Oregon Breweries Get Political

Yesterday, the President of the United States stood before the press and told them: "We got 306 because people came out and voted like they've never seen before so that's the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan." This was for an election in which he received fewer votes than his opponent that happened three months ago. This kind of disconnect with reality has provoked heretofore apolitical entities into action--including a group of Portland beer fans who formed into a group called the Beer Party PDX. On Monday, they host their inaugural initiative:

The Beer Party PDX Launch Event takes place on Monday, February 20 at participating businesses. 100% of the revenue from purchased kegs will go to the ACLU. Participating bars include Bailey’s Taproom, Bazi Bierbrasserie, Beer Mongers, Belmont Station, Imperial, Lombard House, Roscoe’s, Saraveza, The Thirsty Sasquatch, The Upper Lip, Tin Bucket, and Uptown Market. Participating breweries include Baerlic, Base Camp, Bull Run Cider, Burnside, Cider Riot!, Coalition, Crooked Fence, Culmination, Double Mountain, Heater Allen, Machine House, Matchless, Montavilla, New Belgium, Ninkasi, Pfriem, Ruse, The Commons, Three Magnets, Uptown Market, and Vertigo.  

Since Trump's election, the once safely-sequestered world of politics has been aerosolized and released into the environment, where it touches everything. I guess it will have to be a running theme here on the blog, since every week seems to bring another example of the way in which breweries have entered the political fray. As recently as a few months ago, this wouldn't have seemed like a realm breweries would eagerly enter--partisan politics divides, which means shrinking your potential customer base. But as unprecedented as a President who flagrantly lies about an election we all just witnessed, so is the reaction against him. With Beer Party PDX, we're seeing the contours of how they're trying to take a stand without falling down a partisan tunnel.

As far as I can tell, nowhere does the group use the words "Trump," "Republicans," or "Democrats." Instead, it's mission is "to organize members of the PDX beer community in order to effectively protect and promote basic civil rights including voter access, freedom of speech, and equal rights." In regulating political speech, the courts have regularly allowed nonprofits to organize around specific issues but not partisan candidates. It's a line we've come to recognize as separating the inner and outer core of political action. Beer Party PDX's issues are clearly political; they're not partisan. A brewery can far more easily join the political conversation when the discussion revolves around speech, ballot access, and civil rights rather than the President himself.

It's also worth noting that smaller breweries have greater latitude here. Donald Trump managed just 17% of the vote in Multnomah County, where Portland is located. A small brewery with no plans to sell much outside the cities in Oregon doesn't have a lot to lose by speaking out. Larger breweries like Deschutes, Craft Brewers Alliance, and Rogue, which have distribution in many red states, may be more cautious--though it's therefore impressive to see New Belgium and Ninkasi take the plunge and join this event. Not every brewery has leadership with clear political preferences, but among those that do, more and more are speaking out. It's really a remarkable moment.

I'm starting a new label, "The Trump Effect," for these kinds of posts--I have a hunch this is far from the last one.

AB InBev Targets Trump?

AB InBev's latest entry in their "hard way" commercial series is ... interesting.


Leave aside the lame myth-making and execrable history. As a story, it's trite and embarrassing. But the text is not the point here--the subtext is. As this immigrant struggles to make his American dream come true, he confronts hostile nativists who tell him "You're not wanted here," and "Go back home." He rides the river with a black man (this is roughly the time of the Civil War). His journey ends as he founds a brewery that will one day sell the world's best-selling beer, the classic American success story--immigrants bringing their skills and talents to our country to make it a richer, more varied, and vibrant place.

Completely coincidental timing, you know.

A marketing executive at Budweiser said the ad is "super relevant today," but he also cautioned that the commercial is not meant to be taken as commentary on the current political climate in the United States.

Of course it's not.

I would love to argue that ABI is a company committed to social justice, but there's a more likely motive here. Anheuser-Busch InBev is a multinational company (its awkward name points to the three heads that still guide things from New York, Belgium, and Brazil) for whom nationalism is bad for business. Tariffs are bad for business. Blocking the free movement of employees across national borders is bad for business. Working up an ad that exalts the history of European migration to the US is a way to both criticize current protectionist policies as well as sending a gauzy, pro-immigrant message to which most Americans will respond well to. It's a warning shot and a bit of Americana served up in a frosty mug.

Still, it's yet another example of the way in which politics have become so dominant that they increasingly define everything--including a simple glass of beer. Whether the politics are naked and raw or submerged and subtle, politics saturate our consciousness. In any other era, this would be a stupid bit of nostalgia bound together by marketing gloss and revisionist history; today it's a sharp (but deniable) critique of a 12-day-old presidency. I am fascinated to see what the reaction will be. Your thoughts?

Politics and Beer in the Age of Trump

I started this blog during an interesting moment in American history. George W. Bush had just finished the fifth year of his presidency. The Iraq war had settled into a slow-rolling quagmire, and Bush had just lost a high-profile battle to privatize Social Security. His poll numbers dipped below 40% and kept falling through the remainder of his presidency. Conservatives weren't happy because their president was flailing; liberals weren't happy because he was still the president. A couple years earlier, I had helped co-found a politics blog that was attempting to overturn GOP dominance in Oregon. It was a grim time for all, a moment of political trench warfare. This blog was actually born as an antidote to politics, a place to write about something uncontroversial and fun.

