Don’t forget the National Toast to Michael Jackson will take place tonight, Sunday, September 30 at exactly 9:00 p.m. EST (6:00 p.m. for those of us on the left coast).

Find which establishments will be participating at the Michael Jackson Memorial. If Michael’s writing has touched you life and your enjoyment of good beer, join us at one of the countess bars, brewpubs and breweries across the country to drink a toast to his memory.

CNN’s Health section has an interesting little item called Letting Kids Drink Early Reduces Binging in which Stanton Peele, psychologist and author of “Addiction-Proof Your Child,” suggests that educating your children about drinking by introducing it in the home is a timeworn tradition that will reduce binge drinking later in life.

From the article:

He says many of the programs set up to stop alcohol abuse contribute to the teen binge-drinking crisis. Any program that tells kids flatly not to drink creates temptation, he says. “Preparing your child to drink at home lessens the likelihood that they are going to binge drink,” he says. “Not sharing alcohol with your child is a risk factor for binge drinking.”

Missing the point, of course, Drug Free America Foundation director Calvina Fay equated Peele’s philosophy with “giving permission to your children to do harmful things.” (Though why Fay’s commenting at all is a mystery since her foundation has almost nothing to do with alcohol.) At any rate, cultures around the world have been teaching their children about drinking in the home for centuries without harming their offspring. I’d certainly be curious to know why she thinks that teaching your kids to drink responsibly could in any way be “harmful?” But I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, most of these groups seem to take an all or nothing approach. They don’t see degrees. They see alcohol (and drugs) as all bad, not just bad in excess or if consumed irresponsibly. It almost seems like a failure of imagination. If you think all drinking is bad, then it would be impossible to understand how teaching your progeny moderate and responsible drinking for enjoyment would be valuable to them when as young adults they are faced with peer pressure and have to make their own decisions. And as Peele suggests — and I think he’s quite correct — the neo-prohibitionist’s absolutist policy of no education and just saying no is making the problem of underage and binge drinking far worse than it needs to be. There’s an old adage, “a little education goes a long way” but I guess in the mind of the neo-prohibitionist that doesn’t include alcohol education. Until it does, it’s hard to swallow that they really care at all about curbing underage drinking or stopping binging.

Last year I wrote that Tony Magee, the iconoclastic owner/brewer of Lagunitas Brewing has been a big Frank Zappa fan most of his life. That’s still true and he’s kept his promise to keep releasing Frank Zappa beers as the anniversaries of each album comes to pass. First it was Freak Out and now Lagunitas has released Kill Ugly Radio, which was apparently the name Zappa wanted to call his second album. The record company said no, and instead it was known as Absolutely Free. The new beer was also made with the permission of Zappa’s widow, Gail Zappa (who runs the Zappa Family Trust). Like the last one, the label uses artwork from the album.

When the Celebrator panel tried it for the New Releases section of the latest issue, here’s what we thought of the beer:

Like a cacophony of Zappa’s music, there’s a lot going on in this beer. In some ways it’s a bit like a saison on steroids with the peppery, zesty spices you’d expect, but with a very big hop presence. Perhaps a little unbalanced, but then so was Zappa. Again, like Zappa, it’s big and eccentric with a lot of tangents of flavors, in the end a fitting tribute. Highly Recommended for fans, merely Recommended for people who don’t get Zappa.

Click on the label for a larger view.
 

Beverage World yesterday had an interesting little article about what’s going on with craft beer in the Japanese market. Microbreweries were only made legal in 1994 and there are about 280 operating today in Japan.

The Beer Institute has released its 2007 Brewers Almanac with all sorts of statistics, but the one that’s getting all the attention is that California has been unseated as the number one beer state in terms of production, a position its held for several years. Colorado takes the top spot this year, besting California by just over 500,000 barrels, or roughly the equivalent of a brewery two-thirds the size of Sierra Nevada Brewing.

To Colorado, I raise my glass and toast their success. There are some fine breweries there and they deserve their moment in the sun. But just wait until next year. Let’s go breweries of California, get brewing. You’re not going to take this lying down, are you? Some kidding aside, it’s great news for everybody. A little healthy competition never hurt anybody. And with contests like this, everybody wins.

