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Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo, while attending a Slow Food event in Torino in late 2006, befriended Agostino Arioli, who opened one of Italy’s earliest craft breweries. His brewery, Birrificio Italiano, makes a unique beer, La Fleurette, whose varied ingredients include flowers, black pepper and orange blossom honey. Agostino is in California this week for the world Beer Cup and the Craft Brewers Conference which begins next week in San Diego. But yesterday, he was in Santa Rosa visiting his friends at their brewery, Russian River Brewing. The plan was to brew his La Fleurette beer at Russian River, trying to approximate it as best they could using a different brew system. I spent the day documenting the brewing process. There are three galleries and approximately 54 photos of brewing the La Fleurette and the story of the beer, too. Start with gallery one and follow along as I present Brewing La Fleurette at Russian River. At the end of each gallery, there’s a link to the next part of the story, through three separate pages. Enjoy.

Agostino Arioli, from Birrificio Italiano in northern Italy, with Vinnie Cilurzo and Travis Smith, at Russian River Brewing.

The beer included two kinds of dried flowers, violets and roses (shown here).

At the point during the boil where dry-hopping normally occurs, the flowers are added along with orange blossom honey and black pepper.

For many more photos of the La Fleurette brew day at Russian River, start with Part 1.
 

I stumbled upon this interesting write-up of the Beers of Martin Luther on a Lutheran website, Cyberbrethern. The post is based on notes from a talk given at a Men’s Breakfast at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Fayetteville, New York in April of 1997. Keith Villa of Blue Moon Brewing is thanked for “describing how the beers of Martin Luther’s era would have looked and tasted.”

The article discusses German beer in the middle ages, both homebrewed beer and brews made at Abbeys, and then speculates which beer of the time would have been Martin Luther’s favorite. This proved easier than you might imagine. Frederick Salem, in his Beer, Its History and Its Economic Value as a National Beverage (1880) notes, “Luther’s fondness for beer is well known, and on the evening of that eventful day at Worms, April 18, 1521, the Duke Erich von Braunschweig sent him a pot of Eimbecker (Einbecker) beer, to which he was specially addicted.” Michael Jackson also mentioned this connection in his New World Guide to Beer, saying “Luther received a gift of Einbeck beer on the occasion of his wedding.” The article goes on to suggest that Luther preferred homebrew over beer from commercial breweries, finding the latter to be “a curse for Germany.” But in an apparent contradiction, Luther “drank at home.” One biographer notes, “The German prophet became a patriarch, and the living room was dominated by his presence. He enjoyed his beer and had a great mug with three rings on it, one ‘the Ten Commandments’, the next ‘the Creed’ and third ‘the Lord’s Prayer’. He boasted that he could encompass all three with ease.”

But he was also a champion for moderation, and in sermon he gave in 1539, preached the following:

“It is possible to tolerate a little elevation, when a man takes a drink or two too much after working hard and when he is feeling low. This must be called a frolic. But to sit day and night, pouring it in and pouring it out again, is piggish… all food is a matter of freedom, even a modest drink for one’s pleasure. If you do not wish to conduct yourself this way, if you are going to go beyond this and be a born pig and guzzle beer and wine, then, if this cannot be stopped by the rulers, you must know that you cannot be saved. For God will not admit such piggish drinkers into the kingdom of heaven [cf. Gal. 5:19-21]… If you are tired and downhearted, take a drink; but this does not mean being a pig and doing nothing but gorging and swilling… You should be moderate and sober; this means that we should not be drunken, though we may be exhilarated.”

There is at least one Luther-Bier, a German-style pilsner brewed by Einsiedler Brauhaus. I’m not sure what that adds to the story, but I found in interesting all the same. As far as I can tell, it was a special release and there’s even a separate website for Luther-Bier, but there’s almost no additional information there. But you can see the special box it comes in an etched mug at a Wittenberg website. And I found this great quote on another church’s website: “We old folks have to find our cushions and pillows in our tankards. Strong beer is the milk of the old.”      — Martin Luther

Today would have been Michael Jackson’s 66th birthday. I’ll be playing some jazz and having a pint of something yummy in his honor. I first met Michael in the early 1990s, shortly after my beer book was published. He is all but single-handedly responsible for the culture of better beer that exists today. He began writing about good beer in the 1960s and 70s and his writing has influenced (and continues to influence) generations of homebrewers and commercial brewers, many of whom were inspired to start their own breweries by his words. There are few others, if any, that have been so doggedly persistent and passionate about spreading the word about great beer. I know some of my earliest knowledge and appreciation of beer, and especially its history and heritage, came from Michael’s writings. Michael passed away seven months ago, in late August. I still miss him, and I suspect I’m not the only one. Join me in drinking a toast to Michael Jackson, the most influential beer writer who’s ever lived.

