BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Risks and rewards when breweries take social stances.

1989: Capitalists in a Commie joint. 

Bryan Roth is a fine writer and this is a thought-provoking piece.

To be honest, I'm conflicted. There is a big part of me that hasn't moved past my "these machines kill fascists" period, and yet also a feeling of dismay at the seeming inevitability of placing breweries, pubs and hospitality-oriented establishments into political categories.

A Show of Hands – Breweries Take Political and Business Risks Mixing Beer and Social Stances, by Bryan Roth (Good Beer Hunting)

Political stances are nothing new in the generally progressive world of beer, but as companies across all industries step deeper into the political fray leading up to the 2020 election, a new question arises: is taking action inevitable?

"We are more aware and more comfortable doing these things that show our ideas and values," says David Faris, an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and host of the Electing to Drink podcast. "When the president himself gets involved in deeply divisive cultural-political issues and won't let them go, he forces people to take into consideration actions they never would have thought about before."

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: If beer choices constantly rotate, then it's revolutionary to rotate them less often -- or not at all.

The Spring 2019 issue (Vol. 63) of Food & Dining Magazine will hit the streets in March. My beer column is returning with a brief overview of Pints&union, emphasizing our revolutionary beer program.

My stand is clear, and the time for a “back to basics” movement is now. I believe there exists a silent majority among American beer drinkers who find the kaleidoscopic tilt-whirl of short attention spans – this frenetic hamster wheel approach to beer appreciation – utterly bewildering.

If you're thinking this isn't revolutionary at all, I beg to differ. The core definition of revolution is "involving or causing a complete or dramatic change." There's an inescapable relativity to this. If beer choices constantly rotate, then it's revolutionary to rotate them less often -- or not at all.

Ah, but BUSINESS -- consumers demand kaleidoscopic hamster wheels, therefore businesses are compelled to provide them or go bust.

Not entirely, and in fact I've never really believed this is true. If I had, would there have been a Rich O's Public House in 1990 offering unknown beers when consumers were demanding a dozen more tasteless frozen light lager "choices"?

Besides, if every bar in town is showing the Stupor Bore, then I want my joint to do something different as a haven for the minority preferring anything but football. Businesses are compelled to find markets, not pander to any particular model.

This is as good a segue as any into a nationwide campaign to restore a dollop or three of equilibrium to the reign of short beer attention spans.

Why #FlagshipFebruary?

What sometimes gets lost amid the constant stream of special releases are the beers that paved the way for today’s remarkable global beer market, or in other words, the flagship beers that got us here.

When the current keg of Monnik Mild George depletes, there'll be two kegs of Anchor Steam to pour in connivance with #FlagshipFebruary, although I can't say exactly when this will begin.

San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Co. is widely acknowledged to be the first modern-day craft brewery in the United States. It is less appreciated that the company’s flagship beer, Anchor Steam Beer, is the first American craft beer in modern times. Because of its status as the last survivor of the steam beer style, which was once widespread in the American West, the beer appears to be a missing link between historic and craft beers. However, the circumstances of its reinvention in 1971 show it to be something far more important.

Finally, at Good Beer Hunting the forever well-informed and provocative Bryan Roth turns the very notion of "flagship" inside out. It's very interesting reading, which makes me more determined than ever to create, nurture and sustain an alternative beachhead.

We’ve Created a Monster — What Does it Mean to Talk Flagship Fatigue?

... Advocates spent the last 40 years decrying the problems of mass market Lager and clamoring for more options and experiences via “small and independent” craft brewers. They can hardly complain when those wishes come to fruition, and when 85% of 21-and-over Americans live within 10 miles of a brewery. This is the future liberal, promiscuous drinkers want, old-guard flagships be damned.

I've been one of these advocates, who now finds his innate contrarianism to be as infinitely mutable as the beer marketplace itself. I'm proud of what we've accomplished so far, and I will continue to work on improving the beer experience at Pints&union.

THE BEER BEAT: How "Ambitious Brew" prefaced "I Know What Boyz Like" -- and "The Misogynist Within."

From Bryan Roth's article at Good Beer Hunting.

