Is beer a generation thing? Why might that be?

In My Humble Opinion
61

I don’t know the particulars of the suits, other than they were against AB Inbev for misleading advertising on Beck’s and Kirin beer brewed in the US, but misleadingly labeled with a lot of references to things like “German Quality”, or “Originated in Bremen, Germany” with the actual “Brewed in St. Louis, MO” being in small print on the back somewhere.

My argument wasn’t against contract brewing; it’s against the practice of contract brewing foreign brands locally, and then marketing them as “imports”. That’s wholly misleading to the average consumer. It’s the idea that you’re getting a German, Japanese, English or Irish beer, when in fact you’re getting a beer that’s every bit as domestic as that bottle of Budweiser from wherever your local Anheuser-Busch brewery is.

Now I’m not quite saying it’s the same thing as AOC/DOC type wines; beer doesn’t really have quite the same concept of terroir that wine does, but there is a certain idea that if you’re ordering Bass, you’re getting something brewed in Burton-on-Trent with the water specific to that place and made from British barley, and probably British hops. Getting something brewed in Baldwinsville, NY with water industrially treated to resemble Burton-on-Trent’s, a British variety of barley grown in the Upper Midwest or the Canadian Prairies, and British varieties of hops grown in Oregon, is deceptive, even if the end result is substantially similar.

I’d say the big difference between say… Cadbury chocolate made under licence in Hershey, PA and Kirin made in Los Angeles is that there’s little, if no pretense of marketing Cadbury chocolate as being from Britain, or British. It’s just another type of candy on the aisle. Kirin, on the other hand, is specifically marketed as Japanese.

That’s the difference- the marketing, not the actual production. And while I’m sure by law it has to say where it actually comes from, the manufacturers go out of their way to camouflage that, because it dents their domestic vs. import price and prestige schedule. Nobody’s going to want to pay more for Bass/Kirin/Beck’s, if they realize they’re made in the same brewery as that bog-standard 6-pack of Budweiser down the aisle, same recipe and ingredients or not.

62

I accidentally miswrote by not calling out the contract brewing was in the early years. I don’t think that was deliberately disengineous, and it it certainly not disingenuous to say its a factual part of the BBC history. In fact, 12 years after launching the Boston Lager is when BBC purchased the Hudepohl-Schoenling Brewery in 1997. I would ask the same courtesy that you don’t be disingenuous either: BBC started out using contract brewers for the first 12 years. Brilliant business move as it allowed BBC to ramp production, get distribution, take over taps, and get the kind of volume growth that the rest of the industry could only envy.

We can argue whether BBC should ever be considered a microbrew that grew into *a *if not *the *leading craft brewer. Sierra Nevada certainly is the poster child of being a microbrewery that just kept building out their own production to become a craft brewing force.

Orwell - I think you nailed it. Back at the dawn of the microbrewery movement and home brewing movement (call it 1980 for round numbers), except for the majors beer was regional. Hell, even Coors didn’t have reliable national distribution until probably the 1980’s. Samuel Adams isn’t acknowledged on the West Coast because it effectively didn’t exist. Whereas we did have Anchor, New Albion, Sierra Nevada. So, I’d be hard pressed to agree that SA had any kind of influence on the west coast at the dawn of the modern beer age, and most likely vice versa with the west coast beers on the East Coast.

63

Related to the original post, I came across this article today, which indicates interest in ‘heritage’ and ‘historical’ brands such as Heurich’s, Ballentine, Gerst, Piels, Old Tankard, Schaefer and National Bohemian (Natty Boh to us Orioles fans). I actually found Natty Boh locally and bought a case a few months ago. Certainly not a craft beer by any means, but not bad for an affordable standard brew.

I remember the Ballentine, Piels, Schaefer and Natty Boh names as “dad beers”, old-timey brands, just as many now regard Pabst, Old Milwaukee, etc.

