Boozin’ Blog

According to a recent Gallup poll Americans are choosing beer over wine once again. It was a tight race there for a while but, if one is to believe the results of this survey, beer is back on top.

Why? Oh, sure, let’s go ahead and speculate. For a few years wine was gaining ground as less expensive bottles of not-bad wine were becoming more widely available all of the time. And this to some pretty clever, eye-catching labels and wine was giving beer some pretty stiff competition.

In the meantime the big beer companies were focusing on new ways to sell the same product. (Sure, craft beer was showing impressive growth and exciting the pants off beer geeks like me but in terms of sheer sales dollars it accounted for very little.) Remember the beer case that seconded as an ice chest after the top was ripped off? Or how about the label that turned blue when the beer was cold enough? Somehow, Americans weren’t all that excited by the same watery beer repackaged.

Then the big brewers remembered flavor. They could have looked to craft brewers and maybe they did but as soon as they started added flavor back into their beer their numbers started picking up. Sure, those flavors might be lime, salt and an apologetic imitation of British ale but at least beer is starting to taste of something again.

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I’ve never considered buying beer for an underaged kid before but, I probably would in this case.

Casey Whittington of California spent some time patching up an old canoe a few weeks ago. After putting the finishing touches on his boat he wanted to make sure that it was fully repaired. He put it in the water and left it overnight. When he returned it was gone.

That was weeks ago and he had likely given up on ever seeing it again. That is until the ransom demand arrived. Yup, Casey is the victim of boatnapping. The master criminal has demanded the Casey turn over a 30-pack case of beer.

I say Casey should just suck it up and turn over the beer. But, he definitely should shake it up first. Maybe the local hardware store would let him use the paint can shaker.

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I seem to become more liberal all the time in my acceptance of what beer can be. There was a time when I wouldn’t have even considered mixing beer with anything else. Even the black and tan seemed a little wrong. I had this idea that what one found in the bottle or the keg was what the brewer intended and who where we to tinker with that?

But that was then and this is now. Now that the summer heat is upon us, I find myself digging on the shandy this year. It started when I grudgingly picked up a sixer of Leinenkugel’s Shandy at a local convenience store. I wanted a new beer but their selection was rather limited and I didn’t feel like driving across town to the good beer store. The shandy was the only one of the lot that I hadn’t tried.

So I took it home and quite enjoyed it. It turns out to be a great drink for hot summer weather – refreshing with a touch of zing from the lemon but still plenty of beery goodness.

Making your own is the best way to enjoy a shandy. Traditionally it’s any light beer (light as in color and flavor, not one those faux diet beers) mixed with equal parts lemonade. Wheat beer is particularly good for this combination. Cutting the beer in half drives down the alcohol so you can have more – a good thing on hot, summer days.

Shandies have been made with other drinks like ginger ale or lemony sodas but the classic lemonade shandy is really the best.

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What’s the perfect job? Well, for me it has to include beer at some level. More than once I’ve considered working at a brewery because most provide their employees with regular supplies of free beer.

How about a company that provides beer during retirement? Sign me up!

But as quickly as I learn about it the dream dies. I had no idea that one of the benefits of working at Molson was free beer after retirement but at the same time I learned about it I learned that it was no more.

Molson employees and retirees were told recently that the free beer they’ve been enjoying will be drying up soon. Each will receive gradually less beer until 2015 when the company will stop providing the perk altogether.

The retirees are pissed! In fact, they held a public protest outside of the Molson brewery in St. John’s, Newfoundland. I doubt it did much good.

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Tailgate hands free and bring your own booze into the game with the Boozin’ Bag - Click here.

To call tailgating a subculture might be overstating it a little. But there is no denying that within the world of tailgating there is a certain set of manners that apply only during tailgating and nowhere else. Especially in today’s increasingly isolated society, tailgating has become a last refuge of the social animal.

Tailgaters relish drifting from party to party. Chatting it up with former strangers who share a passion for the same sports team, musical group, or Best Buy sale, depending on what event is being tailgated, is one of life’s great joys. This open society encourages people to sample the grilling acumen of the fellow tailgaters. There is also a relatively free sharing of booze from beer to alcopops to wine.