At the Great Divide Brewing’s media party in Denver over ten years ago.

On stage accepting the first beer writing awards from the Brewers Association with Jim Cline, GM of Rogue, Stan Hieronymus, who writes Real Beer’s Beer Therapy among much else, and Ray Daniels of the Brewers Association.

At GABF in 2006, still wearing the same glasses. But my, oh my, have I changed. Sheesh.

Hilarious. I love this story of British publicans taking matters into their own hands. It seems the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, placed a 4p increase on the price of a pint, at a time when a pint already costs 25p more than it did one month ago, plus has “pledged to raise duty on alcohol by 2% above inflation for the next four years.” His budget is seen as only helping supermarket chains, whose share of the beer market has increased due to cheap pricing, which many have termed “pretty irresponsible alcohol retailing.” Pubs had already been losing ground to retail pricing wars and had asked for a freeze on prices to hep save pubs. Apparently, Darling was deaf to their concerns and now they’ve responded by banning him from every pub in England (or at least in all the participating ones—which after one day numbers 170). Obviously, the actual banning will do little to change things, but presumably the attendant publicity might.

They’ve created a poster which they’re encouraging pub owners to display in the window of their establishment featuring Darling behind bars and the word BARRED in large block letters.

It’s even spread to Brussels, where at least one pub—O’Farrells—has also put the poster in their front window. UK Independence Party head Nigel Farage noticed while there earlier today, about which he is quoted.

“Every politician who voted for the smoking ban and an increase in alcohol taxes at this difficult time for our pubs should be banned,” said Farage.

“However, most of our politicians are so detached from reality that they probably don’t visit pubs.”

They’ve also set up a group about the ban on Facebook.

I can think of plenty of our own politicians we should do likewise with.

This is the poster is available for download.
 

On St. Patrick’s Day I wrote about how many American holidays have been ruined by by overzealous marketing campaigns by the big alcohol companies, suggesting that there were very few not tainted. Well, Easter is one of those that has few beer associations. Less than a couple dozen breweries, most from Europe, make a special beer for Easter.

Given our track record for trying to ban labels for Christmas beers because they might also appeal to kids, it’s hardly surprising that so few of these beers make it to our shores. I’m frankly somewhat surprised this old bottle of Jubelfest from the now defunckt Privatbrauerei Franz Joseph Sailer in Germany I pulled off of my shelf managed to get label approval. Those are cartoons of bunnies on the label for chrissakes, children might pick one of these up and — gasp — look at it.

Goudon Carolus Easter Ale, a Belgian beer that I sampled at the annual Keene Tasting last week in Seattle. This one, so far as I know, has not been imported to the U.S. (at least not with this label), and I suspect if they even tried it would make the average neo-prohibitionist’s head spin. You can at least buy the beer in Ontario, but because of the asinine regulation that “graphics that might be appealing to children” are forbidden, with a censorship sticker covering the bunny in the lower left-hand corner. You can read all about it by Greg Clow from Toronto’s beer, beats & bites post entitled LCBO: Let’s Censor Bunnies, OK? . I guess there’s some consolation in knowing we’re not the only idiots when it comes to these things.

A true brewing legend, who’s treated like a rock star in Belgium where they care about their national beers, Pierre Celis turns 83 today. Celis single-handedly revived the style witbier in the 1960s when he was a brewer at Hoegaarden. He later moved to Texas to start a microbrewery with his daughter Christine, which was sold to Miller in 1995. He now makes three cave-aged beers under the label Grottenbier at St. Bernardus in Belgium. Join me in wishing him a very happy birthday.
 

With Pierre at the Craft Brewers Conference in New Orleans a few years ago.

At last GABF in 2006.

My friend and colleague, Greg Kitsock, had an article last week in the Washington Post that got me thinking. It was titled Another Layer of Enjoyment and tackled the issue of blending beer, especially with Guinness, as in beer cocktails. It was written to coincide, one presumes, with the then impending St. Patrick’s Day holiday. The two most common of these are a Black & Tan — which Guinness has long promoted as Guinness and Bass Ale (the two shared distribution for many years) — and a Half & Half, which is Guinness and Harp Lager, also a Guinness product. Obviously generic stout and a pale ale or lager may be substituted, but as Guinness has promoted the combinations for such a long time, they are well and truly most closely associated with those brands. I once got into a huge row with the copy editor that Beverages & more used to employ when she changed my text for our March newsletter and switched Black & Tan to Guinness and Harp, and vice versa, without consulting me, so the paper went out to thousands of Club Bev members (the company’s loyalty card) with the wrong information and my name on the item as the author. She was one of those insufferable people who felt they already knew everything and couldn’t conceive of ever being wrong. Surprisingly enough, many continue to spread confusion, with plenty of websites — even bartending websites — with conflicting definitions, including a few that contradict themselves. So perhaps the dilemma is not as well-settled as I believed.