Maureen Ogle's Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer was published in 2006, and I've finally gotten around to reading it.

When the Beer Was Bitter, and Its Future Cloudy, by William Grimes (New York Times; October 27, 2006)

In the annals of immigrant success stories, lager beer deserves its own chapter. Before 1840, Americans drank English ales and porter or, more commonly, whiskey and rum. But as Germans by the thousands poured into New York and moved onward to Midwestern towns like Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago and Milwaukee, they presented a new beverage to the American palate, a different kind of beer that Americans took to with such, shall we say, gusto that it soon became the national drink.

The rise of lager beer, and the great names associated with it — names like Busch, Pabst, Blatz, Schlitz and Miller — is the subject of Maureen Ogle’s effervescent, occasionally frothy “Ambitious Brew,” a fairly standard history with a provocative thesis attached. Ms. Ogle, in telling the story of the great beer families, takes the air out of a few myths, chief among them the standard narrative used to explain beer’s sad decline in quality to the pale, tasteless, mass-market drink advertised these days on televised sports.

The twice-told tale of beer’s fall from grace goes something like this. In olden days, thousands of craft brewers turned out a pure, flavorful product made from nothing more than hops, barley, water and yeast. After Prohibition, however, the big beer companies started manufacturing beer with cheap ingredients like rice and corn, duped the public into buying it through lavish advertising campaigns and forced their smaller competitors out of business, making the world safe for Bud Light.

The real story, as Ms. Ogle tells it, is a little more complicated.

Maybe it actually was a "little more complicated," but one of the author's own anecdotes confirms that the industrial beer barons of old weren't exactly exemplars of vision or social consciousness.

Ogle tells of the run-up to Prohibition, with the "Drys" an early example of a well-funded, highly-motivated single-issue lobby group. The teetotalers began putting points on the scoreboard in the late 1800s, but it took the brewers until 1913 to so much as begin organizing in response, and unity was elusive among them.

Perhaps the most effective argument coming from the prohibitionist camp pertained to the sinfulness of the average saloon. Most were tied to a brewery, and the breweries feared giving up this lucrative distribution arrangement even when the saloons were functioning as cesspools, gambling dens and whorehouses.

The ensuing xenophobia and patriotism (almost to a man, the beer barons were of German ancestry, albeit American-born) greeting America's inexorable march toward entry into WWI effectively did the rest. The brewers didn't know what hit them, primarily because they refused to pay attention until it was too late.

Ever since Leg Spreader first oozed to the surface three years ago (really -- it was January, 2015), much has been accomplished with respect to sexism in "craft" beer.

Quite a bit is left to be done, judging by another excellent piece by Bryan Roth, who is one of the most thoughtful beer writers around -- perhaps the Dave Zirin of good beer?

In the immediate aftermath of Roth's essay, just about every brewery mentioned belatedly recalled those long ago words of Phil Collins: "There must be some misunderstanding/There must be some kind of mistake."

Coming amid the overdue tsunami of #MeToo, I'm afraid to ask this question, but can the "craft" brewers of today really be as blind as those pre-Prohibition beer barons?

I Know What Boyz Like — A Grassroots Industry Struggles to Find Leadership on Social Issues, by Bryan Roth (Good Beer Hunting)

 ... “It’s a microcosm of the cultural zeitgeist right now,” says (Craig) Smith, the brewer and consultant from Florida. “We couldn’t be more divided in everything.”

In the macro sense, the sentiment feels true, especially for anyone who scrolls through news feeds or turns on the nightly news. But, as shown from a variety of viewpoints across many entries to the beer industry, there has also never been as much cohesiveness around this one topic. If anything, now may be the most ideal time to push the hardest toward change. The Brewers Association struck a decades-long victory recently when tax reform passed, lowering federal costs for selling beer. It’s making a significant investment in a public hop-breeding program. The organization even launched an initiative to address an ongoing problem of lost kegs, which can be a significant financial burden to breweries.

Battles have been won. If ever there was a time to jump into the fray for other causes, now would be it. In fact, others have already done so.

