One Other Point About Anti-Trust and Beer

Not that I'm inclined to go into a long historical disquisition on this but . . . Regarding anti-trust, beer, etc. (because that loony "news" piece is still floating around the internet), it's worth elaborating a bit on the results of anti-trust prosecutions in the 1960s and 1970s. (By the way, the "new" version now appearing at Slate's The Big Money is just a slightly longer version of the piece that  originally appeared in the New York Times.)

At the time, the federal government took action against beermakers, most notably Schlitz and Anheuser-Busch, when those companies tried to buy other beer companies, or when they wanted to buy brewing plants. (Eg, sometimes a company was already out of business and the one brewer simply wanted to buy the actual brewhouse, the facility.)

These properties mostly consisted of older plants with outdated or dilapidated equipment. In almost every case, the government refused to allow the acquistions. So Schlitz and A-B made their only logical, and legal, move: They invested in NEW brewing facilities. Schlitz, for example, spent millions and millions of dollars building ultra-efficient, state-of-the-art brewing plants.

No surprise, as a result both Schlitz and A-B were able to reduce their production costs and brew more beer at a lower price. Which, ya know, allowed them to gain a market advantage.

Again, there was nothing illegal about their moves, and it was the ONLY option left to them, given the anti-trust policy at the time. (Well, okay, they had another option: maintain the status quo, or, put another way, not grow any larger.)

For what it's worth.

Historical Tidbits: The New York Times Reviews "The Beer Hunter," 1990

I gather today is the anniversary of the death of Michael Jackson. So in that spirit (no pun intended): In August 1990, cable television's Discovery Channel began airing Michael Jackson's six-part documentary on beer.(*1)

At the time, Jackson was unknown to most Americans but a reporter for the New York Times wrote a preview of the series. The reporter explained that Jackson's goal was to answer the question "Why should wine drinkers be esteemed as nobs while beer drinker are put down as slobs?"

The first episode , "The Burgandies of Belgium," showed Jackson in various Belgian breweries and "emulating the wine know-it-alls" as he "rhapsodiz[ed]" over the "'three-dimensional exercise" of beer tasting. Jackson, noted the reporter, "is evidently in earnest."

That first half-hour also featured a multi-course meal in which high-toned food was cooked and paired with equally high-toned beer. The "sedate diners" at the table, noted the Times writer, "bear no resemblance to the guzzlers in American [beer] commercials." "The lesson of this  foamy journey," concluded the reporter, "is that  homely beers, no less than delicate wines, require attention in the making and invite pretension in the drinking."

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*1: The Discovery Channel aired the program as "Beer." It was released on VHS tape as "The Beer Hunter."

Source: Walter Goodman, "Beer for Slim, Elegant Sophisticates," New York Times, August 23, 1990, p. C22.

About That Loony Anheuser-Busch "Anti-Trust" Claim

I wasn't going to waste my time on this but . . . . Yesterday the New York Times ran this piece in which someone with entirely too much time on his/her hands "argued" (and I use that term loosely) that when Anheuser-Busch InBev announced it was raising prices, it all but invited the Obama administration to file an anti-trust suit against the company.

And suddenly everyone and his mother seems to be running around in breathless anticipation, waiting for A-B to finally get what's coming to it, damnit. Picture me rolling my eyes. Read the piece for yourself (it's short), but know this:

1. Whoever wrote it knows little or nothing about the recent history of the beer industry.

2. A-B, Miller, and Coors have controlled 80% of the beer market for about 25 years (during which time, of course, the number of American beermakers rose from about 100 to 1500).

3. The Pabst suit was one of many filed by the government between c. 1960 and 1980.

4. All the beer makers, large and small, raised their prices recently. They did so last year at this time, and the year before that, and the year before that . . . (you get the picture).

5. There is no more reason to assume that this price hike will inspire an anti-trust suit than there is reason to assume or believe I'll land on the moon anytime soon.