But even within the nearly communal nature of the tailgate part there are a few points of etiquette that we at the Boozin’ Blog feel should be pointed out.

First, don’t be greedy. Oh, sure, we can always expect there to be a few moochers in the crowd. (We’ll get to them in a minute.) But don’t let the presence or theoretical presence of moochers ruin your time. Share freely.

Second, bring too much food and drink. This goes hand-in-hand with the first rule. Expect to share and bring plenty with which to do it. Bounty only makes the tailgate party better.

Third, if you don’t bring anything don’t expect anything. Simply put, don’t be a mooch. Moochers are the bane of the tailgate party and do more for ruining everyone’s time than almost anything else. Don’t be an asshole.

Fourth, share reciprocally. Try to give double to those who have shared with you. Did you get a couple of beers off the car two stalls down? Offer them four beers or a bottle of wine. Did you get a brat off the guy in the red Ford? Send your kid back over there with two burgers. Get it?

Fifth, keep your mess to yourself. It might be a communal event but that doesn’t mean that someone else should be responsible for your mess. Show a little style - keep your spot on the parking lot clean and take your litter out with you.

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There is a belief out there that beer is recession proof. Proponents of this idea point to the smaller recession in recent decades where sales of beer improved while the rest of the economy retracted. The idea is that as money gets tighter people want to continue to drink - or drink more - and the cheapest way to do so is to buy cheap beer. Nothing like a sixer of Stag to forget your shrinking 401(k), right?

But this monster of a recession that we’re in now has all of us rethinking that meme. Is beer really recession proof or is it just recession resistant? Every couple of weeks a new report or study comes out conflicting the previous studies - beer is improving, beer isn’t improving, this or that segment of beer is improving while the other isn’t. It’s basically a lot of economic mumbo-jumbo where statistics can be and are used to explain any particular position.

I’ve tended to take a bigger picture approach to this. Before the recession beer sales were generally stagnant or in some years even in decline. Wine and spirits were giving beer the sort of competition here in the US that it simply wasn’t used to. After ruling the liquor industry for so long beer was starting to have self-esteem issues.

But within that trend there was a dynamic that I, as a good beer lover and tireless promoter, found particularly heartening. While big beer here in the US struggled to figure out how to increase or even maintain their position, craft and import beers were going gangbusters. Year after year the craft beer segment showed double digit increases in sales. My analysis is that Americans were finally realizing the truth of the old joke: American beer is like having sex in a canoe; it’s fucking close to water.

Given that the fact that we’re getting mixed signals from the beer market now during this recession isn’t really all that earth shattering. Big beer continues to languish while craft beer continues to improve. Some are calling the improvements in craft and “above-premium” beer sales a desire for “affordable luxuries” among American drinkers.

That might be. Or it could be that beer really is recession proof. The trend of shrinking big beer sales and improving craft beer sales has continued unabated despite the recession. This is what it was doing before and this is what it’s doing now. Had the recession not have happened would the beer sales picture be any different? It’s tempting to think that it wouldn’t be.

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Have you noticed a change in the look of Jim Beam’s bottles? Well, if you haven’t yet you will soon.

I usually have a bottle of Jim Beam somewhere in the house. I like bourbon and, while JB isn’t my favorite, it’s certainly affordable and very decently palatable. It’s my ‘every day’ whiskey.

For about a month - from Memorial Day to the Fourth of July - Jim Beam bottles will feature the Operation Homefront logo. Now, there was nothing in the email I received about this that mentioned any sort of “proceeds from the sales” sort of situation. Nevertheless, this isn’t some crass bid at patriotism on JB’s part. Besides raising awareness of Operation Homefront with these bottles, JB is also a big contributor. They rank with top contributors according to OH’s website and, according to JB contributed a quarter of a million last year and are on course to contribute even more this year.

If you don’t know what Operation Homefront is take a moment and check out their website.

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I’m a snobbish beer geek. I know it; I own it. Therefore I tend to look askance at anything a big brewer does be it Anheuser-Busch, Diego, Miller or Inbev. I always suspect that they are up to something besides making better beer.