Adolf Hitler's painting of the Hofbrauhaus
in Munich

Partisan, elective politics is necessarily adversarial; it's a zero sum game of winners and losers. Beer, by contrast has always, or at least as far back as we can see, been a beverage that created community. It brings people together in a social space and its lightly alcoholic nature raises their moods and puts them in a convivial space where they enjoy it together. From the very start I tried to keep this blog out of the realm of politics--for my own mental health--and have been noting for over a decade that "politics divide, beer unites."

In an ideal world, these two realms work symbiotically. We spend the day in our halls of politics fighting about the issues, but retire in the evenings to a pub for a pint together. We know that political choices are usually binary (we cut tax or don't, we enact health care or don't), but that they exist in a larger context of healthy community. We disagree, we fight, but we're family. The context of the battles is our ultimate unity--nation before party. And beer is one of the tools we have of affirming that unity. In a good pub, we're all on team beer.

The world, unfortunately, is not always ideal. There are moments when politics becomes the context for everything else, when it is our divisions and not our commitment to unity that define us.* This is especially true of wartime--the history of beer is punctuated by enormous changes that resulted from bombs, invaders, or resulting famine. But it is also the context of moments before war. Revolution-minded colonists met in New England pubs to conspire against a distant king. Hitler rallied support to a nascent political party in Munich beer halls.

During times of instability, everything becomes a matter of politics. That zero-sum nature of politics can consume countries. When two or more factions agree that their issues are more important than unity, nothing remains free of the division. We may wish pubs were still neutral spaces where we could transcend our grievances, but the best we can hope for is a crowd of fellow-travelers.

Something remarkable and dark is happening in the US right now. We are at an inflection point in politics where that context is in question. For over fifteen decades, we have been secure in our sense that unity outweighs political difference. Things like beer and pubs (and pop culture, religion, business) were safe refuges. But whether you support newly-elected President Trump or oppose him, there's a feeling now that maybe things have flipped. Maybe our political differences will define everything else. Maybe something as benign as beer can no longer be uncontroversial. Maybe our breweries, pubs, and blogs can no longer pretend to be neutral--in 2017 we're either pro- or anti-Trump.

I think we don't know yet. We don't know whether the President will challenge the norms and laws that protect our democracy. And, if he does, we don't know whether our system is strong and stable enough to prevent him from violating them. The last time a president violated the law (Nixon), the ultimate result--it took a few years--was a greater sense of unity and a renewed commitment to the institution of government. The mere presence of a transgressive figure like Trump is not enough to undermine our sense of unity as a nation.

I don't know where we're headed. I really don't want to sacrifice the world of beer and the physical spaces of pubs as refuges of camaraderie and community. But we have entered a moment when it seems like everything has political valence. It is certainly conceivable that we'll have to take sides as beery folk. I'd love this to be my last post on politics on this site for the next four years--and still hope it will be. We'll see.

Interesting times, beer fans. I hope we look back and laugh at how much we were overreacting at the start of the Trump presidency. Be well--

______________________
* "Politics" is a vague and broad term and can mean something as anodyne as holding an opinion on public policy. It is often used to point to social justice--"the personal is political." I use the term to mean the actual activity of electing officials and enacting law. I think it's important to recognize that while a vaguely general political view may not be adversarial, a partisan political view is. By definition and design. Americans often shy away from this truth, thinking that there's some way to adjudicate public policy without a fight. There isn't and never has been. The question is whether that fight exists in the context of a larger commitment to unity or democracy or government, or becomes the context itself. In the latter case, the resolution leads to (sometimes civil) war.

The History of Beer is Political

When I give talks on beer, I usually pin them to national tradition. Wine, a similar fermented beverage, is a product of the grape, of agriculture. Beer is a constructed beverage, like cuisine, and is a product of culture. What is culture? I give examples: local ingredients, history, tax laws, famine, war, and those ineffable preferences that make Germans prefer schweinshaxe and the French Coq au vin.

The first Belgian brewery I ever toured was Palm (long story), and I heard a story there that was repeated in visits to breweries elsewhere in the country. The brewing equipment dated to around 1920, even in breweries that were decades or centuries older than that. The reason? During WWI, Germans harvested the metal for munitions.

Post-WWI

The Czech Republic is another fascinating case study. The breweries there are retro; they are all designed around a four-vessel decoction system, which is by law the way one must make any beer called "Czech beer." They often have antiquated equipment like grants. In neighboring Bavaria, where decoction was invented, many modern breweries have abandoned the practice and it will someday be considered a rustic, old-fashioned exception, not the rule that defines lager-brewing. The reason? The former Czechoslovakia was for much of the 20th century an occupied land, and the innovations that visited breweries elsewhere skipped Plzeň and České Budějovice.

Exactly 500 years ago, a Bavarian Duke passed a law mainly concerned with price regulation, but which included a rider designed to protect the wheat supply of local bakers. Today, in a unified Germany, that law has radically shaped the way Germans brew--affecting beer styles, ingredients, and brewery design. The British government had a similar restrictive law in the 19th century, one that changed in 1880 and allowed brewers to use sugars and unmalted grain in their beer. That eventually led breweries in Ireland to include roasted (and unmalted) barley in their grists--an ingredient now considered the most distinctive element in Irish stout.