Even Wikipedia, which states that the term Black & Tan, in its meaning as a mixed beer drink, was first recorded in 1899. It’s not listed in my OED, so I can’t confirm that. But after beginning by claiming the two drinks are as I think they should be, they later in the article state that “[t]he two most common types of Black and Tan in the United States use Guinness Draught (not Extra Stout) and either Bass, or Harp Lager,” [my emphasis] which at best is contradictory. When you consider that Harp Lager was first launched in 1960, it’s seems hard to imagine that after 61 years of Black & Tan meaning one thing that it should suddenly make no difference what kind of beer is used, but then I presume the Wikipedia folks who wrote that entry were not on to the finer points of what makes a lager and an ale different. Perhaps they simply assumed a light colored beer is a light colored beer.

I know these drinks are just marketing gimmicks, and possibly not even worthy of discussion, but that ’s the anal-retentive in me. Is there some confusion about what goes in a martini or a gin and tonic? I just think there should be some consensus, that’s all. Am I asking too much? Anyway, there are actually plenty more of these type of mixed beer drinks, many of which are black and something, like black and red or black and orange. Wikipedia has a huge list and a website, No Sheep, has a few more as well. Personally, my favorite thing to add to Guinness is just a few drops Crème de Cassis, which gives it just a touch of berry sweetness. But I’ve never had a name for it — I suppose I could call it a black & currant or a black & black.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone. Enjoy your pint of Guinness, or Murphy’s, or Beamish, or whatever. In Ireland, they’ll be sitting down to a traditional family dinner, which while it may include a dry Irish stout, is not all about the drinking. But here in the United States, the supposed melting pot, we take everybody’s holidays and run them through the cultural meat grinder. When they come out on the other end they’re invariably bigger, glossier, brighter and most people probably think more fun, if your idea of fun is to drink yourself silly every time you have an extra day off. But whatever solemn purpose or commemoration or event is being celebrated it is all but completely erased and what remains is fun, fun, fun. Now I like fun as much as the next guy. I’m a curmudgeon, certainly, but I still like to have fun. But we’re talking about days set aside so that we don’t forget our heritage, the often selfless sacrifices people have made on our behalf or the celebration of religious traditions. And how do we treat those days, almost without exception? We drink. And not just a toast. We drink to excess. We drink until the streets run pink or brown or yellow or whatever with vomit. Of course, we do this to our own holidays, too. Unfortunately, I see this as fairly recent trend. I remember when Memorial Day wasn’t just an excuse to have a picnic or barbecue and drink. I remember when Halloween was just for children and not the biggest keg sales weekend of the year (which it actually is now).

Now I enjoy a party, a picnic, a barbecue as much as the next guy. Any excuse to get together with friends and family is a welcome event. That’s not what I object to. My objection is twofold. First there’s the general over-commercialization of holidays. Second, there’s the way in which the big breweries, mass market imports along with the wine and spirits industries have seized upon each and every holiday as a way to sell more booze. And, of course, I’m not anti-alcohol. I hope that goes without saying but just in case, feel free to read more of what I’ve written before and you should quickly realize that I don’t like the neo-prohibitionists as much as they no doubt dislike me.

As to the first point, the over-commercialization of holidays, I’m going to take it for granted that most people will agree that this has happened. It’s hard to miss that whatever commercial aspects are inherent in a given holiday, they have been wildly exploited and expanded upon. A stroll through the average card shop should be more than enough to drive this home. If not, then how about that stores start decorating for Christmas in October now, sometimes even earlier. Anyway, I don’t want to belabor this point too much because I think most people will accept it and my second point is, I think, more novel.

Before I dive into this further, a little more background is probably in order. I’m also something of a calendar geek and have an almanac blog, too. I started collecting dates about thirty years ago when I picked up a book on mixed drink recipes that had an appendix with a reason to celebrate and have a drink each and every day of the year. That got me thinking and I started keeping a notebook where I’d write down new holidays, famous birthdays and historical events I happened upon. As a result, I may be more sensitive to holidays than the typical person, if such a thing is possible.

