Thinking of Endorsing Trump? Don't.

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Four days ago, Eric Trump toured the Yuengling brewery with 73-year-old Dick Yuengling Jr, and declared himself impressed. Thereafter, on behalf of the brewery, Dick endorsed another scion of a famous dynasty for president.

Our guys are behind your father,” Yuengling said. “We need him in there.” 

Care to guess what came next? (Hint: it involved social media.)

It's not surprising that a fifth-generation business owner is a Republican. Nor would his personal support of a political candidate spark outrage and boycotts. But in associating his brewery and its product with a partisan campaign, Yuengling dragged his business into the middle of the ugliest presidential race in two generations. Advice to brewery owners: don't do this. Just don't. There is absolutely no upside to politicizing your product (and this isn't a matter of party--Yuengling would have erred by endorsing Clinton on the brewery's behalf, too), but a number of serious downsides. It will hurt business in the short term, make you some lifelong enemies (many people still nurse a grudge over Coors' anti-union and anti-gay stances of the 1960s-'80s), and tarnish your brand for years.

Yuengling is the fourth-largest brewery in the United States, and sells millions of barrels of beer each year. They appeal to, and depend on, mass appeal. Everything about their business model must depend on broadening their base of support. Choosing to jump into a nasty political campaign means associating your product with, for roughly half your customers base, a deeply loathed figure. (Worse, it is certain to have zero effect on Trump's prospects, particularly in the largely blue-state network in which Yuengling operates. Strategically, this was mammothly boneheaded.)

The rules of branding are simple: associate yourself with generic positive emotional cues. America, mom, apple pie, "innovation," working-class values, a local region, history, etc etc. These are things no one rejects. There are of course more subtle elements of branding that come into play, and courting controversy may be a viable route. But embracing political factionalism is not one of those controversies you want, and it's why so few companies ever do it. (And it's why companies that wander into policy battles or charge there intentionally usually end up walking their support back.) you can discard a failed marketing campaign like an unnecessary coat, and no one will remember it a week later. Supporting a divisive political figure leaves a scent you may never be able to wash off.

I get why Dick Yuengling was seduced into this endorsement. A presidential campaign wooed him; he imagined that putting the weight of his company and customers behind Trump might move the needle more than his private endorsement. But if you're confronted with a similar impulse, resist the urge. It will damage your business in the short term, and your brand will be tarnished for years after everyone has forgotten the politics of that long-ago election. It's just dumb.

What Brands Tell Us

I have long been waiting to indulge my cider Jones, an itch I started scratching last night at Bushwhacker's Cider.  My experience has heretofore been limited almost exclusively to local ciders, and I wanted to see what the famous regions of the world had to offer: the Basque and Asturias ciders of Spain, Breton and Norman ciders of France, and English ciders.  Sally and I enjoyed a wonderful tannic French pour and then had two Basque ciders--Bereziartua and Petritegi.  The former was sharply acetic--a cider so transmuted during fermentation it was difficult to identify the nature of the source fruit.  The Petritegi was pure funk, a lambic-like cider that had a bit of acidity, full apple flavor, but a lot of cheesy wild stuff.  I loved it.

Afterward I went over to select some bottles for sampling at home and came across an amazing diversity of presentation.  These three bottles come from the three famous cider regions and all cost about the same (seven bucks and change).  These aren't cherry-picked especially--they do a good job of representing the style of their home country's packaging, though each in a slightly exaggerated way.  Have a look and then we'll talk about how they appear to American eyes:

Moving right to left, we have the Basque, French, and English ciders.  What do they tell us?

Credit: Todo-Jaunjo

1.  Spain.  If cider were beer, Spanish cider would be Belgian beer, and Basque cider would be lambic.  It's a very old-school beverage, rife with wild microorganisms that contribute tons of acids and funk.  If you look closely, you can see the lees floating in the bottle--I inadvertently roused them during the photography.  The label itself is a quirky, homespun affair that brings to mind both artisanal handcraft and also a bygone time.
That font is fantastic and reminds me of children's books and the circus.  If you zoom in a bit, you can see the blocky small print, which looks like something that got added on later, perhaps when the company got its first computer in 1988.  And if you look at the funny sketch, you see not just a whimsical rendering of pouring cider, but a particular way of decanting known as "throwing the cider." 

This may be a titan of cider-making, producing millions of barrels a year (though I highly doubt it), but the label says: we are a small, rustic cidery and we make things traditionally and by hand.  The cidery wants you to see the local farm where the apples were pressed, so smell the wood and vapors of the fermenting room, and to imagine the wizened, whiskered master cider maker as he tends his casks like a doting grandfather.

2.  France.  Next we go to France, and find the mirror opposite of the Basque presentation.  It has all the hauteur of a French wine bottle, with a refined color scheme, cursive font, and detailed information about the type of cider and apple varietal.  The company has even hung the crest of nobility around the neck.  You can't see it in this photo, but the neck is wrapped, champagne-style, in foil and covers a caged cork.  This company does not want you to see in your mind's eye anything to do with a farm.  Their product is as polished and sophisticated as any Burgundy, and deserves a place next to the Cassoulet.

3.  England.  I actually have no idea what to make of this bottle, which is like one of those foreign names that means something obscene in English.  To American eyes, it looks like a bottle of Olde English 800 or perhaps a fortified wine like Wild Irish Rose.  Both the Basque and French bottles are wine-bottle sized and corked and colored for effect--Gold Rush is in a clear beer bottle, topped unceremoniously by a plain black crown.  And Gold Rush?  That has specific associations in the US that maybe it lacks in the UK--greed and overindulgence, the kind of thing that buttresses the sense of cheap, strong hooch.  It's a simple label, but not good-simple; one has the impression that someone spent four minutes laying it out.  (I suppose the cursive "cider" is meant to suggest elegance, but it's too slapdash to convince.)

