BEER BIZ
Betsy Perse of First State contributed a piece by ElizabethJensen in the Feb 10 Wall Street Urinal on Guinness. All theirbrands (including Harp and Bass) showed double-digit gains inU.S. sales in 1996, with the legendary Stout jumping 33 percentand moving from 9th to 6th place on U.S. sales ranking amongimports. They've started their first U.S. TV ad campaign, arecurrently in the middle of their 4th annual "Win Your Own Pub InIreland" contest, and tried to get into their own Book of WorldRecords for the largest number of people making a toast with a"Great Guinness Toast" on Feb 28. [If any readers know if theysucceeded, please let me know.]
One of my graduate students, Jen Ruebush, gave me an announcementof the contest that was printed in the Wilmington News-Urinal acouple weeks back. Up for grabs are the keys to Morrissey's Pubin Cahir County, Tipperary. U.S. residents 21 or older areelegible, by completing the following phrase ("As the cool,creamy head of a pint of Guinness settles...") in 50 words orless and sending it on an 8 1/2-by-11 sheet of paper to: GuinnessContest, Guinness Import Co., Bowling Green Station, P.O. Box 71,New York NY 10275-0632 by March 31. Ten finalists will travel tothe pub on May 6th where the winner will be chosen after a seriesof pub games, a pint-pouring content and an oral essayrecitation.
Oliver Weatherbee of First State sent me a announcement from theWeb that Anheuser-Busch has announced 4 new Michelob brands -Golden Pilsner, Honey Lager, Pale Ale, and Porter (the last onlyavailable in the northwest states). A-B now produces 34 brandsin its efforts to crowd everyone else off the shelves.Finally, a piece in the Feb 20 Wash Post by Dale Hopper announcedthe opening of Frederick Brewing's new plant, tripling itscapacity past the legal "microbrew" status. It cost $8 millionand was financed by the money raised when Frederick stock wentpublic a year ago. The majority of stock was purchased byFrederick County residents.
INTERESTING STUFF
Scientific American has over the past year published two articlesof interest. The first, from last April, by David Musto of YaleUniversity, charts a tendency in U.S. history for a shift inpublic mood between alcoholic abstinence and indulgence inroughly 70-year cycles, in contrast to other nations' consistentmoderation. Actually, average consumption per adult reached apeak of 7.1 gallons back in 1830, far beyond anything for thetwentieth century. Early reformers distinguished betweendistilled and non-distilled drinks and actually associated beerand wine with wealth and health, but by the early 19th century amovement for total abstinence was in full flight, resulting inprohibition in 13 of 40 states and territories at its peak of1855 (average consumption had fallen to 3.1 gallons by 1840 and2.1 gallons by 1860). State prohibitions stated disappearing inthe 1860s, partly due to a need to raise money through excise taxto finance the Civil War, although average consumption remainedsteady for several decades. The Women's Christian TemperanceMovement and the Anti-Saloon League began as protest movementsagainst "the saloon life" before taking aim at all drinking,resulting in the period of national prohibition (averageconsumption fell dramatically to 0.9 gallons). The end ofprohibition led to a gradual increase in consumption until 1980(up to 2.76 gallons), but drinking has dropped since. Theauthors asks whether current temperance movements (MADD, SADD andthe like) will make the same mistakes of their progenitors -shifting from a focus on dangerous overconsumption (resulting insupport from a large faction of the U.S. populace) to a broad-based attack on all consumption (which will most surelybackfire).
The August edition featured an essay by Jacques De Keersmaecker,managing director of the Belle-Vue Brewery in Brussels (part ofthe Interbrew-Labatt Group I discussed in January's BrewNewz), onthe chemistry of lambic. Far too much detail to describe here(there are four basic stages, each with characteristic rises andfalls in population of different yeasts and bacterias), butending with the hope that the modern beer movement will save theonce-endangered style.
