me with a paper copy of the interview, but it's now available online.)

*21: “A New Paradise for Beatniks,” San Francisco Examiner, September 5, 1965, p. 5.

*22: “Haight Street Hippies--Are ‘Beats’ Good Business?,” San Francisco Examiner, September 8, 1965, p. 11.