Archives for August 10, 2006

Icons of England: The Pub and a Pint

August 10, 2006 By Jay Brooks

I’ve always been fascinated by symbols, so I was immediately drawn to the Icons of England Project, a project to identify and select the symbols that are instantly recognizable as being a part of England and England’s heritage. Throughout the course of 2006, people are invited to nominate icons for England and they will be chosen in four waves, three of which have already been selected. That quintessentially English establishment, the Pub was selected earlier this year, along with such other stalwarts as tea, Big Ben, the FA Cup, the miniskirt and Alice in Wonderland. The third wave was just announced and it included a Pint, along with the perfect pairing of pub food, Fish & Chips. The latest wave also included Monty Python, bowler hats, Robin Hood and the OED. A total of 53 icons have been chosen so far with one more round of icons to be selected. A staggering 667 nominations have been made online and my favorites so far are cheddar cheese, cider, James Bond, real ale, the red phone box, shepherd’s pie, the tube map, and Wallace and Gromit. What great fun.

Two of the Icons of England, the pub and a pint.

Blast From the Past: Genny Cream Ale

August 10, 2006 By Jay Brooks

Cans of Genesee Cream Ale were de rigueur when I was growing up in Eastern Pennsylvania in the late 1970s. The simple green can design is emblazoned in my memory of that more simple time. It was certainly one of the favorite beers of my youth — at least in my memory — probably because cream ales are such a light, undemanding style. They fell out of fashion for a number of years, but lately several craft brewers are resurrecting the style as their lightest offering. It’s a much better alternative than making a low-calorie beer or American-style lager. High Falls Brewing, who has owned the brand for many years now, abandoned the all-green design sometime in the 1980s and when I carried it at BevMo in the mid-1990s all that was available were bottles with a paper label. Which is a shame. The beer itself I recall wasn’t great but was certainly serviceable and a decent session choice. It was that plain green can that had us all enraptured, though in retrospect I have no idea why.

High Falls is now trying to tap into that nostalgia I feel for the brand with a new retro-styled website at www.geneseecreamale.com. It’s a nice site but I don’t think they went back far enough because they’re still showing that damned paper label and a bottle on the main page. It does suffer the problem I have with virtually all big brewery sites — Flash. They’re so over the top with using flash technology instead of HTML that I hate navigating them. Maybe I’m in the minority here because I started hand-coding HTML back in the mid 90s, but I find it very annoying.

Sure, it’s a nice piece of breweriana, made to look older than it is, but where’s the can?

Frankly, this is how I will always remember Genesee Cream Ale. If they really want to tap into nostalgia, they need to bring back this can.

Elevating Beer and Food in Florida

August 10, 2006 By Jay Brooks

Somewhat surprisingly, this is the second article from a Florida newspaper in recent weeks about pairing food with beer. Today’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel has a short article entitled The right foods can elevate beer by Food Editor Deborah S. Hartz. The focus of the story is a monthly beer dinner put on by Trina, a Fort Lauderdale restaurant in the Atlantic Hotel.

There Goes Traveling with Beer Samples

August 10, 2006 By Jay Brooks

I know I should be thinking of the potential victims saved and the fact that terrorism is on most people’s minds every day, but I confess that when I heard the news this morning, my first thought was how it affected me. If you haven’t looked at the news yet this morning, British police foiled a terrorist plot to blow up more airplanes, apparently ones to New York, Washington and California targeting American carriers United Airlines, Continental Airlines and American Airlines. The method uncovered this time was to use “liquid explosives disguised as beverages.” So if this goes the way things did the last time with the shoe bomb, we can kiss taking beer samples home from trips goodbye.

I realize this doesn’t impact very many people, but I usually carry 6-9 bottles of beer home with me from almost any trip. Sometimes it’s samples I’ve been given to try and other times I just pick up beers I can’t get where I live. So far, I’ve been lucky. I’ve only been hassled in the City if Brotherly Love — Philadelphia. The security guard I got didn’t know you could travel with beer and started giving me a hard time until a supervisor stepped in and asked me one simple question. “Are they open?” “No,” I replied. “Then please go ahead.” As I walked along, relieved, I could hear the supervisor explaining something to the newbie, presumably that I was well within my rights and a bottle of beer posed no security threat. Well I can all but guarantee that will be changing soon. The airlines will rush to impose a new prohibition to include beverages of all kinds: beer, wine, soda and probably even bottled water. I’m sure they’ll cry security, but you know they make a lot of money selling drinks on the planes now. Imagine if they suddenly have a monopoly?

My friend Stephen Beaumont recently told me he never travels with samples anymore. He finds it’s just too much of a hassle in a post 911 world. I can only imagine what a hassle it’s going to become now. My big problem with all of this — apart of course from the personal inconvenience — is that the increased security they keep heaping on us isn’t really producing the right result. It’s not making us any safer, it’s just giving us the illusion that we’re safer. And for most people, I don’t think it’s even doing that. How is it escaping so many people’s attention that turning America into a police state one new security measure at a time is not making us safer but instead is making us less and less a free society?

I wonder if there’s a train I can take to GABF this year?