As a onetime political blogger, I often contrast the experience to writing about beer with the axiom "politics divide; beer unites." And interpersonally, this is undoubtedly true. In front of the taps, we are all on the same team. (Yay, beer!) But politics have had an enormous effect on the way beer, this cultural fixture, develops and evolves. Rarely in the US have national politics had much to do with the world of beer. After the rise of small breweries in the 1980s, a few laws were tweaked, but most of the serious change took place (or didn't) at the state level. But that doesn't mean they can't.

The election of Donald Trump may not change things much--all we can do now is guess at what his policies will be. But the GOP is almost certain to gut environmental regulations to address climate change. This could have very serious consequences, and not least for brewers who depend on both water-intensive crops and water itself for their livelihood (and it's why so many brewers, from Hopworks to Carlsberg, are focused on the issue). His economic policies may affect people up and down the economic ladder--and the economy as a whole. Foreign policy rarely affects breweries--until, as in the case of those Belgian breweries, it does.

I won't be getting into public policy on this blog unless it directly affects the beer industry--and I hope therefore never to get into public policy on this blog. But it's worth mentioning, on a week in which it at least feels like we've had a political earthquake, that elections do matter. And they can affect things as remote and unconcerned with politics as beer. We know this because the beers we drink were in so many ways shaped by politics, near and distant. The history of beer is a political one.

Be well, you all--

Pick Your Poison

When I was 16 years old, driver's license burning a hole in my pocket and all flush with a bad, nerdy case of early-onset political junkyitis, I jumped in the old yellow Karmann Ghia with my friend Steve and we went election-night party-hopping. This was 32 years ago, in Salt Lake City. As such, the scene at the Democratic party site was dismal. The main floor had already drained of activity, and hardcore politicos retired to smaller rooms around the fringe of the hotel's ballroom. (For the youngsters, let me just say that '84 was not a good year for team blue.) In those smaller rooms, we espied rumpled Dems sagging in overstuffed chairs, highball glasses and cigarettes in hand. It was a sordid and depressing scene, and no good advertisement for the wonders of booze.

Next we went to the Republican headquarters, located in a nicer hotel. The ballroom there was flush with people. They were all better-dressed, all wearing toothy smiles on their faces. It was Utah, so there wasn't a lot of smoking and drinking going on. (Dems, godless as usual, were far more likely to be something other than Mormon; not so the GOP.) I do remember a few people with glasses of wine--though perhaps it was Martinelli's. In any case, the festive mood placed their tipples in a far different light.

Twenty years later, buoyed by totally inaccurate early exits that said John Kerry was going to up-end George W. Bush, I stopped off at a liquor store on the way to a viewing party and picked up a bottle of Lagavulin--fit elixir for a magical evening. (I learned in that election the dangers of confirmation bias and the dangers of inhabiting a bubble of liberals.) When the actual results started coming in and it was clear Kerry was going to have a long night, that fine Islay malt became solace rather than celebration.

Today is election day again, and our quadrennial exercise in democracy is underway. In ballrooms and living rooms and bars across the country, it will end in tears or cheers and almost certainly an alcohol kick. It's funny how booze serves the needs of either group. So go forth and choose--Dem or GOP; beer, wine, or liquor. It's America's big day, and we wouldn't want to miss the chance to bless it with something potent.

Don't forget to vote--

Thinking of Endorsing Trump? Don't.

source

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.

Presidential Debate Drinking Game

Preparation
Before the debate, pour yourself a stiff drink. If you have a back porch, take it out there and regard the crisp autumn air as the liquid slowly warms your belly, noting how a country just before revolution is infused with a strange calm.

What to Drink
This is a beer blog, sure. I know there are a few wine drinkers who read it as well. This is, however, no time to fool around with dainty potables that have only been lightly fermented. An event like this requires distilled beverages, strong and brutal. America eventually found its love of beer and wine, but it was founded on the hard stuff. (Beer Bible: "By 1763, New England alone housed 159 commercial distilleries; there were only 132 breweries in the entire country in 1810.  By 1830, the US had 14,000 distilleries, towns tolled a bell at 11 am and 4 pm marking 'grog time,' and the per capita rate of consumption was nearly two bottles of liquor a week for every drinking-age adult.") Democracy, apparently, cannot be trusted to the delicate caress of IPA or pinot noir. The revolution is coming and, like our founders, you should be sloshed to the gills when it arrives.

Game On
In this game, the first ten minutes is a no-drinking zone. You'll require your senses to take in the sweep of Trump's hair, the drape of Hillary's pant suit. There are things you need to see with clear eyes to reassure yourself that they're actually happening. There's the billionaire Mark Cuban in the front row, selected by Clinton to provoke Trump. There's Gennifer Flowers, Bill's one-time mistress, sitting nearby--Trump's earthy riposte. Note the optics of the moment: the first woman in 240 years to be nominated by a major party debating a proud sexist who cheerfully and regularly retweets white supremacists while the debate is moderated by a black journalist. Only in America!

Once you've situated yourself in the moment, it's time to start drinking heavily. Most drinking games revolve around the mention of certain key words or phrases, such as "believe me," "Benghazi," or "small hands," but they are unsuitably frivolous for this year's debates. Instead, pour out another drink when the pangs of doubt peek over the edge of your subconscious and startle you, that moment when you first think, "Sure, this is amazing television, but I wonder if it's good democracy?" As the fire of alcohol burns down your throat, comfort yourself with the fact that there are no plans for a wall north of the country and, anyway, the border is too vast to keep out fleeing Americans, anyway. Oh Canada, our (future) home and native land...

