About that mom breast-feeding at the bar

Child at barFull disclosure: Our daughter had been in more than 100 breweries before she was two years old. Not that she remembers any of them. Not everybody thought this was a good idea, but we sure learned some interesting facts about strange state laws, such as in Washington.

So stories such as yesterday’s in the New York Times about a Brooklyn bar posting a sign that reads “Please, No Strollers” get our attention, particularly with a catchy headline like, “Look Who’s Getting Rolled Out of the Bar.”

The story also makes reference to Wetherspoons in the UK implementing a limit on how many beers parents could drink in a pub. Which gives me an excuse to point to this quotable commentary from Stonch:

Presumably this is aimed at reducing the number of ankle-biters in your local ‘Spoons. Lots of people would prefer to ban children from pubs altogether, so perhaps the policy will have its supporters. However, there’s something annoying and petty about it. Back in September, we had a discussion about daft rules in pubs. I’d like to add this one to them.

The Times story explores pub culture, but considerably more, including the Gen X lifestyle (attention, Alan).

Which is probably why it kicked off an incredible long conversation. There should be more than 300 posts by the time you get there, and they are all over the map.

Worth reading, although I must admit my favorite doesn’t necessarily advance the discussion. I don’t care. Read it and smile.

“This is outrageous. Divisive issues such as this threaten to tear the Democratic party apart. We need to show a united front to the GOP, yet our very babies and being used as would be badminton birds. Anyway, why strollers? In my day, we lashed our babies to our bodies with rawhide strips. Babies could gnaw on the strips when teething time came around. When the strips rotted away, the baby fell to the ground and toddling time began. The toddler was given a crust of bread and sent out to make his way in the world, coming home for snack time and story time. Having a baby lashed to you means your body gets toned like no pilates workout would. As the baby gets bigger and bigger, you get stronger and stronger from the increasing resistance. The great world champion Bulgarian powerlifters of the 1970s pushed this technique to the limit in their training and kept their children bound to them well into their teenage years. We should not argue with their success. If these mothers would use these traditional methods, combined with a serape to conceal the baby, this would be a non-issue. For the sake of Democratic unity, I implore the mothers of Brooklyn to use the time honored method of rawhide strips and serapes, and let the healing begin. A ravaged nation awaits your decision and salutes your sacrifice.”

Surely “Contemplator, Kansas City” is a beer drinker.

Beer links you shouldn’t miss

HopsStuff I marked this past week to muse about on Monday (but there’s not going to be room for). In case you haven’t already hit these links do it now:

Tomme Arthur’s “Last Call” in Beer Advocate magazine — on the subject of auctioning beer on eBay — ignited a thread at BA that’s gone past 200 posts. Arthur since added the open letter to eBay on his blog at Lost Abbey so I suggest starting with that, then scooting over to BA.

Evan Rail writes about protected status for the term “Czech beer.”

But labels can only do so much. If consumers don’t pay attention to how beers actually taste — buying, for example, low-quality brews ostensibly produced from high-quality ingredients — the term “Czech beer” could end up being a distinction without much difference.

A distinction without much difference — I’ve definitely had too many of those beers.

– Sign me up for the Friday brewery tour at Cricket Hill in New Jersey. The brewery has posted two videos at YouTube (thanks to Lew Bryson for pointing this out). At the risk of having my beer geek status revoked, I’m of the opinion that Rick Reed is less than fair to Bud and Coors. But he sure is entertaining.

Burton Ale, Burton Ale, Burton Ale. Why you should have Shut up About Barclay Perkins on your RSS reader.

– And although James McMurtry has referred to himself as a “beer salesman” while performing, this is in truth a non-beer link. No point in watching the Grammy Awards tonight, since I’m pretty sure prizes for Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album, Best Zydeco Or Cajun Music Album and every other category we’d care about will be presented off-air. Instead head on over to McMurtry’s MySpace page and listen a while.

(Choctaw Bingo will get you properly psyched for “Breaking Bad” on AMC, because who can resist a show that centers around selling meth in Albuquerque? They shot one of the scenes in the first episode at the library where Daria works. It’s available online.)

We’re screwed – The jinx is in

Sprecher Black BavarianOK, we’re not at the point that Time magazine has put 750ml bottles of beer on its cover and declared “Beer Is The New Wine.” That would definitely be a jinx.

But when the business types start paying attention — as BusinessWeek does with “Micro Beers Brew Up Big Business” — I get nervous.

Particularly when there’s every chance that 2008 isn’t going to look all that great for “craft beer.” In the next few months the totals from 2007 will come in and they are going to look great.

Don’t be fooled. Things aren’t that rosy. You’ve probably noticed that the economy could be looking better, and you might have heard a little something about beer ingredient costs skyrocketing with higher prices to follow. Not exactly a formula for double-digit increases in volume sales this year.

And if brewers hit that bump in the road what are business magazines and newspapers going to write?