Anyway, it seems to me what was once a solemn religious holiday celebrating the patron saint of Ireland on the date he was believed to have died, March 17, 461 C.E., has been perverted into a way to sell more Guinness and all manner of other Irish doo-dads. Several years ago, Guinness gave away an actual pub in Ireland to a winner in America. They did this for a few years running. What happened to the pub and the pub owners once they were out of the spotlight wasn’t always pretty and I suspect that’s why they stopped. Then there was the yearly attempts to break the world’s record — from the Guinness Book of World Records, naturally — for the largest number of people simultaneously toasting, which was accomplished with some elaborate coordination. I’m not even sure what they’re doing these days, since the parent company Diageo has had them off in bizarre directions which have not done the beer itself any favors, and I’ve pretty much given up on them as a brewery. They still seem to enjoy a good reputation, even among beer geeks. Of course, the stuff available here is brewed in Canada. That’s done so they can still put “imported” on the label. It’s a common trick. Foster’s does the same thing, as do a few other larger import beers. There are around 19 or 20 different Guinness beers worldwide, of course, and at least four different ones are sold here. The beer in the widget can, widget bottle (an abomination in my opinion), regular bottle and in kegs are not the same beer; I mean they’re not even the same recipe. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with that. They’re fairly up front about it though still, I doubt most people are actually aware of it. So when somebody says they like Guinness, I have to wonder which one? I think it says a lot about peoples’ palates that so few realize they’re drinking completely different beers when they order a can or bottle of Guinness.

To be fair, St. Patrick’s Day isn’t the most egregious of these holidays by a long shot. At least dry Irish stout, which is what Guinness and most other Irish-made stouts are, is actually originally from Ireland. Many other non-Irish beer also advertise themselves for St. Patrick’s Day in about as shameless a fashion as one could imagine. Last weekend, while in Philadelphia, I witnessed part of their annual parade for St. Patrick’s Day. There were the requisite social organizations marching in their green colors, bands, floats for Irish bars and bagpipers. Oddly, one float was blasting the song 500 Miles by the Proclaimers. It’s a catchy little tune, but the band is Scottish, not Irish. To me, that’s a perfect illustration of how little we all know about our shared heritages. Nobody else seemed to notice they were celebrating Irish culture with a song from Scotland, least of all the people on the float who chose the music.

For most of its history, the holiday was a relatively quiet affair in Ireland, a time for family, church and reflection. There were shamrocks and other greenery, but it was mostly for the tourists who flocked to Dublin and other parts of the Emerald Isle.

Sadly, this may no longer be true in Ireland. In 1996, the government of Ireland began what has become a five-day celebration in Dublin known as the Official St. Patrick’s Festival, which this year began on the 13th and concludes today. The stated goal of the festival is the following.

1. Offer a national festival that ranks amongst all of the greatest celebration in the world
2. Create energy and excitement throughout Ireland via innovation, creativity, grassroots involvement, and marketing activity
3. Provide the opportunity and motivation for people of Irish descent (and those who sometimes wish they were Irish) to attend and join in the imaginative and expressive celebrations
4. Project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal, as we approach the new Millennium.

That’s certainly a modern approach to raising revenues for the country through tourism but it feels a bit like a sell-out. Given that the Irish have been shedding their own blood over religion for centuries, it seems odd to me that they’d so cavalierly commercialize their national holiday. But perhaps the momentum was too great and they decided to go with it rather than fight a losing battle. America has a way of ruining almost everything it touches, remaking it our own image of bigger, glitzier and with an eye toward profit, always profit. But when profit is the prime motivator, the meaning of the traditions that binds a people become lost. No matter how rich we might become, nothing can rival the social connections that make us a society rather then a group of self-serving individuals who care nothing for their fellow man.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Enjoy it with friends and family.
 

Propaganda is, of course, not a new development and has been around as long as there have been people to manipulate and public opinion to shape. And while propaganda the word has taken on derogatory connotations, the concept itself is largely neutral, though personally I tend to be skeptical of propaganda’s higher purposes. I’d say as a general rule if we agree with the position being pushed by propaganda than we tend to view it as benign whereas if we disagree with it then we similarly view it as being dangerous.

I bring this up because the Society of Independent Brewers, a trade organization in England that appears to be similar to the Brewers Association here and represents over 400 small brewers, is reviving and updating some very old propaganda by English painter William Hogarth. Hogarth was a painter, printer, satirist and above all social critic during his lifetime, which was from 1697 until 1764. He has also been credited with pioneering sequential art, paving the way for comic strips. In 1751, he created two contrasting works of art, Beer Street and Gin Lane.