Drink again when you notice the superficial nature of the moderator's questions. If you happen to wonder why actual policy issues are not being discussed, ponder the degenerate state of journalism in the United States. How is it that presidential elections went from being moments when journalists carefully vetted the candidates who would control a nuclear arsenal to one in which they so came to resemble a reality show that they actually starred a reality show personality? Pour another drink while you consider whether there's a satiric screenplay in all of this.

Drink every time the distaste of nepotism and dynastic politics crosses your palate. Consider the ramifications of sexual politics in a country that had two and a half centuries to nominate a woman who wasn't the wife of a president ... and failed. Drink when you think of Bill Clinton serving as the first gentleman, and take note of the glimmer of joy that brings. Joy will be in short supply throughout this ordeal, so take it when you can.

Drink every time the camera cuts to a Republican or Democratic official and you find yourself pondering our two-party system. Surely we can do better than two parties. Surely we can do better than these two parties. And yet, it's also true that Great Britain has multiple parties and still inadvertently voted to leave the European Union. Drink when you consider democracy. Are we really sure it's the best system? 

Drink when you notice the anxiety that this election seems to be a metaphor for ... something. Drink when your mind lapses back to earlier elections (2008 for Dems, 1980 for Republicans) and you remember thinking, "Is America the best damn country in the world, or what?" Drink when you grow irritated they're not talking about the issues you care about. Drink when you realize they're not talking about those issues because Americans don't care about them. Drink to douse your gnawing apprehension, drink to encourage your hope. Drink for liquid courage. Drink for comfort. Drink for good old Teddy Roosevelt--man, we could really use the old Rough Rider right now. Drink to drink.

And remember, enjoy the debate!

____________________
Picture credit: Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Bringing Us Together Through Beer

I spend about half my internet time reading about politics, and this is shaping up to be one of the grimmest, most divisive elections in my lifetime. But then I run across something like this and I think: "There is hope." That hope is beer.

OHIOPYLE, PA.- Judy and her husband Phil, who is in his 29th year of service in the military, along with three other couples who ventured from Pittsburgh to attend an annual craft beer festival held on the fringes of the Pennsylvania state park, all sat in folding chairs, waiting for the event to begin.

They were three hours early, the second in line and well stocked with sunscreen, bottles of water, string cheese, beef jerky, cold beers and a very happy state of mind. “We come for the atmosphere, the camaraderie, the music, the beer of course, it’s just a very good vibe here,” she said.

The article goes on to describe the couple and their political leanings and surfaces the rawness of the campaign. But I have a hunch that if I'd been standing next to them in line, we'd all have been happy to steer conversation straight back to the beer. What's that? Trump or Hillary? Actually, let's talk about IPA or pilsner.

Yes, that's much better.

A Blog Post About Donald, Hillary, Steph, and, Oh, What the Hell, Beer

Back in the late 1980s I stumbled across my first bottle of stout ale, an event that sparked decades of fascination. That may seem like a long time (particularly to the many adults born thereafter), but more than a decade before beer, my first two loves were basketball and politics. I was drawn into both around 1976, the first by Kareem and Dr. J, the latter by stories my mom told me of a peanut farmer who might win the Democratic nomination. I know this is a beer blog, but (wo)man can not live in malt alone--and this is an absolutely banner moment for my first two preciouses. 

Let's start with politics, it being so timely and all. Last night the first woman in US history sealed up a presidential nomination for a major party. At one point last evening, MSNBC posted a graphic of the number of votes for all female candidates for president not named Hillary in US history: 800k and change. Hillary has in her two runs earned more than 30 million. 

Of course, barely anyone noticed that because the GOP primary is the most florid and bizarre in living memory. (Old-timers may cite 1964, but come on, Goldwater had been a sitting US senator for 12 years before he ran.) Without leveling any particular judgments about candidates, I think it's safe to say that the events of the GOP primary--a billionaire and reality-show host beating a slate of senators and governors--were so implausible you couldn't have used them in fiction. No matter what happens in November, the selection of Donald Trump will remain a point of head-shaking amazement for decades. It's the campaign that will launch a thousand poly-sci studies. It's been such good entertainment that come November, I won't know what to read in the morning without my daily Trump campaign news.

Fun!

Meanwhile, in basketball we're witnessing not only the best season any team has had (the Golden State Warriors are two NBA championship wins from wresting the all-time record from the Jordan-Pippin Bulls), but seeing the Warriors permanently change the game. For the whole of basketball's run, it has been a sport dominated by giants. Plant an oak tree under the basket and give him a couple maples on the wings, and you can compete in any game. High-scoring teams have made runs in the past, but the shooters who do so well in the regular season enter the playoffs and find themselves in the middle of wrestling matches they inevitably lose.