At the end of December, the UK's Campaign for Real Ale consumer advocacy group released its first executive statement on discrimination, condemning "any behaviour that discriminates against individuals because of their gender, race, ethnic origin, disability, age, nationality, national origin, sexuality, religion or belief, marital status and social class.” Any use of sexist images or slogans would bar placement at the group's festivals, competitions, and publications.

Currently, no state guild in the U.S. lists any similar language on its website. The Brewers Association has its marketing code, and won’t announce inappropriate names of award-winning beers at events, but nothing as definitive as what the UK organization issued.

“It's important that CAMRA's stance is as public as possible in order to ensure that all our members are aware of the organization's policy when it comes to discrimination, and that they understand the standards of behaviour and value that we expect any member of CAMRA to follow,” says Tom Stainer, the organization’s head of communications. “It's also important that we make it clear to the rest of the industry where we stand on issues of discrimination.”

Similarly, the UK’s Society of Independent Brewers followed suit, issuing a statement that “SIBA members who promote their beers with sexist, offensive advertising have no place in our membership of responsible, professional brewing businesses.” The group goes a step farther than its U.S. counterpart in regard to offensive names or labels, holding the right to disqualify competition entries out right instead of simply not saying a beer's name during award announcements.

Change is happening in many sectors of society, but across the U.S., an attempt at incremental steps continues to be led by those with the least at stake ...

This would be an excellent juncture to turn to a more palatable topic, like Maibock or NEIPA. But I'm not finished yet. I recommend reading the whole article, although only the conclusion is here.

The Misogynist Within, by Kai Wright (The Nation)

Sexual harassment expresses power dynamics from which all men benefit.

... And so now we face a reckoning. Let it be more than a coming to terms with sexual harassment. Yes, let’s bring the abusers to justice. But let us also consider the many ways in which we’ve organized ourselves around misogyny—in our workplaces, in our families, and as individuals. Maybe then we can mount a movement larger than Democrats and Republicans, and start talking seriously instead about things like peace, justice, and equity.

THE BEER BEAT: "Craft," "quality" and other beer semantics -- but independence genuinely matters to me.

Believe it or not, at one time not so long ago the feds prohibited listing the alcohol content on a bottle or can of beer.

Allegedly this owed to a post-Prohibition fear that posted strengths would lead to competition based on potency alone, although at the very same time, liquors producers were obliged to do the very opposite and clearly indicate the proof.

Whatever the origin, this rule was successfully appealed and disappeared by the mid-1990s. For the most part, during the past 25 years there has been widespread acceptance that knowing the alcohol content is a crucial piece of consumer information, enabling a drinker to understand exactly what he or she is getting into -- assuming the knowledge is desired, and of course for some, it isn't.

One conclusion of Bryan Roth's piece on the beer semantics of craft and quality is that relatively few beer consumers as yet care very much about the ownership of the brewery so long as the components denoted by "craft" are present.

In short, whether the brewery is independent or monolithic/corporate just isn't a consideration because it tells consumers little about "quality" as this concept is applied to the denominator "craft."

Perhaps, but as with alcohol content those many years ago, beer drinkers like me who actually are interested in knowing the destination of our cash -- how much of it stays with an independent producer as opposed to being repatriated to shareholders in Switzerland or Hong Kong -- really want to know.

It's consumer information, every bit as much as alcohol content or hop varieties. Can there be too much consumer information? I don't think so.

By the way, before I turn it over to Roth, there's this essay for anyone in need of a refresher course as to why these considerations matter:

The BS Arguments of Craft Beer Sell-Outs: How Brewery Buyouts Hurt Craft Beer, by Jim Vorel (Paste)

Let me tell you who I care about, in the world of beer: I care about the craft beer industry as a whole. I care about selection and availability of great craft beer, and at night I dream of a world where great beer from independent breweries can be accessed just about anywhere.

