New Beer Book

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Tip o' the mug to David Fahey from the History of Alcohol and Drugs website for letting me know that Amy Mittelman's new book will be available in December. (The Amazon page shows it available now.) The title is Brewing Battles: The Story of American Beer. (Catchy subtitle, eh??) I read her dissertation (an investigation of the alcohol industry and federal tax policies) when I was working on my book about beer. That was a fine piece of research, and I'm guessing this book is as well. Her publisher's page is here, and here's the Amazon page.

Thanks again to David.

Pondering Beer's Future

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In a comment on my previous blog entry, Stan Hieronymus of appellationbeer.com asks a good question: Will beer-based cookbooks and campaigns, like Here's to Beer, persuade Americans to re-think beer's role in daily life? (*1)

I'm all for the focus on food and beer. But that is well-trod territory, one that post-Prohibition brewers worked as they struggled to promote beer to an indifferent public. In the 1930s, for example, brewers hosted "ladies luncheons" in department stores, where hired chefs prepared food with beer. During the '40s and '50s, women's magazines and the "women's" section of daily newspapers routinely ran articles about how to cook with and serve beer. (I suspect those pieces were press releases submitted by breweries and their ad agencies.)

It didn't have much impact then. Will it now? I'm not sure, although I hasten to add that I'm all in favor of ANYTHING brewers can do to promote beer as a sophisticated, complex beverage. That won't be easy. Like just about everything else in daily life, public relations, marketing, and media are in turmoil. I'm not sure anyone, in or out of brewing, understands what kinds of promotions work in an age of remote controls, Ipods, and internet.

But to get back to Stan's question: In my opinion, until brewers persuade Americans to re-think their attitudes toward alcohol, cookbooks won't do much good. The "Here's to Beer" campaign won't have much impact. But they've got an uphill climb ahead of them, because the "other side" is far better organized and funded.

Right now, MADD owns the subject of alcohol. It sets both the tone and the agenda in the crusade to demonize alcohol and to eliminate its manufacture, sale, and consumption in the United States. What brewers need is an equally substantive, organized campaign to counteract the neo-Prohibitionists (eg, MADD and groups like it). The operative word here is ORGANIZED. As in: Unified. United. As in: they need to work together.

Brewing's great downfall c. 1915 was not the Prohibitionists per se. It was the prohibitionists' unifed action and the brewers' fragmented fractitiousness. Yes, the Brewers Association works hard to promote beer. But its budget and resources are limited.

Yes, Jim Koch at Boston Beer Company uses his ad dollars to air commercials that challenge our old image of beer. Yes, brewers' website urge vistors to "drink responsibly." Yes, the Here's to Beer campaign soldiers on. But it's not enough, and it's too disjointed and fractured. Brewers need to work hard TOGETHER. Not as competitors, but as partners in a larger battle. And yes, that means that the craft brewers need to reach out and accept the helping hand offered by That Big Giant that funds the Here's to Beer campaign. Because none of them can do it alone.

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*1: Full disclosure: I appeared in the Here's to Beer documentary titled "The American Brew." I was not paid for my time nor was I compensated for expenses incurred.

Pondering the Fear of Beer

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I've been mulling Garrett Oliver's op-ed piece "Don't Fear Big Beer. It appeared in the New York Times on October 19. Something about it bugged me, but it took me awhile to figure out what it was.

Don't get me wrong. It's a fine piece, full of nice sentiments about the joys and wonders of American craft beer. But I think Oliver veered down the wrong road when he asserted that "there is no future" in what he calls "industrial beer" (by which I assume he means anything made by Anheuser-Busch or Miller Brewing).

He argues that just as Americans are drinking better coffee than they did ten years ago, so, too, they're discovering fine craft beer.

Maybe. Maybe not. Here's another take on it: Something like 95% of the beer consumed in the U.S. is "industrial." Only about 5% comes from "craft" brewers. Moreover, that proportion -- 95% versus 5% -- has remained fairly constant for the past fifteen or so years.

So it seems to me that the more interesting question is: Why? We're twenty-five years into the "real" beer revolution. Why haven't craft beermakers grabbed more of the market? Why do the vast majority of Americans prefer "industrial" beer?