But the Warriors have switched the script. They use a lineup of small sharp-shooters who are so fast the wrestlers can't get a hold of them. They regularly use a lineup in which their "tree," the center, is Draymond Green, a 6' 7" forward who gives up five inches to other teams' centers. They win because the movement of their offense, and particularly of their two guards, Klay Thompson and Steph Curry, is so fast and fluid the bigs can't keep up. Now teams who want to beat the Warriors bench their big men and put in the speedsters. The Warriors are illustrating that you can win more easily if you score in intervals of three than two, and when plodding teams put their large lineups in, they get blown out. Because math. Those Bulls-era teams of the 90s put up 10-13 three-pointers per game. Golden State averaged thirty-one this year.

Back in the late 90s, when the Ewing-led Knicks were at their prime, the game was a dismal mess. Each possession ended up with a clear-out and one guy backing down to the rim to fire up a brick or get fouled. The  Knicks would win games and only score 70 points. The game is more elegant and beautiful now, and teams almost always pass 70 points in the third quarter. The rest of the league has taken notice, and the Thunder almost beat the Warriors playing Warriorball, while the Blazers, a team everyone thought would be one of the league's worst, used it to get into the second round of the playoffs.

There's every reason to expect it to continue. Guys who are 6' 3" like Curry are a dime a dozen. And all those short 15-year-olds are now shooting day and night to be the next Steph, knowing they don't have to wait for divine (or rather genomic) intervention to make them giants. It's rare to witness a revolution--even one so trivial as to happen in basketball--and I'm enjoying every minute. Tip-off to game three of the NBA finals is tonight at 6pm West Coast time.

Amazing times. Oh, right, this is a beer blog--I've got to do my duty and somehow tie IPAs into this whole thing. Easy peasy: nothing is so pleasant as drinking one while watching the Warriors or as necessary while watching politics. See how I did that? Now it's a proper beer blog post.

(Oh, and I didn't even get to the heroics of Big Papi and my Red Sox--that's the kind of year we're having.)

The Changing Politics of Beer

We are now into the overheated tail-end of the primary season, where partisan fires burn most bitterly, and where politicians are working overtime to build cred with different constituencies. Very few things signal "normal," "blue-collar," and "down-to-earth" better than beer, and so politicians have regularly sipped from pints in front of the camera. Lately, though, the optics have changed:

Contrary to the time-honored campaign tradition of stopping at a local pub to quaff Budweiser with the after-work crowd, this cycle’s candidates have gravitated toward local beer makers. The shift shows how the market for beer is changing: Craft breweries are making increasingly significant economic impact in their communities...

Clinton’s not the only candidate in the 2016 U.S. presidential race who feels compelled to share the spotlight with a craft beer. Her Democrat rival Bernie Sanders has been photographed proudly holding a can of Heady Topper, a Vermont-brewed Double IPA that can only be purchased in Sanders’s home state. 

What's fascinating is the changing reputation of big breweries. There are two notable shifts here. One is that large breweries are now no longer American. AB InBev and MillerCoors are a part of giant international conglomerates, and this fact is well-known among customers. (They used to feature heavily patriotic ads, but have had to back off them for more anodyne spots.) One giant remains American, Pabst, but it illustrates the other problem. As breweries have gotten ever more giant, they've become less local. Except for plants in Milwaukee, St. Louise, and Golden, CO, we have no idea where our mass market lagers come from. Pabst doesn't even have a brewery anymore. "Local" is no longer relevant to the bigs and as you know, all politics is local.

The second big change: breweries used to be a perfect proxy for supporting organized labor. When a politician visited that Budweiser plant in St. Louis, he not only got a nice photo op at a classic industrial site, but he got to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Teamsters. It wasn't quite as popular as a stop in Detroit, but the symbolism was the same.

Now there's a bigger upside in going small. Smaller craft breweries are still industrial sites, but they're also local businesses. They are still obviously very blue collar (yay workers!), but they're also classic, entrepreneurial small businesses (yay capitalism!).  You get to associate yourself with one of the trendier products, and, as when a politician pays lip service to a local sports team, you get a tribal bump at no cost. If you play it right, you can talk about how breweries help build local communities. Breweries have even managed, despite peddling the devil's water, to avoid getting embroiled in the culture war. There's no political downside to making a stop off at the local brewery*.

Oh, finally, I suppose I should use my tiny pulpit to exhort you to vote against Trump. Beer and politics don't mix, and I will spend no further blog space mentioning it, but come on. I have to go out on this very short, stout limb and say nyet to Trump. I mean, the man doesn't even drink beer (or anything else.) No doubt this was highly persuasive.

Bernie wisely avoided trying to pour out the Heady.

__________________
*Unless you commit an unforced error like Hillary did in this widely-mocked photo of her foamy, low pour. Personally, I found this photo hugely appealing. It looks like your Mom trying to pour a pint and, although she recognizes she sort of botched the job (look at Hillary's expression), she nevertheless takes simple joy in gamely attempting the maneuver. But it's the bitter season, so pouring a foamy pint makes you history's greatest monster. Let the comments commence.

The Scandal That Wasn't

Tony Magee

Last week, Guys Drinking Beer posted a most intriguing take on a $25,000 donation Lagunitas made to the election campaign of Chicago mayor Rahm Imanuel.

Lagunitas Brewing Company cut a check to Rahm Emanuel’s re-election campaign for $25,000. It certainly isn’t the brewery’s first contribution to a political candidate but is the most sizable contribution and the second time this year it’s dropped 25k on a politician.