From the press release:

In 2006, the state of Colorado officially became the largest beer producing state in the country, according to newly released data from the Beer Institute. The Colorado brewing industry produced over 23.3 million barrels or 724.5 million gallons of beer. This makes the state tops in production.

“Colorado is tremendously important to the beer industry and produces a number of high quality brews enjoyed by adults around the country,” said Jeff Becker, president of the Beer Institute. “With a strong beer culture and a rich brewing history, it’s no surprise the state has become number one.”

“As a state widely recognized around the country for our natural beauty, rich history, and extensive cultural attractions, we’re pleased to now also be known as the beer brewing capitol of the United States,” added Colorado Governor Bill Ritter. “Colorado breweries are also increasingly using and producing renewable energy, which is good for the industry, good for the environment, and good for developing more home-grown sources of energy.”

Colorado is also home to other major industry trade groups such as the Brewers Association, based in Boulder, representing America’s small brewers since 1942. The state also plays host to the annual “Great American Beer Festival” in Denver.

“In addition to housing many long established large brewers, Colorado is also leading the way among small, independent craft brewers,” said Charlie Papazian, founder and president of the Brewers Association. “We invite beer lovers from every state to visit us and sample firsthand some of the many fine varieties of craft beer produced here.”

Here the Top 10 beer producing states:

1. Colorado
2. California
3. Texas
4. Ohio
5. Virginia
6. Missouri (est.)
7. Georgia (est.)
8. Florida
9. Wisconsin
10. New York

 
Surprisingly, Oregon and Washington ranked 15th and 16th, respectively. After I take a look at the full almanac, I’ll see what other interesting facts emerge. Until then, I’m drinking a Great Divide Titan IPA tonight. Or perhaps an Odell 5 Barrel Pale Ale or even a Dale’s Pale Ale. Damn, I just have too many friends in Colorado making great beer. Congratulations one and all!
 

There’s a festival in San Francisco every year, the Folsom Street Fair, that celebrates sexual diversity, fetishes and leather lifestyles. The event has a rich history of fighting conventional wisdom and poverty, as well. It’s a registered non-profit organization and also has all the things that typical street fairs have: music, food, beer and sponsors. One of the four main event sponsors this year, known as “presenting sponsors,” is Miller Brewing Co. Which is all well and good, or at least it was until the fair organizers unveiled this year’s poster for the event.

It’s an obvious parody of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper, which along with his Mona Lisa, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, Grant Wood’s American Gothic and Edvard Munch’s The Scream, is undoubtedly one of the most parodied works of art in the world. Do a Google Image’s search for “last supper parody” and no less than 6,360 images pop up. The poster is meant to show diversity in many forms; racial, gender, sexual preference and lifestyle. If you’re deeply religious it’s possible that you won’t like the image but that’s the price you pay for living in a free society. Everybody wants tolerance in the first person, such as “tolerate my beliefs” but it’s gets harder for those same people in the third person, as in “tolerating his beliefs.” Enter the Catholic League, which bills itself as a “Catholic civil rights organization” and states its purpose is to “defend the right of Catholics – lay and clergy alike – to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination.” Their mission also includes working “to safeguard both the religious freedom rights and the free speech rights of Catholics whenever and wherever they are threatened.” All laudable goals, except that it appears the free speech rights of non-catholics count for naught. Since Tuesday the Catholic League has put out five press releases “calling on more than 200 Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu organizations to join with [them] in a nationwide boycott of Miller beer.”

Yesterday, SABMiller released the following statement:

Statement Regarding Folsom Street Fair

While Miller has supported the Folsom Street Fair for several years, we take exception to the poster the organizing committee developed this year. We understand some individuals may find the imagery offensive and we have asked the organizers to remove our logo from the poster effective immediately.

Not good enough, sayeth the Catholic League, calling Miller’s press release a “lame statement of regret.” Then they kicked things into high gear. “We feel confident that once our religious allies kick in, and once the public sees the photos of an event Miller is proudly supporting, the Milwaukee brewery will come to its senses and pull its sponsorship altogether. If it doesn’t, the only winners will be Anheuser-Busch and Coors.” See, even Catholics aren’t aware of the craft beer movement and believe there are only three breweries in the U.S. And certainly imports were overlooked, too. Some kidding aside, this is certainly a quagmire for Miller, and this has been receiving a lot of media attention, as stories involving sex usually do in our society. There’s nothing like titillation to increase reader- and viewer-ship.