BEER STREET Beer, happy product of our Isle Can sinewy strength impart, And, wearied with fatigue and toil, Can cheer each manly heart. Labor and Art, upheld by thee, Successfully advance; We quaff thy balmy juice with glee, And Water leave to France. Genius of Health, thy grateful taste Rivals the cup of Jove, And warms each English generous breast With Liberty and Love.

GIN LANE Gin, cursed fiend! with fury fraught, Makes human race a prey; It enters by a deadly draught, And steals our life away. Virtue and Truth, driv’n to despair, Its rage compels to fly; But cherishes, with hellish care, Theft, Murder, Perjury. Damn’d cup! that on the vitals preys, That liquid fire contains, Which madness to the heart conveys, And rolls it through the veins.

The poems below each print appeared on the originals and were written by Reverend James Townley. Click on Beer Street (on left) or Gin Lane (on right) to see larger, more detailed versions of each print.

Essentially the pair of prints were intended to make the case that beer is a reasonable, healthier alternative to hard alcohol, in this case gin, which had become very popular at that time. The poems are classic examples of propaganda, appealing to jingoism and emotional but ultimately irrational arguments. Much as I’d like it to be, beer isn’t the answer to all of life’s problems any more than gin is the cause of them. But according to the basic accounts of that time period, by 1750 something like one-quarter of all homes in one area of London’s West End known as St. Giles Circus were gin houses. Imagine any neighborhood where every fourth place was a bar or brewery. That would probably seem like a huge problem, then or now.

From Wikipedia:

Beer Street and Gin Lane are two prints issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth in support of what would become the Gin Act. Designed to be viewed alongside each other, they depict the evils of the consumption of gin as a contrast to the merits of drinking beer. At almost the same time, Hogarth’s friend Henry Fielding published: An Inquiry into the Late Increase in Robbers which dealt with the same subject. Issued with The Four Stages of Cruelty, the prints continued a movement which Hogarth had started in Industry and Idleness, away from depicting the laughable foibles of fashionable society (as he had done with Marriage à-la-mode) and towards a more cutting satire on the problems of poverty and crime.

On the simplest level, Hogarth portrays the inhabitants of Beer Street as happy and healthy, nourished by the native English ale, and those who live in Gin Lane as destroyed by their addiction to the foreign spirit of gin; but, as with so many of Hogarth’s works, closer inspection uncovers other targets of his satire, and reveals that the poverty of Gin Lane and the prosperity of Beer Street are more intimately connected than they at first appear. Gin Lane shows shocking scenes of infanticide, starvation, madness, decay and suicide, while Beer Street depicts industry, health, bonhomie and thriving commerce, but there are contrasts and subtle details that allude to the prosperity of Beer Street as the cause of the misery found in Gin Lane.

PUB STREET Pub, happy product of our Isle Gives Company, Good Cheer, and here Work done, each man may spend a while With pleasant Talk enjoy his Beer And sullen Youth, in Girls and Pool is pleased to find a better Sport The threat of ban tends to keep cool Young Men, if not: by Bouncer taught I-Diess kids can learn the Art of drinking without Conflagration And older Counsel with friendly Heart can guide them toward Moderation

BINGE LANE The couch-potato cheers the game With lonely pizza, 6-pack drinks Every booze-filled fridge’s the same— Each man at home in stupor sinks Fiendish Vodka, eight quid the Bottle Fills youthful breast with wanton Rage His friend he’ll stab, his neighbor throttle ASBOs progress to prison Cage In Alcopops our Children find Some Comfort to their troubled Mind Drunk in whatever sordid spot The CSO’s discover not

The poems below each of the modern prints appear to echo the spirit of the originals though I haven’t seen any information about who wrote them, though a Peter Amor is credited for something at the bottom right-hand corner of each. And I must confess I don’t know what some of idiomatic words mean, such as I-Diess kids, ASBOs or CSO’s. Click on Pub Street (on left) or Binge Lane (on right) to see larger, more detailed versions of each print.
 

The idea with the new contrasting prints is to contrast and encourage people drinking in pubs (something SIBA has a pecuniary interest in, of course) with being drunk on the street and buying cheap bargain beer at grocery stores. They also hope the updated works will help raise awareness of the problems with binge drinking that have been in the news of late in Britain. The new prints are by UK artist Enoch Sweetman. As the BBC put it, “[i]n Pub Street, people are seen as relaxed and happy” whereas “Binge Lane shows youths fighting and drunken schoolgirls.”