That dream is currently under attack, primarily by so-called “Big Beer,” but not entirely. For all of the wrangling and shady dealing that AB-InBev and MillerCoors are conducting in the American beer market, equally disturbing is the propensity of beer geeks and even food & drink publications to rationalize and apologize for the buyouts and practices that are currently driving craft beer into the most dangerous situation it’s faced in more than a decade. In some cases, would-be allies are willingly parroting back the exact marketing copy that AB-InBev would love to place in their mouths. Other times, beer drinkers are simply accepting the bullshit reassurances of just-purchased breweries who have huge monetary incentives to be dishonest.

But don’t take our word for it. We’re not here to simply rant and rave—we’re here to give you specific examples of BS rationalizations you’ll see in the wake of every major brewery buyout. We’re here to point out the logical chasms and blatant hypocrisy that proliferate in the public response to buyouts. And we’re here to point out exactly why these buyouts are so capable of devastating the craft brewing industry ... 

As usual, Roth's work is outstanding and thought-provoking. It certainly provokes my thoughts, primarily because drinking without thinking hasn't ever held much interest for me.

Beer’s War of Wordplay — The Semantics of “Craft” and “Quality” (at Good Beer Hunting)

 ... The constant back-and-forth over objective definitions of what “craft” or “independent” means for beer overlooks the value placed on the terminology pulled from our own dictionaries. Instead of seeing these words as a way to convey particular feelings toward a beer of choice, we’re missing a rather straightforward purpose created over years of marketing by trade organizations and breweries themselves.

As we enter a period where “independent” is set to act as the vernacular de jour for the most in-the-weeds beer lovers, it’s unfortunate that the previous effort surrounding the ideals of “craft” may fall to the wayside. While many words have malleable interpretations, when it comes to sales, the effective message that is relayed to customers through “craft” actually matches up with its intentions: it’s how most of the American public thinks about “quality” ... 

THE BEER BEAT: Rarity, beer quality, authenticity, and why it's so difficult to love the beer you're with.

From Roth's essay.

I won't kid you, and I'll confess to a measure of pride about the small regional role I've played in the better beer revolution.

If any one aspect of the seemingly Sisyphean task of supplanting Bud Think obsessed me the most from the late 1980s forward, it was the educational angle.

After university, I ruled out teaching as a career. Then I became a teacher, anyway.

At a time when information was scarce, I taught myself what better beer meant, both objectively and spiritually, and my daily objective once established at the Public House was to try to impart this knowledge to others, so they'd be able to look out upon the expanding range of choice and make good decisions based on their likes and dislikes.

At some point during this mostly upbeat 25-year run in business, I looked around and saw a radically changed landscape. Almost overnight we'd become snobs, not revolutionaries. It was all about badges of braggadocio -- ratings, rarity and a diminished stylistic range. At the same time as we'd exploded outward as a cause-driven category, we'd shrunk inward as advocates for it.

Now it was about social media selfies -- this rare beer I waited hours to purchase; this beer I have, and you don't. Look at me! I'm an expert, and I'm special. In short, there seemed to be numerous factors conspiring to lower the value of beer as worldview; instead, a sort of consumer narcissism seemed to have taken hold, and I felt alienated from it.

When this point arrived, I knew that as a card-carrying contrarian from the beginning, I was about to openly rebel against the wayward edifice I'd helped construct. Truth be told, it was inevitable, and I knew it all along. It was a matter of when, not if.

Just last week I pointed to an essay by Lew Bryson, in which he discussed what he'd like to see more and less of in 2017.

THE BEER BEAT: The beer and whiskey that Lew Bryson wants to drink in 2017.

Many of you know that Lew is a friend of mine, and so my touts aren't entirely unbiased. I'm not a whiskey drinker, and so cannot take a substantive position on Lew's distilled thoughts. However, his beer observations are spot on, mirroring my own.

Lew addressed rarity.

BY GOD, A LOT LESS OF
Waiting in lines for beer releases.
Put away the camp chairs, this ain’t a Phish concert. If anything, you should be in a Stephan Stills state of mind, humming “Love The One You’re With.” Chances are very good that a brewery, a bar or a store near you is selling some excellent beers right now. Go get some and worry less about what you’re missing.

For greater insight as to why people would ever stand in line for rare beers, there is this wonderful essay by Bryan Roth, otherwise known as "my kind of beer writing."