Locally, at least, not everybody agrees as one gay member of the clergy had this to say via the Bay Area Reporter.

“I disagree with them I don’t think that [Folsom Street Events] is mocking God,” said Chris Glaser, interim senior pastor at Metropolitan Community Church – San Francisco. “I think that they are just having fun with a painting of Leonardo da Vinci and having fun with the whole notion of ‘San Francisco values’ and I think it’s pretty tastefully and cleverly done.”

Glaser added, “I think that oftentimes religious people miss out on things because they don’t have a sense of humor. That’s why being a queer spiritual person we can laugh at ourselves and laugh at other people.”

Even Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, herself a Catholic, issed the following through her press secretary, Drew Hammill. “As a Catholic, the speaker is confident that Christianity has not been harmed.” Exactly. And while the people Fox News interviewed called it a “mockery of religion,” “blasphemy” and suggested that it’s “bad for society,” I can’t see the Catholic League’s point.

First of all, they don’t own the image of Da Vinci’s Last Supper and it’s already been parodied countless times. The event itself has been painted by numerous artists over the centuries. Honestly, I don’t see how the “religious freedom rights and the free speech rights of Catholics” have been infringed upon or how catholics have been in any way defamed. The Last Supper even as an idea is not the exclusive province of Catholicism. If they had left it alone, it would have been a minor event in a local community.

And why pick on Miller? There are dozens of other sponsors, too, including SF Environment, an environmental group, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a local weekly newspaper. I almost hate to wonder, might this also be a little bit because it’s beer? Many neo-prohibitionist groups are also religiously based. But really, what did Miller do wrong? They sponsored a local event that’s perfectly legal, has the support of the local community and government. They’ve been sponsoring it for years. Then suddenly the event does something that the Catholic League doesn’t like. They’re offended. So what? Miller tries to soothe the situation, obviously seeing it for the powderkeg it is and asks to have their logo taken off the offending poster, but bravely continues to sponsor the event. Good for them. Why shouldn’t they? How is that in any way the “corporate arrogance” the Catholic League accuses them of? What’s arrogant about that? If you want to talk arrogance, then we need to look at the Catholic League. Being arrogant is defined as “making claims or pretensions to superior importance or rights,” which is exactly what they’re doing by asserting that their “right” to not have their religion criticized or challenged — if indeed that’s really what’s being done, which I seriously doubt — is above the free speech rights of the criticism or challenge. I doubt many in the Catholic League have read Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion, but one of the book’s soundest arguments is that religion has become the only idea, concept, belief, whatever that can’t be criticized. That we’re taught we must respect one another’s beliefs and not question them. Why? Why is every single other idea in the world able be talked about critically but not religion? It just doesn’t make sense to me. Obviously, the Catholic League believes that or they wouldn’t be misreading this so badly. It seems obvious to me that the Folsom Street Fair poster isn’t attacking or criticizing religion and certainly isn’t targeting the Catholic religion. It’s obviously parody, which is protected speech under the First Amendment of our Constitution. Even the Supreme Court has said so, thanks to an unlikely person, Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler, whose story is chronicled in the film The People vs. Larry Flynt.

But again, why pick on Miller? They didn’t make the poster. They didn’t print the poster. They didn’t approve the poster. All they did was sponsor the event. The Catholic League is the bully in this passionate play, and they’re the ones that deserve to be crucified, not Miller. It’s one thing to disagree with another point of view or not like what you perceive as criticism of your own, but it’s quite another to attack it and try to harm their business over that disagreement. That’s what bullies do. But there’s one more bit of irony in all this that needs saying. Obviously, many catholics and other religious conservatives have a great deal of difficulty dealing with non-traditional sexual lifestyles, some of which are center stage in the Folsom Street Fair. But the Catholic Church is no stranger to non-traditional sexual practices among its own clergy and has systematically been suppressing its own sexual misconduct literally ruining the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands, of children in the process. Check out the film Deliver Us From Evil for just the tip of iceberg. That’s really offensive, worthy of people being offended, not like this fake controversy and complaints of being wounded simply by an image they don’t like.