Both are finely detailed and there’s a lot to look at that’s not immediately apparent at first. There are many little events going on throughout each illustration, which makes it fun to keep looking at it as you keep discovering new stories and symbolism.

SIBA’s own press release spins it like this:

In the new pictures, Gin Lane is renamed Binge Lane, a scene of violence, unconsciousness and under-age drinking in the midst of shops selling cheap beer, alcopops and Vin de Toilette.

Beer Street becomes Pub Street, a peaceful environment of real ale, good food, bar games and live entertainment, according to one of the pub signs in the picture.

Rhymes beneath Hogarth’s originals speak of gin as a “cursed fiend, with fury fraught”, which “cherishes with hellish care theft, murder, perjury”. But beer is praised as a “happy produce of our isle”, which “warms each English generous breast with liberty and love”. SIBA chairman Peter Amor says: “The gin of the 18th century may have been replaced by a whole trolley of cheap drinks, but the message is the same.

“The pub is practically the only place where you can drink draught beer and people’s behaviour there is subject to strict controls by the licensee and by the presence of mature, well behaved regular customers who wouldn’t stand for any kind of trouble. “The real source of the problems that are being sensationally highlighted by the media at the moment is cheap liquor sold in bulk and, in a minority of supermarkets and off-licences, without much regard to the age of the people buying it.

“In the circumstances, it is totally unfair to lump pubs in with the real perpetrators of the problem.” SIBA’s campaign will include lobbying MPs and peers, to make them aware that pubs are not in the main the culprits of the current perceived rash of binge drinking, and working with other trade and consumer organisations with interests in the brewing and licensing sectors to form a broad alliance in support of the positive aspects of the British pub.

So what I take away from all of this is that what SIBA’s trying to do is preemptively head off the neo-prohibitionists who have been getting horror stories of binge drinking into the news with increasing effectiveness. If memory serves (and I’m sure the historians out there will confirm or refute it for me, —Bob? —Maureen?) our own brewers did the same thing prior to Prohibition trying to distance themselves from the social problems associated with whiskey and other hard liquor and portray beer as a healthful alternative. But it was too little, too late, and the prohibitionists continued to paint all alcohol with the same broad brush. The cynic in me thinks this won’t be terribly effective either, especially since, unlike in Hogarth’s time, there are many more diversions available that will make it more difficult for two black and white cartoon prints to have much of an impact.

In the updated version they seem to splitting the hairs even finer, trying to distinguish good drinking behavior from bad, and distinguishing it by where it’s taking place. A worthy endeavor, to be sure, but one which the average neo-prohibitionist seems predestined to not consider for even one nanosecond. But perhaps I’m mis-reading their intentions, which they state are to separate good pub drinking from bad binge drinking. That may be a tough sell. Some people can drink in their home without incident and I suspect that at least from time to time a binge drinker may go on a bender in a pub. In the end, I’m not sure it’s only the location where someone drinks that determines his or her behavior. It may be a factor, of course, but it doesn’t seem as black and white as Pub Street and Binge Lane pictures it.

Purity Brewery, a newer British microbrewery in Warwickshire, England, became the first brewery in the UK to earn a Red Tractor Assurance Mark for one of its beers, Farmer’s Harvest.

From their website: This is the first alcoholic beverage to carry the Red Tractor assurance mark which makes it unique! The mark symbolises that the ale has been produced in the UK using British grown malt and hops that meets the high standards expected and examined through independent inspections by the Assured Food Standards agency. Paul Halsey, director at Purity, comments: “We’re really excited to be the first brewery to display the Red Tractor stamp. This reflects our commitment to use only British farmed produce in all of our ales. Including the Red Tractor symbol on our beer will work to reassure consumers and demonstrate our support for British farming.” Colin Smith, chairman of Assured Food Standards, said: “We are delighted to award Purity with the first ever Red Tractor assurance mark for a brewery. This is the latest exciting development as an ever increasing number of businesses join Red Tractor. We hope other breweries will follow Purity’s lead and commit to sourcing farm assured British ingredients.” The beer was brewed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the National Farmers’ Union in the UK.

