Historian. Author. Ranter. Idea Junkie.
This a blog. Sort of. I rarely use it anymore.
The current issue of The Nation focuses on food. There's much to read and ponder (some of it from the usual suspects). The most worthwhile essay there --- worth, in my opinion, at least fifteen minutes of your time --- is this one by Brent Cunningham. He does as good a job as anyone yet to outline the nearly overwhelming complexities facing those who want to "change the world" one stomach at a time.
This just in from Astute Reader Dexter, our man-not-on-the-beach in Hawaii. As a one-woman walking/talking guinea pig, I concur. (I drink alcohol every day and exercise five to six days a week.) (Currently dealing with a truly nasty case of swimmer's elbow, I might add.) (No! Not drinking elbow. Swimmer's elbow.)
I now resume my fishing expedition. Got interrupted last week by all kinds of crap -- but now back to meat.
(Seriously. Am hoping no one and nothing trips my rant trigger and that I lay low so I can focus on research and writing.) (*1)
I've been wading through several thousand pages of testimony/evidence/etc. from a 1918 Federal Trade Commission investigation into the affairs of what were then the major meat-packing companies. (Yes, that's thousands of pages. Sigh.)
But hey, it's all good. The new book moves forward.
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*1: Which, heh, I could manage if I stop reading newspapers, magazines, blogs, twitter, etc. Isolation. I need to become a serious isolationist.
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These properties mostly consisted of older plants with outdated or dilapidated equipment.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.
Okey dokey. This is what I get for being lazy (see comment from me on earlier post.) Regarding the (recent) history of imported beer in the U.S: I was wrong in my earlier post. Here are some accurate numbers (and thanks again to Jess for calling me out on this): In 1983 (close enough to 1984, right?), import beers accounted for just under three percent of total sales in the United States.
What I misremembered was the growth rate, as opposed to the share of total beer sales. Starting in the 1950s, sales of imports rose year after year, often as much as nine or ten percent at a time when domestic sales were either stagnant or rose only a half percent or so. In 1982, for example, import sales rose 10.2% higher than in 1981.
It has to be the special mental attitude of the consumer of imported beers," noted the president of Grolsch Importers, Inc.. (*1)
He was feeling good about the world: sales of Grolsch had soared 20% in 1982. Sales of Heinken, in contrast, had only gone up eleven percent. No small beer, that number: Heinken had commandeered more than 40% of the American import market. Prosit!
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*1: Ross Heuer, "'82 Was Another Growth Year for the Leading Imports," Brewers Digest 58, no. 3 (March 1983): 12.
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.
Website of Maureen Ogle, author and historian. Books include Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer; In Meat We Trust: An Unexpected History of Carnivore America; and Key West: History of An Island of Dreams.
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