Frankly, I thought I’d never utter these words, but “It’s Miller Time.”
 

There is little doubt that hops are or soon will be in short supply. I heard it at “Hop School” in Ralph Olson’s “state of the hop crop” report and I’ve heard it from almost every other quarter, as well. Belmont Station’s blog has a good summary of what Ralph had to say via Dave Wills at Freshops and Rick Sellers at Pacific Brew News has another summary from Deschutes brewer Larry Sidor, as well as a summary of world hop news. There have even been two recent fires at hop kilns, and while crop damage was minimal (though the kilns were destroyed) it still further reduced an already thin harvest. Lew Bryson also posted David Edgar’s summary from today’s Brewers Forum. Overall, there’s some good but mostly foreboding on the future availability of hops, and most notably prices may skyrocket. There simply isn’t enough hops to meet current demand and acreage has been declining for several years.

Enter corn into the mix. When George Bush started touting ethanol he increased incentives and subsidies for farmers to grow corn to make the alternative fuel. If you’re barely getting by growing a difficult and fragile crop like hops, switching to corn with all that federal moola looks mighty attractive. I’ve heard that now from a variety of sources. According to an Iowa State University study, food prices have risen an average of $47 per person as a result of the ethanol surge since last year. So it’s not just hops, but farmers are replacing a number of other crops with corn, too. This has been widely reported to be effecting food prices across the board. But once on a gravy train, few will voluntarily jump off, no matter that the train may be headed for a collision. And corn has been riding those amber waves for quite some time, especially once high fructose corn syrup made its debut in 1980. HFCS is now in what seems like every processed food you could name. So if government policy makes their situation even better, you would expect the corn industry to be overjoyed.

There’s a little interview today at Retail News online (subscription required) with S. Richard Tolman, CEO of the National Corn Growers Association, trying to allay fears that the corn subsidies are having unintended consequences. And if you want to lay such fears to rest, who better to ask than someone with a totally vested interest in convincing you that black really is the new white. Here’s the forthright honesty he employs to counter numerous claims and studies that suggest “ethanol production is exacerbating environmental impact problems.” Tolan’s answer: “Those claims are simply not true.” Deny, deny, deny. To the final question, “Critics contend that American farmers will be unable to keep up with demand for corn needed to produce ethanol. What’s the short-term and long-term thinking on this from corn growers?” he answers: Short-term the question has already been answered. Farmers have planted more acres of corn this year than any time since World War II. If we have merely an average yield, there will not only be enough corn for all current food, fuel and export markets, we will build our carryover (surplus) stocks. It’s that “planted more acres of corn this year than any time since World War II” line that should concern beer lovers everywhere. More acres of corn means less acres of something else. Believe it or not, when I was in the nation’s “hopbasket” — The Yakima Valley, Washington — last month I saw several large fields of corn.

Ethanol production has doubled over the last three years, and in 2006 accounted for almost 5 billion gallons. But that’s still only around 5% of total gasoline needs, and corn growers are hoping to increase that to 10%. Doubling again the acreage for ethanol would mean a pretty substantial amount of land on which one thing — hops perhaps — would be converted to grow corn. It seems naive to think that’s not going to raise the price of whatever is no longer being grown on the land that’s now growing corn. So while it may seem odd to blame corn for the hop shortage, it is at least one of the factors that’s contributing to it. I’m certainly no energy expert, but I haven’t seen anything to convince me that ethanol is the panacea so many seem to believe it is. Even if planting all that new corn provides us with 10% of our fuel needs, we’ll pay for it somewhere else, either in higher food prices or a potential beer shortage. Frankly, I’d rather walk, bike or take mass transit than give up beer.

But nothing’s going to change if people continue to give a voice to industry stooges like Tolman with so obvious an axe to grind. Why would anyone, and especially people in the retail business, believe such pernicious propaganda? He’s telling retailers the goods they sell will not go up in price if there is less acreage of land to grow the ingredients needed to make or grow the things they sell. On top of that, he represents the very people changing the way that land is used. That’s shuckin’ and jivin’ of the first order.