In a sense, the Red Tractor mark is similar to labeling something organic, except that the goal is to promote local ingredients in a variety of goods, with a standard of quality, too. It is administered by Assured Food Standards (or AFS), which is a trade group “owned by the entire food industry. It represents interests from each of the key links in the food chain, including the National Farmer’s Union, the Ulster Farmers Union, the Meat & Livestock Commission, Dairy UK and the British Retail Consortium. Observers include DEFRA and the Food and Drink Federation.” Their stated objective:

AFS believes that the Red Tractor has a major role to play in the future of British food and farming — by promoting recognition of professionally-produced assured food, and by boosting the reputation of food production in the UK. We do this by first establishing the benchmark for production and then ensuring that producers, processors and other operators continually meet those standards by carrying out regular and robust audits.

Purity Brewing was founded in 2005 and makes two beers in addition to Farmer’s Harvest, Pure UBU (an amber that’s 4.5% abv) and Pure Gold (a 3.8% abv golden ale). The Pure UBU was chosen last year as one of the world’s top fifty beers at the International Beer Challenge, an international competition headquartered in the UK. The Supreme Champion that same year was none other than Deschutes’ The Abyss. Based solely on their website, they appear to be a well-funded craft brewer, but with the accolades one dares to hope they care about the beer, too. I’m certainly looking forward to giving them a try on my next visit across the pond.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last forty years you undoubtedly know the iconic image of the album cover to the Beatles’ seminal work, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. There have been countless homages and parodies of the cover, from Frank Zappa to the Celebrator Beer News, who used it initially for their tenth anniversary. Their version, of course, features well know figures from the brewing industry, both past and present.

The original and the Celebrator’s beer world view.

Well, it seems there’s more of a connection to beer than first thought, as the artist who designed the Sgt. Pepper cover Peter Blake, has designed the label artwork for a new beer, which has been named the official beer of Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008. Better known simply as Liverpool 08, it’s a yearlong cultural event with something like 350 events taking place in Liverpool. There will be “more than 50 international festivals in art, architecture, ballet, comedy, cinema, food, literature, music, opera, science and theatre.” One billion people from more than 60 countries, across five continents, are expected to visit and/or participate.

The beer itself is brewed by Cains, a Liverpudlian brewery that’s been brewing since 1870. Cains is using their award-winning Cain’s Finest Lager, which won awards at the 2005 CAMRA festival in Liverpool and “Best English Beer” at the 2005 CAMRA Scotland Beer Festival. From the website: Cains have created a lager of distinction using the finest barley malt and hops. Because Cains Lager comes from an extensive maturation period, it delivers a distinctive, refreshing taste for the discerning drinker. Smooth and full flavoured with a lovely amber hue, we believe it’s truly worth the wait’. About 250,000 bottles will be produced, and it will also be available at the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern galleries in addition to the usual supermarkets and other outlets. They’ll keep using the label all year, but will discontinue it December 31. The BBC reported on it’s origin today as follows: Sir Peter [Blake] said: “Cains wanted a bottle that would encapsulate the ‘Best of British’ activity and provide a fitting tribute to Liverpool during its Capital of Culture year. “To me, the Union Jack seemed like the perfect choice - it’s an enduring symbol of national pride and one of the few things that is instantly recognisable as being British.”

Cains chief executive Sudarghara Dusanj said: “Sir Peter Blake is one of country’s best loved artists and, through his work with the Beatles, has built a strong affiliation with Liverpool so we couldn’t think of anyone better.

“The final design is truly striking.”

No doubt the bottle will be highly sought after by breweriana collectors.

It’s been said that when you buy something, the price is what you pay and value is what you get. But if you want to get people’s attention, charge an astonishingly high price for something. Case in point, ever since Bloomberg News on Friday did a story about Carlsberg’s new $400-per-bottle beer, touting it as the world’s most expensive, it’s been burning up the blogosphere, online news outlets and forums. And with good reason. There’s a lot not to like about this story, and very little to suggest the $400 price tag is anywhere near reasonable, as many, many have already pointed out, from A Good Beer Blog’s Are You An Utter Fool? to Beer Advocate’s forum responding to the question, Are massively expensive beers good for the craft brew world?

What I find curious about this new beer is that, as far as I can tell, Carlsberg is almost completely silent about it. There’s nothing about it on their website, nothing under media or press releases. Wouldn’t you expect at least some PR information on the supposed release of something called the world’s most expensive beer? But all of the press this has gotten seems to be coming from a single source, the Bloomberg piece, which even more oddly appears to be aimed at the Latin American market.