64

Oh, come on. This was not an accidental miswriting:

It was written out of ignorance. I didn’t call you out for being disingenuous until you attempted to support your previously stated (in current tense) “facts” by the reality of 20 years ago.

Here you can either take Jim Koch at his word that his original business plan was to ramp up production to 5000 BBLs per year at $1.2 million gross revenue over his first five years at the Boston facility (which seemed like a fairly ambitious plan at the time) or believe that he actually planned on sales of seven times that amount in four years with a dependence on contract manufacturing and that the Boston facility was only ever launched as a corporate headquarters and figurehead to sell “Sam Adams” beer out of Boston Massachusetts as a marketing ploy. Never mind the fact that the man lived his entire adult life in Boston before he started the Boston Beer Company.

I choose to take the man at his word. You are obviously free to draw your own conclusions, but I think your accusation that I’m being disingenuous is unfair, regardless of what you think Jim Koch’s motivations were thirty years ago. I’m simply believing the story that he’s told, which I don’t think is an unreasonable thing to do.

65

Fair enough. I will say that when Budweiser was introduced to the Canadian market, it was prominently advertised as, “Budweiser: Brewed in Canada.” So was Coors and Coors Light (though Coors stumbled and fell–more on that later), and so was Foster’s Lager, of Australia, and Carlsberg of Denmark. All were advertised as “Brewed in Canada,” so there was no doubt in the Canadian consumer’s mind, that these foreign brands were made in Canada to the same recipe, just brewed locally.

And I can see where the American consumer might feel misdirected, if their beer projects the image that it is “German,” while it is brewed in New York State.

The Coors brewed and sold in Canada suffered a bit, as I mentioned. There was really little to recommend it, except to those of us who had seen “Smokey and the Bandit.” But a push in Canadian Coors Light marketing made that brand very popular–I always dreaded going to my sister’s, because she always offered me a beer, which was always going to be Coors Light. (Sis had, and still has, no taste in beer.) But original Coors, brewed in Canada, was unpopular and discontinued, and you could only get it if you went to Colorado, or another state where it was sold.

Flash forward to today. Original Coors, known locally as “Coors Banquet,” is an import. It is advertised as an import (which it is), while Coors Light, brewed as a domestic, and advertised as such, is Just Another Domestic, alongside Molson Canadian, Labatt Blue, Old Style Pilsner, and–get this–Budweiser. Which, as its advertisements tell us, is brewed in Canada.

I’ve found that I kinda like original Coors Banquet, imported from Colorado. :slight_smile:

66

Here’s a Kirin label - look at the left-most vertical line of text. THAT’s where they tell you it’s brewed in the US.

Here’s a Beck’s label. Look at the right-hand pane, at the white-on-silver outer ring- under the “Originated in Bremen” part- you have low-contrast “Product of USA Brauerei Beck & Co. St. Louis MO” printed at the bottom.

And my favorite…the back of a Foster’s Lager can from Fort Worth. That’s it- no other indications that the beer isn’t brewed in Australia somewhere.

67

Also… the big US mega-brewers have an anti-competitive habit of trying to pass off license-brewed beers as “imports”, as well as doing a sort of brewer’s astroturfing, and either purchasing existing or spinning up “new” craft breweries, and then using their market muscle to stomp on the actual craft brewers. Stuff like Shock Top and Blue Moon are great examples of this, as is Goose Island. Essentially when breweries have to compete for shelf space and distributor volume, the big boys can leverage their muscle in that arena to squeeze the smaller guys out of the market, unless there’s a determined consumer demand for the other stuff.

68

A few random comments:

  1. The fact that Sam Adams puts out so many varieties is meaningless, seeing as how 75% of them suck.

  2. I started home brewing a good 6 years before Sam Adams got off the ground. If someone from the future had brought me a Boston lager and told me that one day I’d make beer as good as that, I would have quit immediately.