Over the last year I’ve gotten to know the “Homebref Chef,” Sean Paxton, and he was kind enough to invite me to his 10th annual beer dinner at the Northern California Homebrewer Festival which will take place October 5. The festival itself is the 5th and 6th and takes place at the Lake Francis Resort in Dobbins, California. Sean recently finalized the menu, and even though it is my sad duty to reveal that the dinner is already sold-out, I though I’d share what sounds like a pretty spectacular dinner. The theme for the dinner is “Sour Ales Inspired by Belgium.”

The Menu:

First Course

Belgian Endive Salad: Slightly Bitter Leaves of Endive Mixed with Pomegranate Seeds, Red Beets, Watercress, Chives and Chervil Tossed in a Watermelon Funk Vinaigrette

Beer: 21st Amendment Watermelon Funk: A collaboration beer involving Shaun O’Sullivan’s Watermelon Wheat and Fresh Watermelon added to Vinnie Cilurzo Barrel and Spiked with Brettanomyces and Aged 2 Years in Santa Rosa

Second Course

Steamed Mussels in Beer: Prince Edward Island Mussels, Shallots, Thyme Steamed in Homebrewed Wit

Pumpkin in Green Herb Sauce: Steamed Fall Squash in Homebrewed Wit, Topped with a Spinach, Sorrel, Mint and Parsley Sauce

Pomme Frites: Twice Fried Kennebec Potatoes, Belgian Style Served with a Duvel Shiso Aioli and Fou’ Foune Aioli

Beer: The Brewing Network’s Dr. Scott Homebrewed Wit

Third Course

Les Carbonnade Flamandes: A Flemish Stew Cooked with Beef, Lamb, Dark Candi Syrup Cured Bacon, Leeks, Shallots, Thyme and Belgian Strong Dark

Flemish Style Root Vegetable Stew: Parsnips, Yukon Gold Potatoes and Carrots Braised in Belgian Strong Dark and Herbs, Served with a Smoked Garlic Aioli

Beer: 21st Amendment The Beer Hunter: Jamil Zainasheff Award Winning Belgian Strong Dark made at 21st Amendment for the GABF Pro-Am 2007

Fourth Course

Waterzooi: A Classic Ghent Milk Stew made with Cod, Leeks, Fennel, Onions, Shallots, Saison, Milk and Herbs

Tofu Waterzooi

Beer: Sacramento Brewing Saison: Peter Hoey’s Sour Mashed Farmhouse Style Saison

Fifth Course

Duck Legs Cooked in a Brett Blonde: Cinnamon Scented Parsnips Stewed in Sanctification

Beer Braised Veal Cheeks: Leeks, Carrots, Celery Root, Fresh Thyme Cooked in Chardonnay Barrel Aged Temptation Sour Ale

Bier Risotto: Pearl Barley cooked “Risotto Style” in a Roasted Heirloom Tomato Temptation Broth With Lobster Mushroms and Roasted Thyme Shallots

Brussels Sprouts: Blanched Sprouts cooked in Brown Butter and Nutmeg

Cauliflower Gratin: A Twist on a Classic, Cauliflower Blanched in Ale and Topped with a Gruyere Cheese Sauce

Beers:

Russian River Temptation: A Blonde Ale Fermented with Brettanomyces, Aged in French Oak Chardonnay Barrels

Russian River Sanctification: a 100% Brettanomyces Fermented Blonde Ale

Sixth Course

Dark Chocolate Framboise Truffles: Where Dark Chocolate meets Brenden’s Whisky Barrel, filled with Porter, spiked with Brettanomyces, Aged for 7 Months, then blended with “The Golden Hallucination” and “Brown Bear”

Vanilla Bean Tripel Infused Pot de Creme: Starting with Todd Ashmans Sage Honey and Thai Palm Sugar spiced Tripel and infusing Vanilla Beans into Cream, slowly cooked in a water bath to make an ultra creamy decedent dessert

Beers:

Thirsty Bear Menage a Framboise

Fifty Fifty Brewing Co. Trifecta Belgian Style Tripel

 
10.5

Northern California Hombrewer Festival Beer Dinner

Lake Francis Resort, 13919 Lake Frances Road, Dobbins, California
[ website ]
 

The online version Ask Men magazine does a weekly top 10 list on a wide variety of subjects, such as “Chill Out Movies” and “Father-Daughter Activities.” This week the list is the Top 10 “Legendary Drinkers.” It’s an interesting list and they at least explain why they chose each person.

