LOCAL NEWZ
As reported by Bob Keaveney in the August 6th Rockville Gazette, the Montgomery County Council will spend $903,000 to build a new keg cooler at the Department of Liquor Control. Despite an overall decline in keg sales, the growth of the craftbrewing movement means that thecounty needs more room to house the added variety.
According to Dale Dallabrida in the August 18th Wilmington News-Urinal (contributed by Betsy Perse of First State), Sam Calagione of Reheboth's Dogfish Head was planning on rowing the first batch of Dogfish beer to be sold out of state across the Delaware Bay to Cape May on August 23rd; I'm curious as to whether this actually occurred.
The August 11th Phily Inquirer had a nice piece by Kent Steinriede (also contributed by Betsy) on Michael Short and Dave Masterson, who not only own a craftbrewery called Hunterdon Brewing Company but perform the highly-appreciated service of trucking the products of several area craftbrewers to bars, restaurants, and liquor stores around New Jersey with more care than the normal distributor would ever take.
BEER BIZ
According to the Ale BrewsGram, Frederick has announced that second quarter sales doubled last year's. Although financial losses continue to mount, the company believes the downward spiral has bottomed out and the "turn toward profitability has begun." We'll see.
Oliver Weatherbee of First State sent me an item from the Home Brew Digest stating that St. Stan's of California has begun what they hope to be a class action suit against Anheuser-Busch, charging violation of antitrust law, for A-B's pressing distributors to stop distributing craftbrewed products other thanthose by A-B and their lackeys. St. Stan's claims to have lost five distributors in California and half of their profits.
And Marc Schogol in the August 6th Phily Inquirer (thanx to Betsy again)reported that Budvar has decided to tweek A-B by brewing and exporting through Europe a lager called "Bud." [The counteroffensive has begun. We can only hope it will be successful.]
SHORT STUFF
According to the August 19th entry in the "365 Bottles of Beer for the Year" Calendar, the beer that ancient Egyptian workers were paid for building the pyramids was called "kash," which I presume is the root of today's synonym for "money."
The August 14th Wash Post had an article on radishes by Adrienne Cook; included was a paragraph on German beer radishes, "that washes down a fine lager like no other food. You'll never go back to pretzels." They are availablethrough specialty catalogs such as Jumbo and German Giant.
The Ale BrewsGram distributed an Associated Press story about a mildew disease that has attacked the Yakima Valley hop crop, so far destroying ten percent of the harvest from the U.S.'s most important source. Next year farmers say they will be ready with fungicides, but that will increase the price of growing crops by ten percent.
Finally, according to Anthony Shadid of AP in the August 3rd Phily Inquirer (Betsy for the 4th time), the new owners of the legendary Stella brewery in Egypt, makers of the most carelessly brewed beer in the world, have got to great lengths to clean up the brewery and their reputation.
POLITICS AS USUAL
Michael J. McCarthy wrote a very interesting piece (Wall Street Urinal, August 18th, Betsy for the fifth time) called "Inside the Beer Industry's Political Machine." The National Beer Wholesalers Association, nicknamed Six-PAC, has according to McCarthy succeeded in gutting the budget of the Office for Substance Abuse's programs subsidizing community projects to reduce alcoholconsumption, protected the alcohol industry from increased excise taxes, and overturned congressional efforts to further curb alcohol advertising. And how have they done it? With money - 1.3 million dollars contributed to federal candidates in 1995-1996 and 1.4 million to House candidates in 1996, not including money from specific beer biznesses such as A-B. With influence - supplied by Dick Gephardt, U. S. Senator from A-B's home state. With pressure - a well-organized system using faxes to alert distributors to contact their congressional reps whenever an important bill is looming. In other words, doing it the American Way. Or as Stephen Lambright, A-B's veep for government affairs said, "Have we bought our way in, to the detriment of someone else? No. Whatever [we do] is within the law."