  3. Anchor, OTOH…

  4. Jim Koch is a beer god. Doesn’t mean he and I agree on what beer should taste like.

  5. The only beer that beats Sierra Nevada is Stone. Unless it’s 95 degrees outside and I’m mowing the lawn. Then it’s Coors all the way.

So let it be written. So let it be done.

69

Huh. De gustibus and all, but even though Sierra Nevada has a local brewery, and even though they’re often cheaper than my local swill, I don’t care for them enough to buy their stuff almost ever. They’re better than New Belgium IMO, but in the same category.

70

Isn’t mowing the lawn on a hot day punishment enough?

71

Pretty much. :smiley:

If beer snobs were honest, you’d find most of them have a fond spot on their palates for whatever beer they grew up stealing from their parents refrigerator. For me, that’s Coors or some really cheap mid-west brew that uses corn as an adjunct. Chugging a Busch, for example, takes me back to summers on the farm with my uncles. Good beer? Hell no! But a very fond memory.

LHoD - That’s a low bar you set there. IMO New Belgium is horrible stuff. Fat Tire in particular. That shit’s vile. But as my grandfather noted, “Everybody has different tastes. Otherwise they’d all be hot for your grandmother.”

72

You are from Cali…how have you not heard of Russian River Brewing? I wish it were easier to get some Pliny the Elder up north.

73

Funny thing, I never tried to steal a beer but I did take a sniff (age 9 or 10, I think) of whatever swill my dad drank and that was enough to put me off trying beer for years.

74

I’ve not only heard of it, I know the head brewer. Vinnie does good stuff. Not as good as Stone (on average), but good. I’m sure if I lived within easy driving distance of the brewery I’d be a bigger fan, but as it is Stone, Green Flash, AleSmith, Pizza Port, Ballast Point, etc. are going to win. I’m amazed I’m still so loyal to Sierra Nevada.

75

It is factually correct that the Boston Brewing Company contracted out their brewing for the first 12 years through at least 1997. Although I’m not sure when they finally ended the contract brewing practice.

Can you stop with the name calling now?

76

Word.

BTW, if you keg your home brew, can you comment in this thread

77

Yep. Old Style here is my cheap beer o’choice. First beer I ever tasted. I still remember being 5 or 6 years old and not leaving my dad alone when he broke open that Old Style while watching the fight on TV until he gave me a sip. It’s still my favorite macro, and I happily drink it without any irony whatsoever. :slight_smile:

78

You made a statement in current tense that is false. There are only two possible reasons for you to do that. The first is ignorance of the facts, presumably based on history in this case. The second is that you were intentionally lying. If you were not ignorant of the facts, what are you?

You made a factually incorrect statement and when called on it, you appealed to history. That’s not a valid argument. After I said that your original statement was posted out of ignorance, you accuse me of name calling.

In the future, when you post factually incorrect information and someone points out your error, own your mistake. A person saying that you posted or said something out of ignorance of the facts is not the same thing as them calling you an ignorant person and it definitely isn’t name calling.

I certainly don’t consider you an ignorant person. On the contrary, when I see your user name next to a post I’ve come to expect an intelligent, thoughtful opinion. When I see something other than that I will call bullshit on it every time, and I expect the same in return.

Peace,
Jake

79

I thought beer was disgusting when I was a kid. I tried a couple at parties, choked them down; drank some homebrew at hippie festivals, thought about goat urine while I choked them down; didn’t see the joy of beer at all. It wasn’t until I hit college and tried Widmer’s Hefeweizen that I was like, okay, okay, I get this. So that’s the closest I come to having a beer-from-dad’s-fridge.

Huh, I thought I was the only one.

80

Ballast Point just sold for a billion dollars last year to an east coast owner. You may feel free to hate them now.

All this east-coast, west-coast stuff is bullshit. Anyone who tells me that New Belgium (not on any coast) puts out vile product is full of shit anyway. Again, you can like their product or not like their product, but if you describe it as “vile” you obviously have an ax to grind.