Here’s who made the list.

1. John Barrymore
2. Hank Williams
3. Andre the Giant
4. Dylan Thomas
5. Winston Churchill
6. Ernest Hemingway
7. Richard Harris
8. Edgar Allen Poe
9. Benjamin Franklin
10. Dean Martin

• Honorable Mention: Judy Garland

It’s a fine list and I don’t really want to quibble with it too much. Dylan Thomas, a great poet, is responsible for one of my favorite quotes. “An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks just as much as you do.” But I do think there are some glaring omissions. Chief among them has to be “W.C. Fields.” But other famous drunks that come to mind are Charles Bukowski, Charles McCabe, Dorothy Parker and Hunter Thompson.

Who would you put on the list?

According to the Portland Beer Blog Guest on Tap there’s another new beer magazine that’s hit the street. It’s Beer Northwest and will focus primarily on the Pacific Northwest. I met the publisher, Megan Flynn, at this year’s Oregon Brewers Festival and she seems like she has a good shot at succeeding with the new quarterly. Of course I may be slightly biased, I wrote the Washington Hops story listed on the cover. Go ahead, subscribe. You know you want to.

Apparently liquor and wine are divine, beer … not so much. That’s the apparent take of Wisconsin columnist Joe Orso who in a recent column, concludes that issues with people drinking beer in his local community are a “spiritual problem,” whatever that even means.

Admittedly, his community does appear to have had a spate of bad luck recently, as he relates.

In the past two weeks, a 19-year-old woman has died after drinking alcohol and falling off Grandad Bluff, Miss America has been to the area to speak to high school and college students about underage drinking and drunken driving, and a concert was held at Viterbo University to raise awareness about responsible drinking habits.

That’s a tragic event to be sure, but Grandad Bluff (pictured here) doesn’t look like the sort of place one should go to while drinking. I don’t want to sound cold, but not only did she show poor judgment but so did her friends. How that’s a spiritual problem or the fault of the beer I find somewhat baffling. As for Miss America, her cause celebre is children. I’m sure she’s on a tour of colleges making the same speech, she wasn’t targeting one community. The concert was a benefit for “Safe La Crosse” promoting responsible drinking behavior at the start of the new term. I’m willing to bet almost every campus has an organization like this one. So what? My point is you can find or make connections wherever you want to find them. There doesn’t appear to be anything remarkable about these three events that would cause a reasonable person to conclude that the youth of today are in spiritual crisis and beer is the bogeyman responsible for it. But our amateur spiritualist isn’t finished. In his own personal life, he once lived with an alcoholic and he recently visited a friend who’s in detox. Oh my god! Two people he’s known throughout his life have problems with alcohol! Alert the media. Oh, wait he is the media. Why not focus on the maybe hundreds of people he knows or has known who aren’t alcoholics? Why try to connect dots that simply may not be there?

He’s heard anecdotally that young people are drinking simply because “there’s nothing else to do,” claiming to hear this excuse over and over again across the country. I have a hard time understanding why both his own lack of imagination and the similar dullness of the people he’s talking to leads to a conclusion that spirituality has anything to do with this. It sounds more like his community may have a problem. But instead his thinking goes like this. “When you look at a society and see so many of us spending weekends between 15 and 22 years old getting drunk, and then saying we do it because there’s nothing else to do, this becomes a spiritual problem.” Huh? When Orso asks “[h]ow are we treating our young people to make them feel like this?” you’d think the answer would be obvious, but apparently it isn’t.