It wasn't the only check the brewery mailed out to politicos:

In July, Lagunitas cut a $25,000 check to incumbent governor Pat Quinn (who lost to Republican Bruce Rauner). In September Lagunitas dropped over 10k on Alderman Patrick O’Connor. $9,225 of that was an individual contribution while another $1,275 was an “in kind” contribution of beer and appetizers — most likely for a fundraiser. Alderman O’Connor, who represents the 40th ward on the north side, is Mayor Emanuel’s floor leader.

And then there’s the Christmas Eve contribution of $25,000 to the mayor’s campaign. It brings the total amount contributed by Lagunitas to Chicago politicians, since July, to $60,500.

For the most part, the incident seemed to garner very little attention. Things like this were rare. Lagunitas's Tony Magee has 20,000 followers, yet when he discussed the matter on Twitter, just a few people responded.  (Mostly about how they hated Rahm, it seems.)  Given the scrutiny beer geeks give breweries, I was surprised by this.  Politics is messy and ugly.  There's always an aroma of quid pro quo about political donations--how could it be otherwise?--and that's the kind of thing beer geeks hate.

Having formally written about politics, this not only doesn't surprise me, it makes a ton of sense.  To ignore the realities of politics--which is to say the realities of public policy that affect things like zoning, distribution laws, taxation, etc--is crazy short-sighted.  And brewers have become much more politically engaged and politically savvy.  But still; I'm surprised it wasn't a bigger story.

Never Talk Politics or Taxes at Christmas

Do it a day and a half before. 

This has been percolating for a long time, but it is perhaps gathering strength.  (Since Congress is frozen by trench warfare, maybe a tax cut that benefits small businesses principally clustered in blue states is just the ticket.)

At issue is a tax that the federal government assesses on a few products like beer, wine and gasoline and gets included in the price. The excise tax on beer is $7 per barrel for the first 60,000 barrels and $18 per barrel on anything above that. A barrel is a standard unit of measure in the beverage industry and contains 31 gallons of beer.

The Small Brew Act, co-sponsored by 136 House members, would reduce the levies to $3.50 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels of beer, and to $16 per barrel on 60,000 to 2 million barrels. The current $18 rate would be retained on production exceeding 2 million barrels, under the measure.

DeFazio tours the OSU Fermentation
Sciences Lab. I believe that lanky gent
to his right is the illustrious hop
researcher, Tom Shellhammer.

If you don't follow politics, this is a fantastic way to introduce yourself to small-bore regional horse-trading.  It's not really an issue that cuts along ideology: it cuts along geography.  

Making the case for the nation’s 2,700 microbreweries is the House Small Brewers Caucus, founded in 2007 by Oregon Reps. Peter DeFazio, a Democrat, and Greg Walden, a Republican.

Since this would lower the tax burden for 100% of Oregon's breweries (though in different degrees), both congressmen are high on it.  Who is not high on it?  Congressmen with large breweries in their states:

The two beer giants, Belgium-based Anheuser Busch-InBev, the maker of Budweiser, Corona, Beck’s and Stella Artois, and Chicago-based MillerCoors, whose parent companies are headquartered in Denver and England, have put their political muscle behind legislation that would halve the excise tax for all brewers, regardless of size.

The BEER Act, introduced in May by Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., has eight co-sponsors. A House companion, filed by Iowa Republican Tom Latham, has 72 backers.

The  economics are pretty obvious.  It's more expensive to make beer in smaller amounts, so tiering the tax structure does something to remove the advantage of very large, efficient breweries.  That means the price of a sixer of Budweiser and Ninkasi creep closer together at the grocery store, which is of course great if you're Ninkasi.  The question is: should Washington be artificially leveling the playing field?  This is a purely philosophical question.  Or, if you're a congressman, a regional one.

The Politics of Beer

Below is an astounding takedown of an American politician using the fulcrum of beer.  I'm going to quote it at length, but I'd like to point out that it's not actually partisan.  The charges leveled here could apply to any congressman or senator in the country.  There's just two pieces of info you need to know to understand the context.  The first is that the politician is from Wisconsin, where Miller is the sacred local brewery. (The dynamic is identical to Detroit and GM.)  The second is the precipitating event, when said Wisconsin pol turned up at Belgian gastropub in DC and was chagrined to learn that the 115 different available beers didn't include Miller Lite.  Then comes the takedown:

Such a man of the people!¹

It's worth noting that [the politician's] tastes in alcoholic beverages do not always run along such downscale lines. In 2011, [an opponent] confronted him drinking a $350 bottle of wine at Bistro Bis², a swanky French restaurant catering to the political elite³. ("Its regular guests include Senators, Congressmen, celebrities and powerbrokers looking to dine in the ambiance and luxury of one of Washington's most popular restaurants," boasts its website.)

Bistro Bis probably does not serve Miller Lite⁴, which likely forced [the politician] to instead order $350 wine as a fallback, as most Miller Lite fans do when their beer of choice is unavailable. And you can see why he mistook a Belgian brewery for a French restaurant. The one time he was publicly confronted at Bistro Bis is probably the only time he has ever patronized a European restaurant of any kind, and he probably naturally assumed that all European restaurants are French^{5, 6}. 