In it, the author considers authenticity, consumer perceptions of quality, marketing, beer ratings, rarity and value systems. The teaser paragraph comes nowhere close to addressing the themes explored herein, so pour yourself a contemplative pale ale and go read it.

Making Snowflakes: An Exploration into Rarity, Beer Quality and Industry Authenticity, by Bryan Roth (This Is Why I'm Drunk)

 ... (It) puts beer in an interesting spot. Not only do industry tastemakers matter in terms of bias and preference that might influence others, but they’re impacted by the psychological cues that make rare beers so good in the first place. Ratings and decisions are based on quality, but there is more to the final score. On top of that, the social nature of beer and an increasing value placed on online interactions means that more people can become an “expert,” or, at least, an influencer. When considering the sum of research presented so far, all this comes back to the power that authenticity – and rarity – wields over us.

THE BEER BEAT: Addressing diversity in "craft" beer, with Naughty Girl once again on the wrong side of the debate.

Let’s put an old saw to the test: Is it really true that any publicity is good publicity?

Specifically, if a New Albanian Brewing Company beer and beer label, as conceived on my watch in 2011, appears alongside an article by a national recognized blogger in 2016 and then is linked on Facebook by a brewing superstar, that’s wonderful, right?

Right there it is ... or "wrong" there it is?

Mitch Steele, formerly of Stone Brewing Company and one of my heroes in the field of “craft” brewing, is pointing to Naughty Girl in the context of "doing better" with issues of diversity and equality, presumably because Naughty Girl does worse.

This latest embarrassing reference to my checkered past starts here, with a very good blog post.

Addressing Diversity in Beer: Seeking Action, by Bryan Roth (This Is Why I’m Drunk)

Over the weekend, I listened to the latest Good Beer Hunting podcast with members of Indianapolis’ Central State Brewing. Among the variety of topics covered by host Michael Kiser was a lengthy discussion of the business’ commitment to social issues of equality and diversity. The Central State crew spoke with earnest about their interest in LGBT issues and Indiana’s political climate.

On Tuesday, I saw a brewery with a beer named “Date Grape.”

This contrast is not just the push-pull of today’s beer industry, but American culture as well. It’s easy to find wonderful examples of people, businesses and institutions doing what’s right for the advancement of human beings. Then you turn around and that 180 feels like more than a metaphor when you see downright ignorant acts.

Later in his piece, Roth links to my blog column about the Great Leg Spreader Crisis of 2015.

The PC: Ripped straight from the pages of an Onion satire: “13 white males not really so eager to discuss issues like racism and sexism.”

In a comment to Roth's post, I linked to my follow-up a year later. I merely wanted him to know that the story didn't end in 2015.

Can I get a “do-over” on Naughty Girl?

Earlier today, I spoke with Roth by phone in connection with another article he's writing about this general topic, and he asked how all this has changed me, and in answering, I said that the jury's out because change always is a work in progress.

Leg Spreader gave me pause, as did the reactions of some colleagues on the guild board. In turn, I started seeing Naughty Girl in a different light. My professional life was evolving during the same period of time. These chain reactions in consciousness continue, and I'm constantly taking mental notes.

Have I become some sort of expert on these issues, whether they pertain to sexism, equality, diversity or a hundred other thoughts of cultural worth, worth having?

Of course not. All I can do is try to be better informed, and as a result maybe improve myself as a person. All I can do is try my best to listen, think and act responsibly. To me, the beer revolution always meant something better, far beyond the beer in the glass. I'm disappointed in myself that when presented with an opportunity to reflect this ethos with regard to a Belgo-Indian Blonde Ale being brewed in 2011, I chose a lower common denominator.

But what's done is done. Now, I'll do what I can do. I appreciate the work that Roth and others like him are doing to keep the sun shining on "craft" brewing's ongoing sexism issues.

For a long time, the Brewers Association rightfully needed to focus on political and business issues in order to better grow their portion of the industry or further define “craft” and its value. But that time is over. The revolution has happened. Now it’s time to think socially and consciously.