Why say things like “[s]omething seems to be going on here with beer.” The author says he enjoys beer and has a favorite — Busch (ugh) — and he “look[s] forward to drinking it around a backyard fire every Christmas when [his] brothers and neighbors return home and [they] all catch up on each other’s lives.” In other words, he enjoys it in a social setting that creates conversation and a sense of togetherness. Does he not realize that’s precisely what goes on at teenage parties, too. Kids get together, drink, talk and bond as they struggle to figure out how to become adults. Teenagers struggle with all kinds of adult and quasi-adult behaviors and fumble their way through most of them. They’re supposed to, it’s through their failures and mistakes that they learn. But with our present taboos and draconian alcohol laws they have no positive role models for responsible drinking and many kids’ first experiences with beer may indeed be negative. They don’t have to be, but adults have created an environment that all but guarantees such a result. There will always be people who can’t handle certain things, be they alcohol, drugs, food, cigarettes or what have you. With alcohol the problem is exacerbated because of a criminal lack of education and misinformation, which in many places even forbids parents from teaching their own children about alcohol in the home. Such places presuppose that the state should be the ones to teach kids about alcohol but then they do absolutely nothing by way of educating them.

Orso concludes his column by suggesting that “we might shift the message a bit from ‘Drinking can hurt you, maybe kill you’ to ‘Why are you drinking so much?’” Well, for me such simplistic nonsense is what’s making me drink so much. He’s looking for easy answers to complex questions. But if you think the path to spiritual enlightenment is not paved with beer bottles, then I suppose no amount of logic will convince you otherwise. But could we please stop blaming beer for everything that’s wrong with the world? There are undoubtedly numerous reasons for drinking by teenagers (or anyone for that matter), but I seriously doubt that chief among them is a lack of spirituality. Frankly, I’d be shocked if it made the top hundred. But let’s ask all of the Orders of Monks who have been making truly inspired beers for centuries if they believe beer has caused them to be spiritually parched.

According to a article at Advertising Age today, the three biggest brewers are spending less these days on traditional advertising, such as television, print and radio.

From the article:

According to TNS Media Intelligence, top brewers cut measured media spending a whopping 24%, about $131 million, during the first six months of 2007, following a 12% cut during 2006. At the same time, the brewers insist they haven’t cut spending at all — and in many cases have increased it.

What that means is that the dollars they are spending are being spent on things that traditional media folks don’t usually keep track of, such as sponsorships, promotional activity, product placement, bar events, concerts, stadium signage, specific sports promotions and local media. Part of that is simply to focus advertising on the dozens of test brands, the stealth micros and the alternative products that all three, though particularly Anheuser-Busch, have been experimenting with lately to compete with the craft segment, which is the only beer segment that’s been showing robust growth over the last few years.

So is this the traditional advertising world starting to panic? They talked to death about the big brewer’s forays into advertising on the internet and what that’s meant for them. They’re also equating trying to reach a younger demographic as another reason for the sharp declines in traditional ad buys. Does that mean since the younger generation has gotten wise to advertising, we’ll see traditional forms of it decline as a whole as they age? Somehow that seems doubtful, especially since in my humble opinion people aren’t really getting any smarter and advertising is certainly becoming more scientifically based. As a result, it’s hard to swallow the notion that young people are too savvy for advertising to work on them. Citing a Beer Marketer’s Insights statistic that beer shipments from the big guys rose 2% at the same time traditional ad revenue fell, AdAge concludes that the non-traditional advertising must be working and even may be the key to that growth. They do qualify the 2% figure as “healthy,” at least “by the mature beer industry’s modest standards.”

But I seem to recall that the shipments figure is almost always around 1 to 2%, every year, no matter what. Maybe somebody has those figures in hand, but that’s certainly my memory. Other statistics like revenue, market share, and others have been fluctuating more, but not shipments, which have been fairly steady. At any rate, it seems hard to draw a conclusion from that statistic, even if my memory is faulty.

What really concerns me, if indeed what the article is suggesting is true — and the big three are throwing their massive resources at local media and cheaper, more targeted marketing — then they’ll be infringing on the only kinds of advertising and marketing craft brewers have been able to afford. Only a very few of the biggest microbreweries have been able to afford television advertising and even then it’s been limited and on cable networks. Regional and smaller breweries have only been able to afford the occasional print ad or radio spot, relying instead on guerrilla marketing, word-of-mouth and local community involvement. It will be very hard for them to compete with the big brewers’ ad budgets if they adopt a similar strategy.