 Let's break this down:1) beer is the people's drink, the tipple of the (choose your meme) 47 or 99%.  2) Wine is the drink of the upscale, though permissible if vinted in, say, Fon du Lac, WI, and French restaurants are, it goes without saying, suspect.  3) Especially when patronized by political "elites," a term of art politicians only use when referring to the opposition party.  4) Ordering Lite was an especially nice touch, as its workingman cred is as unimpeachable as its likelihood of being on tap in a gastropub is remote.  5 and 6) This is a deft slam by the writer, who simultaneously evokes American crassness and our ignorance of the foreign world--hanging it around the politician's neck--while reminding readers of a time when America inexplicably targeted France as History's Greatest Monster in the period before the Iraq war. 

This is why I do my best to avoid dragging tarnished politics into the wholesome beer world.  It's more amusing when politics tries to drag beer into its world in an effort to polish things up.

Gerrymandered! Craft Beer Is No Proxy for Political Leanings

Philly's Joe Sixpack:

Remarkably, every one of the 25 most densely brewed states voted for Obama in 2008. Those blue states account for 335 electoral votes - much more than the 270 needed for victory. 

He includes a very professional graph to show how it all shakes out.  The thing is, the metric is pretty bizarre:  "It ranks the states by brewery density - the number of breweries per 1,000 square miles."  It's based on geography, not people, so states are penalized for not having breweries in the middle of pasture land and mountains.  He analyzes: 

What's really important here is the type of beer voters are drinking.  Most American breweries today are microbreweries or so-called craft breweries - small businesses that make handcrafted batches of premium-priced beer. There are about 2,100 of them nationwide, according to the Brewers Association, the highest number since the 1800s....

I know I'll get some argument here, but I'd say that it takes a certain progressive, open-minded attitude - certainly not fundamentalist, conservative values - to even begin drinking craft beer. That's why the Deep South is so far behind the curve in the microbrewing revolution.

Yes, indeed you shall get an argument.  Look, we don't care about square miles.  Sagebrush doesn't drink beer.  If you were really trying to find out how people and breweries related, you'd look at breweries per capita.  And why is this metric uninteresting?  Because Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska are top-seven per-capita states, and states like New York and New Jersey are in the bowels of the ranking.  It is true that the southern states are the least-breweried, but they're also the states where new breweries are cropping up the most.

But really, the indefensible part is that business about the "progressive attitude."  Unless he's talking about progressive Guernseys, I assume he is talking about people.  And the people of the great states of Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming drink a whole lot of craft-brewed beer.

(On the off chance anyone reads this as an endorsement of either party, it's probably important for me to offer the full disclosure that I'm pretty much a communist.  But only on matters of politics, not beer.)

Beer and Politics

I tossed up my post about Obama drinking beer yesterday with slight trepidation.  Put anyone else drinking beer on a blog and no one bothers to think of political implications.  But a politician drinking beer?  Could have a Chik-Fil-A culture war on your hands.  Apropos of this, I would like to direct your attention to this post by Lew Bryson, which I happily endorse:

When it comes down to drinking it, and the beer's good, beer isn't partisan. If you can tell if a beer's liberal or conservative just by tasting it, you're -- well, I was about to say you're better than I am, but to be honest? You're crazy.

Let's keep politics out of beer, because as I've learned in 30 years of drinking non-mainstream beer, you can't tell anything about a brewer's politics from their hopping rates. Let's leave that to the pundity types, and keep politics out of beer. Just a suggestion.

It is the nature of electoral politics to divide; hell, it's their design.  You throw competing visions out there, let people speak for them, and then let the voters decide.  It's good and healthy for democracies.  Beer, though, most ably performs the opposite function--it brings people together.  Beer does this not just figuratively--though it does that, too, in our shared passion--but literally, into pubs, festivals, and back yards.  With a pint of tasty beer in hand, you are predisposed to like the guy at the bar next to you.  You are there to make a human connection and you want to avoid discussions about topics like politics that, in the space of that connection, look petty and base.  (They're not: democracies may have their ugly side, but the alternative is worse.) 

Indeed, I'd take it a step further.  Pundits writing in the MSM often confuse two incredibly valuable social functions.  They laud bipartisan comity like it's a Platonic ideal, and direct contempt at partisans.  But we should all be partisans.  We should be high-information voters with opinions strong enough to make us active participants in our democracy.  But the other element is one of unity, the ability to look past our disagreements and see each other as good people despite our disagreements.  Politics is great for the first, beer the second.  Leave politics in the street, I say; everyone's a friend at the bar.

(Incidentally, I don't think that means we have to ignore politicians promoting beer.  We just shouldn't be partisan about it.  As Lew points out, Paul Ryan's a big fan of New Glarus beer, and God bless him for it.)

What To Do In the Event a Waiter Spills a Tray of Beer on You

German Chancellor Angela Merkel demonstrates:




Note the way she barely acknowledges the sensation of beer and glassware cascading down her back. A flip of the hair, a gracious smile. And then, soon after, a toast as if nothing untoward has affected the evening's fun. Perhaps the Greek debt crisis has inured her to petty distractions. In any case, well done.

Inside the Brewpub, There's No Blue or Red

Although I don't always succeed, I try to keep politics off this blog. Beer is a higher calling; before the tap handles, we are all Americans. I'm pleased to see this unifying message is making it to Washington:

Move over, Sam Adams: Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) want to make it easier for craft breweries to produce more beer.

On Wednesday afternoon Kerry and Crapo introduced the Brewer’s Employment and Excise Relief (BEER) Act, which would cut taxes for microbreweries and on the production of smaller quantities of beer barrels.