I would actually love the insight of a native to describe what the gents at Olivers Cider were going for.  It's lost on these Yankee eyes.  Fortunately, the barkeep at Bushwhacker's recommended it or I would never have even have really seen it, much less bought it. For what it's worth, the bottle is fairly typical.  I also picked up a bottle of the acclaimed Burrow Hill, and although the label was slightly better, it came in the clear beer bottle topped by a metal crown.

Unlike beer, which has a similar status in each nation that brews it, cider's varies.  You can see how the countries themselves see their product in these labels.  Spain's is an artisanal tradition, a cultural expression that is unique to place.  For France, cider is part of the exalted culinary tradition.  And in England cider is--well, that's less clear.  But certainly neither something people take instantly to be either an artisanal handcraft nor a mark of high culture.  I will report back next once I've tried all these and let you know what the insides of the bottles tell us.

A New IPA Glass From Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head

Update.  I started out the post with "facts."  Alan McLeod did some digging and exposes the fraud behind this whole sorry affair.  The good thing is that I no longer have to feel bad about hating these glasses.

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First the facts, ma'am:

In April, the Bavarian glassmaker Spiegelau will release the world’s first glass designed specifically for India Pale Ales, whose hops-heavy brewing process gives them an especially pungent, fruity aroma. Designed in collaboration with Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada--two craft brewers known for their IPAs--the unusual glass features wave-like ridges toward the bottom that help bring out the beer’s flavor. “As you’re tilting your glass against your face, it creates more resistance to the liquid, which pushes more carbon dioxide gas and hop aromatics out of the liquid and into the balloon-shaped chamber of the upper glass,” explains Dogfish founder and CEO Sam Calagione.

It's the brainstorm of Spiegelau's Matt Rutkowski, whose thinking on glassware produced what can only be described as the ugliest champagne glass on earth--to which the IPA glass bears a family resemblance.  Well, never mind, tasting panelists at both Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada independently agreed that of 12 different designs, this one was the best.  The new glass also earns kudos from MBAA's Karl Ockert as a flavor-maximizer. 

Thoughts
There are those who believe glassware affects a beer's flavor and those who don't.  I am in the believer camp.  I have experienced an aroma-deadening effect in the shaker pint as compared to an identical beer poured into a tulip pint.  (The English nonic pint is fine, but not as nice as the tulip.)  Beer glasses can affect the behavior of a beer, as when a hyper-carbonated Belgian is poured into a goblet, allowing the head to dissipate as the beer enters the glass, or a weiss vase, which encourages a lovely, thick head.  Furthermore, we know that flavor is actually the play of complex inputs in the mouth and nose, including nerves in the mouth that sense pressure and viscosity, retronasal aroma, and the brute sense of taste from the taste buds.  To the extent glassware can affect aroma and texture, it will affect perception of flavor.

I am also a huge fan of branding.  Even if glassware had no effect on flavor, I'd love the differences in vessels--the tulip glasses that evoke Belgian beer, the steins of Germany, and hell, even our terrible shaker pints, which are so classically American.   Dimpled mugs, pokals, pilsner flutes--they all suggest a beer and a place.  Wonderful.

But this IPA glass fails on one of the most important dimensions--appearance.  It's just embarrassing.  I have really tried to love the Sam Adams glass, another engineered vessel that uses every trick in the book to boost flavor.  Like the IPA glass, though, it's faintly ridiculous.  There's a kind of technical fussiness, blind to the realities of aesthetics, that results in really visual absurdity. The IPA glass looks like a creation of Dr. Seuss--and not in a good way.  Curves are nice, but these are childish--they don't flow elegantly, they bulge foolishly, like the bubbles protecting the Michelin man.

When machine-made clear glassware first hit the scene in the 19th century, it helped popularize pale beers.  Why?  Because it showcased their appearance.  Ever since, proprietary glassware had focused at least in part on highlighting the beer itself.  A long, slender pilsner glass is nothing special to look at itself, but it displays the beer gorgeously.  When we drink a beer, our minds are working overtime to affect our sense of flavor, too.  Even the concept of flavor is one more evolved in humans than any other animal, and is a fusion of tons of mental and sensory inputs.  In a laboratory setting, it may be that my mind could filter out the "extraneous" notions of form and shape and verify that the new IPA glass produces the richest flavor.  But in a pub, I'd just feel silly with this glass.  IPAs are quickly becoming the classic American beer and they deserve their own glass.  But not this one.

Any Theories?

Give it to Redhook--they're definitely willing to try unorthodox marketing techniques. Take for example the package I got yesterday. The brewery is entering expanding their line in the lucrative 22-ounce bottle market, and so they sent me a Pilsner, ESB, and IPA. That makes sense, but then what to make of this waist-high distressed-steel sign they also tucked in with no explanation. (Click to enlarge; those are the 22s in the picture, to give you a sense of the scale.)


Let's make a game of it. Aside from the obvious--but not quite persuasive--explanation that they sent it to me to get a blog post out of it (there's gotta be far cheaper ways to get press), why did they send it?

I will say this; it's pretty cool. I wouldn't have minded distressing it myself over the course of the next thirty years, but that's a small quibble. As brewery swag goes, it is the largest and most interesting piece I've ever received.