Finally, and most important, this is the kind of vacuous crap that ends up in newspapers today as newspaper/media companies try to figure out how to add "content" to their websites. (I am dead certain this stuff would never have appeared in the print edition of the paper.) There is no story here.

If the Times had a reporter assigned to the beer industry beat, the piece would not have appeared, but it doesn't. As a result, it tends to print inane crap about the brewing industry, presumably in an attempt to woo readers.

In this case they probably succeeded, because this "reporting" was all over the internet in about thirty minutes flat, thereby drawing readers to the Times website. You won't see fluff like this in, say, The Wall Street Journal or the St. Louis Post-Dispatch because they have reporters assigned to cover the industry (David Kesmodel and Jeremiah McWilliams.)

If you want to follow the industry, read Kesmodel in particular (Jeremiah's reporting is focused toward A-B, no surprise given his location). But they're both terrific reporters.

And by the way, I am otherwise a huge fan of the New York Times. I just don't bother with its beer industry coverage because, well, see above.

Let Us Now Praise . . . Alan McLeod (Again)

As some of you realize, I'm a big fan of common sense, reason, facts, and, well, good thinking.

Which is why I'm a fan of Alan McLeod, the brains behind A Good Beer Blog. A prime example is his recent essay about blogging, "professionals," "amateurs," and a whole lotta other topics in between. No, I'm not a beer blogger or a beer writer --- but I so appreciate good writing and thinking regardless of topic. I hope you to, too.

Which is why you oughta read Alan's blog. (And, no, I didn't know that I'd inadvertently referred him, via Stan, to the piece that inspired this instance of rumination. Frankly, and as I noted a day or so ago, I'm a bit baffled that anyone reads my tweets. Who knew?)

(Yes, I know that's irrational: Presumably I bother tweeting because I assume someone's going to read the tweet. Certainly that's my hope. In my experience, however, life is chock-ablock with unrealized hopes and so, ya know....)

Miller[Coors] v. Anheuser-Busch DukeOut. Round . . . Two?

This is worth coming out of hiberation for. Jeremiah McWilliams, the fabbo Lager Heads guy for the St. Louis-Post Dispatch, notes an interview with the CEO at MillerCoors. Here's the money quote:

“We are writing beer history, and this is a trip,” Kiely told Sterrett. “This is a game that will play out over the next 25 years in the beer business, and I will be watching this from my rocking chair.”

Hey! What I been sayin' all along! Although I hope it won't take 25 years, if only because I'd like to know how it comes out. If history is any guide, however, it'll be over with in about five years.

More on Peoples Brewing Company

I got a terrific email from a reader over the weekend, and want to pass it along to you. The background is the black-owned brewing company I mentioned in the op-ed piece I wrote last week for the Washington Post.

In 1970, a group of investors, some of whom were African-American, acquired the old Peoples Brewing plant in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Peoples was initially founded in 1911, but like many small breweries it had long since closed its doors, and only came back to life thanks to its new owners.

The new venture, by the way, didn't last long (the early 1970s was a truly bad time to open a new brewing company). Anyway, a woman who read that essay emailed me this weekend with her own bit of Peoples’ history. Her email follows:

One of the partners [in Peoples] was the husband of my best friend. I first saw the beer, Peoples Beer, when my friend and her husband brought a case to a party in 1971 hosted by me and my husband in Evanston, IL, a suburb north of Chicago.

We knew the beer was historic and didn't serve it to the guests on that evening. The beer later traveled to Silver Spring, MD in 1973 when our family moved there.

Over the years, I gave away cans of Peoples, including to a son of the junior high school principal I worked for. Beer can collecting was the rage in the 1970s, and Peoples was featured in some beer can collecting catalogs as a rare beer.

I managed to hold onto one can of Peoples, but sadly, one evening an older relative found the can of Peoples, which I thought I had put away safely in an out-of-the-way cabinet, opened it, and drank it!

So all I have now is an empty Peoples can! I guess an empty Peoples can will not put my grandson through college!

So --- anyone else out there have a can of Peoples?