Later in this article, DC-based (and Pittsburgh-raised) Poltico blogger Shira Toeplitz observes, "Idaho is not necessarily known for its beer selection, but...." Actually, Idaho has one brewery for every 80,000 citizens--one of the highest concentrations in the nation. Maybe Shira shouldn't offer opinions about the West from way out there in DC.

In any case, cheers to the Senate for joining Peter DeFazio and his bipartisan team in the House of Representatives, who have been working on similar legislation.

Beer Law Madness in Colorado

This is insane. Thanks to an old law that will be enforced after January 1, where you can buy beer depends on how strong it is:

A state law in effect next year will force the owners of restaurants and bars to stop selling beer that contains low levels of alcohol....

Bars, restaurants and liquor stores can sell only beer that is above 4 percent alcohol by volume. Grocery and convenience stores are allowed to sell only alcohol with less than 4 percent alcohol by volume.

(That comes from two reports by the Denver Post: 1, 2.) The perverse law was not created by consumers, obviously, nor politicians concerned about public health, nor breweries. It was hatched by lobbyists for grocery and convenience stores. So, if you want a low-alcohol session in a pub, good luck. Have an imperial stout instead!

Expect to see this item return with my inaugural DMS awards later this month.

Beer Versus Ganja in California

Let's say you earned millions of dollars a year ferrying a mildly intoxicating malt beverage around the highways of California, keeping that state famously mellow. How would you feel if a bunch of hippies were trying to pass a law to make legal another less toxic and less addictive relaxant? "Welcome aboard, boys!", right? Not quite:

The California Beer & Beverage Distributors is spending money in the state to oppose a marijuana legalization proposition on the ballot in November, according to records filed with the California Secretary of State. The beer sellers are the first competitors of marijuana to officially enter the debate; backers of the initiative are closely watching liquor and wine dealers and the pharmaceutical industry to see if they enter the debate in the remaining weeks.

(Those who read beer blogs would have spotted a mistake in this paragraph: distributors are not exactly "beer sellers." They are the middlemen who take the beer from the brewers and give it to the retailers.) As it happens, Stone and Sierra Nevada were caught in the crossfire: as nonvoting affiliated members, they weren't aware and didn't endorse the CBBD's political contribution. (And are apparently trying to do serious damage control.)

I wouldn't make too much hay about this. The CBBD's donation of ten grand is merely symbolic in a state where a single candidate may spend $150 million dollars on a statewide race. But it will do nothing to endear the already-unpopular beer distributors with Golden State potheads.

Time to Rethink the Health Benefits of Drinking?

In order to make any kind of coherent public policy, we have to accept certain claims as fact, even when they are only provisionally supported by data. Almost never are these claims purely borne out by the data once it comes in, but often, the claim has become a treasured chestnut as durable as any actual fact. As a consequence, we keep charging forward on bum assumptions.

Owing to a particular mixture of history, religion, and culture, the United States has always had an awkward relationship with alcohol. You recall that dust-up we had in the late teens of the last century, but that was only the most extreme case. The way we think about alcohol sales, alcohol abuse, and alcohol consumption is colored as much by hoary myth and legend as science--abetted by the fact that until the last decade, there wasn't a whole lot of science to refute the myth. But that's changing, and the overwhelming consensus refutes much of what we have believed about alcohol and its affect on society. Time Magazine recounted some of the more surprising recent findings:

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren't entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers....

But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who had never been drinkers, second-highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.

We have to add a few caveats--correlation is not causation, alcoholism remains a real and serious problem, and drunkenness can lead to a host of bad activities--but these don't refute the underlying message: alcohol is not costing society a massive amount of money. In fact, it looks like the biggest costs come from those who never drank at all and who as a consequence live shorter lives than heavy boozers.

So what effect should this have on law? Well, for one thing, it gives anti-alcohol crusaders less cover for non-moralistic rationales to ban hooch. When the beer tax surfaced last year in Oregon (as it does in every legislative session), one of the principal rationales was that the state had an interest in recouping lost revenue due to alcohol-related health problems--a cluster of costs the state pegged at $5.13 billion a year. But these costs arise from the assumption that drinking alcohol is a social ill that the state needs to spend millions combating and treating. If the state thinks of consumption of alcohol as a health benefit and managing drunkenness as a separate legal matter, the picture changes considerably.

The state has a right to recoup the cost of negative externalities of certain behaviors--smoking, for instance, which causes the state to take on massive health expenses related to lung and heart disease. Economists have created a theory of optimal taxation that compensates the state for the costs of these negative externalities such that the tax would recoup exactly the costs of the behavior. So a cigarette tax would pay for all the health-related consequences of smoking. (For those who don't recognize it, I'm just parroting what I learned from economist Patrick Emerson.)

For generations, we have treated alcohol the same way, assuming there are negative health externalities from drinking. Whether or not alcohol is definitely the cause of better health, these studies pretty clearly show that it isn't a negative. There are other reasons to regulate and control alcohol--underage drinking, drunk driving, and domestic violence spring to mind. But we need to separate those out from the idea that booze is bad for you. It's just not. The state has no right to try to recoup health costs from drinkers. And anti-alcohol crusaders need to acknowledge that their beef liquor has nothing to do with health.