I think it's because we don't take beer seriously. And we don't take beer seriously because we don't respect alcohol. Instead, we Americans demonize alcohol. We teach children that it's bad and evil, and so of course as teenagers, they want to be naughty. They learn to drink in their cars at midnight, rather than at home with their families. And when we're not demonizing it, we're infantilizing the act of drinking (slugging down shots, giggling at the notion of having a beer with lunch, cackling at our friends when they can't stand upright). Then they grow up and either stop drinking completely or save drinking for "special" occasions. And then they pass on the lessons learned to their kids, and the process starts all over again.

Lesson being: beer is something to slug down randomly rather than a fine beverage to consume with fine food. Another lesson learned: beer's not worth much money, certainly not worth as much as, say, good mayonnaise or a pair of shoes. Craft beer is more expensive than its "industrial" counterpart; typically quite a bit more expensive. When Susan and Joe Consumer shop for beer, they're shopping by price. Given the choice between splurging on beer or shoes, they're gonna choose shoes.

Our only "grown-up" beverage is wine. We think of it as a fitting companion for fine dining. I think that's because, prior to about 1960, American wine production was about zilch and wine consumption was even lower. But then people began investing in vineyards and grapes in California and elsewhere. When it came time to marketing their wares, they were starting from scratch. Americans didn't know much about wine.Vintners were smart: they promoted wine as a sophisticated beverage best consumed with food, rather than as an alternative to canned beer or martinis.

Post-Prohibition brewers and distillers, in contrast, rebuilt old industries. But they had to market their wares to an audience that had been taught to disrespect and fear both. Indeed, if there's a single long-term impact of Prohibition (other than the "three-tier system" of distribution), it is that the Prohibitionists endowed alcohol with shame, and Americans have not been able to shake that inheritance.

Garrett Oliver asserts there's no future in industrial beer. I say there's not much future in craft beer until and unless we learn to respect alcohol in general and beer in particular. Only then will it seem normal to serve a fine stout with a fine roast beef. If craft brewers want to own the future, then they need to address the deeper issue of Americans's mistrust and misuse of alcohol. Until then, BUD is likely to remain a good investment in "the future."

Name the Beer Company

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Okay. I can't resist. Yes, I know this Miller/Coors thing is a "collaboration," and not "merger." Or whatever. But let's assume the two merged. What's a good name for the new entity? Coiller? Ciller? (With a hard "c" so it rhymes with "killer.") Moors? Millorc? (Sounds like something out of science fiction. Or maybe a long-lost creature from Middle Earth?) Cooriller? (A new species of primate.) Enough fun and games. Back to work, everyone!

Deborah Solomon? A Waste of My Time.

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Yeah, yeah, okay. I know blogs are supposed to be specific and targeted and mine rambles all over when it should stick to history or beer. But.......... when a girl’s gotta rant, she’s gotta rant.

And here’s a rantable subject if I ever came across one. Deborah Solomon writes a column for the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times titled "Questions For," in which she poses questions to various "famous" people. Or not. In last Sunday’s opinion section, the newspaper's public editor revealed that Solomon routinely "reworks" her interviews after the fact. The column typically contains quotations taken out of context and questions that she never posed.

Worse yet, her bosses at the Times knew this, but failed to alert readers. According to the magazine's editor Gerald Marzorati, that's okay because Solomon's column is intended as "entertainment." Oh? That's news to me. I’ve always read Solomon’s column the way it was presented: as accurate representations of actual interviews.

On the surface, this feels like a rehash of the Jayson Blair episode of a few years ago: Blair was a Times reporter who regularly faked his sources, his quotes, and his reporting. When that story broke, his supervisors struggled to contain the damage. Heads, as they say, rolled. The Blair affair came off as a case of bureaucratic bumbling induced, perhaps, by lethargy or incompetence.

The Solomon ugliness, however, feels more like arrogant indifference induced by -- a kind of smug condescension. As if various editors at the Times are trying to woo the snarky YouTube crowd: If you’re clever and hip, you knew Solomon was having fun at her interviewees' expense. If you took her text literally, well, you’re kinda stupid and definitely unhip. Maybe I'm old (well, okay, I am. I've over fifty).

But I ain't stupid. If Solomon couldn't figure out how to do good interviews without resorting to deceit, then she's simply a bad reporter. I sure won’t read waste time reading anything else written by her. Unless, of course, she turns to fiction. I’m always up for an escape into make-believe.