The beer itself may be called Carlsberg Vintage No. 1, and all we know about it is that it’s 10.5% abv and “contains hints of prune, caramel, vanilla and oak tree from the French and Swedish wooden casks in which it [was] stored. It has a chestnut brown color, little foam and goes well with cheeses and desserts.” That’s according to Jens Eiken, the brewer at the Jacobsen Brewhouse (the small boutique brewery housed in the Visitor’s Center), who created the beer. Given that it’s so expensive, he’s surprisingly tight-lipped about giving any details that might convince one that it’s worth that hefty price tag. He says it’s relatively cheap, “considering the amount of time the brewery spent developing it.” Naturally he’s not saying how long that was, but does add “[w]e’re trying to raise the bar for what a beer can be,” which is maddeningly infuriating since he refuses to say how or to where he thinks this beer has moved the “bar” to.

But unlike other efforts to “raise the bar” where the process and rationale for a higher price tag have been spelled out somewhat convincingly, making beer of great value doesn’t appear to be the point one iota. Price appears to be the driving factor, which at least explains the lack of persuasion or transparency. The $400 price is a conversion from the price in Danish kroners, which is 2,008 — a figure arrived at simply to coincide with the year. Next year, the price will go up to 2009 kroners and 2010 the year after that. The 600 bottles initially being sold in three high-end Copenhagen restaurants aren’t even very large. Each bottle is only 37.5 centiliters, which at 12.68 ounces is just north of our standard beer bottle.

The beer was created for no better reason than to “challenge luxury wines in the gourmet restaurant market and capitalize on rising individual wealth.” You can see the visible hand of marketing in every step of this project. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I think the way to challenge wine’s perceived supremacy is to make beers that rival the quality of fine wines, not arbitrarily price them as if they did. Frankly, I think one of the best selling points of better beer is precisely that in many cases it really does already rival that of fine wine, and does so at a spectacularly more reasonable price and one which bears some relation to the ingredients and process of manufacture. In other words, it’s a good value. Even Utopias, at $100 or more, because we know what’s involved and how it was made doesn’t seem too out of whack. Carlsberg Vintage No. 1 on the other hand? Whack job, all the way.

Beyond that, look at the tortured way they arrived at the title “world’s most expensive.” From the Bloomberg news article:

Is it enough that there are only 600 bottles (50 cases at 12 per or 25 cases at 24 per) to justify the price? Certainly supply and demand is a time-honored economic method of determining fair market value. But in this case while the supply is indeed low, the actual demand is non-existent, completely artificial and will have to be manufactured from scratch.

You have to wonder about what they’re not telling us, because a 10.5% beer that’s been aged on wood is not exactly newsworthy. I can find any number of beers similar to that description. There are entire beer festivals here in the U.S. devoted to wood-aged beers. I judged at the Bistro’s Barrel-aged Beer Festival in my own backyard last year and had at least a dozen beers fitting the description of Vintage No. 1, without having to travel to Denmark. So what could be so different about this one to not only justify the cost but also their claim that even at this price they’re losing money. If I wanted people to plunk down a previously unheard of amount for something I made, I’d go out of my way to justify that high price.

To give my take on the question of whether or not expensive beer is good for the craft beer industry, I think in general it can be. I think that for the most part the price of beer has been kept artificially low for too long and has helped to maintain the image of beer as a cheap, mass-produced commodity not worthy of respect. There is something to the idea of charging a higher price for something giving it more perceived value by that fact alone. Though I think it’s gotten out of hand, wine has been using perceived value for years instead of a cost of goods to mark-up ratio to come up with a fair market price. Beer, especially among the big breweries, works on volume sales rather than a high mark-up per bottle or per package. And to keep volume up, the big breweries have kept their prices low even as their cost of manufacture and for ingredients has steadily risen. This has also forced craft brewers to likewise keep their profit margins thinner, which has had the effect of keeping perceived value lower, too. Now that there are shortages to both hops and malt, that will have to change and it will be interesting to see how consumers react. I think as long as they perceive that for the price they’re still getting a good value, things shouldn’t be too bad.

That’s where I think Carlsberg’s Vintage No. 1 goes off the rails. There’s just no sense that there’s any reasonable value for the exorbitant price they’re asking. I’m sure there will be someone willing to buy it just to show off or impress others with their success. After all, there’s never been a shortage of fools with more money than sense. That doesn’t justify the price, of course, and in this case the utter lack of perceived value could indeed damage the cause of making fine beer more highly prized and priced. I’d pay almost any reasonable price for something I highly value. But I place almost no value in being tricked into paying ten times (or more) for something just because someone thinks they can get away with it.

UPDATE 1.29: I’ve found a bit more about what the bottle will look like. “Each bottle is labeled with a hand stenciled original lithographic print by Danish artist Frans Kannike, making the empties worth about $100 apiece.”