The Repeal Day before Repeal Day

Like all good and decent Americans, I know that December 5 is "Repeal Day," the day the America's "Noble Experiment" of Prohibition was ended for good.

However, during my online travels today, I came upon the above banner ad, telling me to toast today as Repeal Day. As Rorschach said, "Hurm."

So, after some research, I learned that on April 7, 1933, there was a "soft repeal" on beer before the big one for all liquor in December. Granted, it was only 3.2 beer that became legal, but it was something.

So thank you, advertisement, for teaching me something new. And yes, have a (slightly higher alcohol) beer this evening and toast the end of Dry America.

Bell's Oberon and the Problem of Hype

So, for some reason, Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo Michigan has become a popular microbrewery for beer writers to talk up their seasonal releases, especially here in the DC area. Everybody went gaga when their Hopslam (Double IPA) came out in January, even at $16 a six-pack, and now everyone is atwitter with their Oberon Summer Ale, slightly more resonable at $9 for a sixer.

Personally, I don't see it, or taste it. It's certainly drinkable (inside baseball!), but at craft-beer prices, there's a lot more out there that is way better.

I guess for me it comes down to the malt character: it's not there. Maybe the brewmaster's wife ran off with a grain farmer, but in both of their offerings I have bought into the hype for, there is almost none of that bready, toasty, cookie flavor I hold so dear.

Now with the Hopslam, you expect the hops to be agressive, but the only sweetness seems comes from the honey they add. And with the Oberon, the yeast is actually the dominant character: peppery and clove-y. Why bother calling it a wheat beer when you can't taste the wheat at all?

So, when the beer writers in the area treat the next offering from Bell's as the Second Coming, don't buy it or the hype. Let someone else buy it for you.

Iconoclasm!

Ad-beer-tising pt. 2

My post on Miller's "Triple Hopped" ad campaign set the comment boards on fire, so I thought I'd follow up with a discussion of the other macro-brewery's new slogan, Anheuser-Busch's "The Difference is Drinkability."

As the plaid-shirted douche tells us, we should drink Bud Light because of its "drinkability."

Now, to some, calling a beer merely drinkable would be considered a thinly-veiled putdown, but one of the main selling points of "lite" beer has always been that you can drink it all night and still have room for wings and not pass out.

Bud light is low calorie, low alcohol, and low taste, so it's perfect for high-volume quaffing at parties and tailgates. Bring a cooler of Guinness to your next outdoor get-together, and everyone will need a nap after a few.

I'm not one of these beer snobs who says they never drink light beer. It has its place and it's usually cheap and plentiful. Plus, on a really hot day, you're not in the mood to contemplate how the hops play off the dark malts in a nut brown ale, you just want something cold and relaxing.

And so, it is drinkable, and even the best option in some cases. But it's more about what they leave out than what they put in.

"It's Toasted!"

On the AMC series Mad Men, Don Draper is an advertising genius in the early 1960s, who, in the pilot episode, realizes that the Surgeon General's decree that cigarettes can't be marketed as healthy is actually an advertising boon. You have several companies with essentially identical products, so you can say anything you want to sell your product. Hence, the creation myth for Lucky Strike's "It's toasted!" slogan. The fact that ALL cigarette tobacco is toasted is meaningless.

And now, almost a decade into the 21st century, we are seeing a similar phenomenon with Beer.

Miller Lite has abandoned "Tastes Great/Less Filling" catfights and celeb-soaked "Man-Law" roundtables for a more craft-oriented advertising approach: telling you to drink their beer because it is "triple-hops" brewed.

The fact is that all beer everywhere, from my 2.5 gallon homebrew batches, to dozen-year-old barleywines made by monks, to the huge behemoths of Miller and A-B, are all triple-hops brewed.

Un-hopped beer would be cloyingy sweet and not pleasant to drink. Much of the sweetness is taken out at the "bittering" stage, where hops are added at the beginning of an hour-long boil. "Flavor" and "Aroma" hops are added at times closer to the end of the boil, depending on the style.

Bottom line, don't mistake process for craft.