In BusinessWeek we get just what you’d expect — a micro history of microbreweries and a list of beers to drink. Before we get to the latter I’d suggest you pass on history according to BusinessWeek and pick up the new All About Beer magazine (March 08 with bottles of beer and hunks of cheese on the front) magazine.

Lew Bryson’s “The Real History of Beer” is, to use the word of the week around here, more “authentic.”

Now the list of “America’s Best Craft Beers” (according to Nick Passmore and BusinessWeek):

Alaskan Pale
Anchor Liberty Ale
Anderson Valley Boont ESB
Breckenridge 471 IPA
Full Sail Amber
Ommegang Abbey Ale
Ringwood Old Thumper
Rogue Shakespeare Stout
Sprecher Black Bavarian
Stoudt’s Scarlet Lady

Not to pick on BusinessWeek, but the Black Bavarian is looking anything but black because they used a picture of Hefe Weiss (that’s why the photo above features the real Black Bavarian).

Fact is this is fine list and I’m glad they noticed.

Just a little nervous.

Monday morning musing: German brewers’ woes

Paulander brewhouseI think I need to talk to New Glarus brewmaster Dan Carey, and finish a conversation started 11 years ago.

He was jet lagged but wired at the time, having just returned from Germany, where he bought a beautiful well-used and bargain-priced copper brewing system that would be the centerpiece of New Glarus expansion in 1997. He also looked a little sad. “We’re 50 years ahead of the Germans,” he said.

This wasn’t nationalistic boasting, a claim that American beer culture had surpassed Germany’s. This was history. He was speaking about how the number of breweries in Germany was (and still is) shrinking in the wake of consolidation. Something the United States went through during the last century.

I thought of this last week when reading stories about how German beer sales continue to shrink.

Is there an antidote? One story suggested, “Micro-Brewers Hope to Fight Sinking Beer Sales in Germany.”

What brewpub entrepreneur Oliver Lemke of Berlin has to say will sound familiar to American beer drinkers.

“There used to be 100 breweries in this neighborhood alone. They died out in the 1970s with the trend toward mono-breweries. The big breweries – for example Warsteiner or Licher – said: ‘We’re only going to make one sort of beer, a premium pilsner, and we’ll market it nationwide.’ And that inevitably leads to a dead-end. At some point, even the world’s biggest idiot notices that there’s virtually no difference between a Warsteiner and Licher.”

And also a little startling.

“The German beer drinker thinks he knows a lot about beer, but most of them know very, very, little.”

Perhaps they don’t know as much about beer as those deep into beer geekdom, but let’s be honest — they’ve still got a stronger beer culture. We talk about differences between the Northwest and the Northeast and argue about America’s best beer city (kind of silly if you let Portland, Oregon, participate). Well, they’ve got Köln and Munich and Bamberg, and scores of villages in in Franconia and . . . It is a different league.

Does that mean even more will be lost if the heartless consolidation continues? Or that the strength of the culture will keep German beer from tumbling into a monoculture as American beer did in the U.S. did during the twentieth century?

I’d like to take the optimistic view.

Why beer blogs are good even when things suck

Jens Dalsgaard puts it this way at Nanobryg: This is the end of Ølfabrikken.

Dalsgaard’s take on Gourmetbryggeriet acquiring the remaining 50% of Ølfabrikken is pretty despressing.

Look, I don’t care if I never drink another bottle of Ølfabrikken Porter (though I know just where to find several). I’m not thinking first about my beer drinking convenience. In fact, my least favorite thing about Ølfabrikken could be that the brewery ships its beer to the U.S.

That might sound strange, but (trust me, this is proof you don’t want to be living inside my head) the logic goes likes this: If they didn’t ship us beer then I wouldn’t know they made really good beer and wouldn’t care when Dalsgaard writes: “We shall see if the brand stays unchanged, but I seriously doubt it.”

You hate it that it appears what looked to be a cool little brewery is changing. One where you knew just who was making the beer and what ingredients they were using.

Without the Internet we might have ever heard of Ølfabrikken (ranked 12th in the world by Rate Beer). Maybe this has already by discussed to death at the beer sites, but I lean on beer blogs, via rss feeds, to get news like this. News I could have missed without Nanobryg.

And, yes, there is the possibility that Dalsgaard is totally off base — which is why brewers scream about “those damn bloggers” — but he’s earned my respect and will have to be proved wrong. (I hope he is, but as already noted, it can get strange inside this head; maybe I need a beer).

It will suck for drinkers in Denmark if what were beers of conviction won’t be brewed with the same character. It doesn’t make me happy knowing what I now know, but I am happy to know Nanobryg and the 193 other blogs really simple BEER syndication currently tracks are out there digging up stuff like this.

(Full disclosure: This is not intended as a shot across Alan’s bows, but his post a few days ago caused me to stop and find a silver lining in what looks like pretty sucky news.)