I’ve softened my view a little in the last couple of years. Obviously someone is drinking these beers and I’ve talked to more than one beer lover who prefers the taste and qualities of a Bud over the latest APA from the local craft brewer. And some of the big brewers have tried - to varying degrees of success - to include themselves in the craft beer movement. The Michelob brand, for instance, made some very decent porter, wheat and pale ale beers last year.

But that hasn’t stopped me from looking a little too closely at what the big brewers do to move product. And so when Guinness and Coors recently launched campaigns in the US to push more product my fevered braid couldn’t help but compare them.

First, there was Guinness. As it turns out this year is the 250th anniversary of the signed of the famous 9,000 lease that A. Guinness signed for his Dublin brewery, which is more museum/gift shop than a brewery these days. So, in addition to other things, the brewer is celebrating by brewing a distributing a specially brewed stout. (I tried it. It’s nice enough, a sweet stout with heavy chocolate notes.)

This is a pretty traditional way for breweries to celebrate. The country wins a war, encounters a bicentennial or some other achievement and breweries often will brew a special beer to celebrate. (This is how Dos Equis was born.) Guinness 250 Stout is a nice way to celebrate and to get the word out to consumers.

Second is Coors Light. They have nothing to celebrate; nothing new to announce. But summer’s almost here so they have to do something, right? OK, remember the ‘cold activation’ bottles that they pushed the last couple of summers? Right, well they’ve added that gizmo to they’re cans and launched a marketing campaign. I shared what I thought of this worthless gesture at my About.com beer blog.

Clearly big brewers are not all created equal. I’m not a diehard fan of Guinness but in this particular contest they clearly win. They’ve taken a real event and reacted/used it in a very traditional way. Plus they introduced a new beer - my very favorite thing a brewer can do. Coors, on the other hand, invented a completely manufactured event jut to get people to take notice of them at the beginning of summer.

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Victims of the same tragedy often feel a bond even is they don’t know one another. There’s a sort of ‘no one understands me like my brother’ feeling between them.

So it’s understandable that the residents of New Orleans can feel a connection with the residents of Fargo after the flood they recently endured. Even though those from the Mardi Gras capital of the US have hardly anything else in common with those from, well, Fargo they are certainly brothers and sisters in that they both no know what it feels like to watch their neighborhoods go underwater.

Dixie Brewing Company in New Orleans wanted to reach out to their compatriots and so decided to send them all a beer. They’re shipping 24,000 of their beers to Fargo where each resident is being given a ticket for a free beer.

Very cool, Dixie.

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Remember a few weeks ago when that fake news story about herpes and beer pong was misinterpreted as real? Suddenly everyone was talking about how beer pong players were at risk of catching any number of VDs from their sport. Well, we now know that one isn’t at significantly higher risk of catching a disease from lofting ping pong balls into cups of beer but there is a chance of death.

Yup, death.

A recent game of Beirut led to a fatal shooting when Joseph B. Jimenez and Scott Riley began arguing. It’s not clear what point of the game they argued over. Nevertheless, they wound up in a nearby alley where they continued to argue and, finally, Jimenez, pulled a gun and shot Riley in the throat.

Over beer pong.

Beer pong.

It would be pointless for me to call this absolutely stupid. No doubt we all agree on that, even Jimenez. Getting so worked up over a game that you’re willing to shoot someone is clearly the act of someone who needs to work on his critical thinking skills. But I think that the really dumb decision happened much earlier in the evening.

Let’s think about the game of beer pong for a moment. It’s fun, right? But it’s also a game with many different interpretations of the rules. It is also highly competitive and strategies often focus on trash talking the other player. Add that the to the copious amounts of alcohol that can sometimes be consumed during play and you have the potential for tempers to flair. Indeed, this might be the first beer pong fatality but it is hardly the first time a fight broke out over a game.

No doubt Jimenez had played before so he knew all of these things. So why the hell did he bring a gun to the game? Here was the really stupid decision that he made that evening. When you are entering into a situation that may bring out your temper and, at the same time, lower you capacity for good judgment leave the damn gun at home!

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