musing

If you care about how green the beer in your glass is then the news that Wal-Mart is partnering with the Carbon Disclosure Project to measure the energy used to create seven products, including beer, seems like a big deal. The story:

What exactly did it take to make that beer you’re drinking? Retail giant Wal-Mart said Monday it will partner with a nonprofit climate group to measure the amount of energy used to create beer — as well as six other product categories sold at its stores.

The goal, said Wal-Mart and its partner the Carbon Disclosure Project, is to then find ways to make products more efficiently and, in the process, reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases tied to global warming.

Does this have much to do with beer of conviction, honest beers, whatever you want to call the beers at the heart of the discussion here?

After all, a brewery has to be pretty good size to sell to Wal-Mart. But technology and innovation trickle down. Plus some of the larger small breweries — notably Sierra Nevada and New Belgium — are already leaders at reducing the environmental impact of brewing beer.

I’ll wait until Oct. 15 to beat you up more on beer and the environment. It’s important, and Wal-Mart getting involved can only help.

Earlier this month Chris O’Brien reported that Climate Change gives the largest breweries low marks when it comes to addressing their impact on global warming. I think the report somehow missed a lot of what Anheuser-Busch is doing, but I also know that any brewery is likely to listen if Wal-Mart suggests there’s more to be done.

Enough to make us feel all warm inside when we think about Wal-Mart? One step at a time.

Local drinkers say they can taste the difference (and that’s good) now that Scottish & Newcastle has resumed brewing some of its John Smith’s cask ale in Tadcaster.

A spokesman for the company said: “In order to gain a better understanding of the recent product quality issues experienced by some stockists of cask John Smith’s we have been producing supplementary brews at our Tadcaster brewery.”

The beer is also brewed in Warrington.

The York Press quoted one regular drinker saying, “It was magnificent and so smooth on the palate that I was forced to test several further pints to check it was no fluke. I implore the brewery to bring production back to Tadcaster. If they don’t I’ll stick to my cider.”

How passionate drinkers can be about a beer others label “average” is apparent in comments posted at the end. They are all worth a read, even those from drinkers who don’t think much of the beer. Here’s one:

“For over a hundred years John Smith’s have been telling us the secret of their brewing was the artesian well water beneath Tadcaster, now they’re saying it doesn’t matter. They can’t have it both ways.”

The drafting order is set for The Beer Mapping Project GABF Fantasy League, and I drew the 16th choice. beerinator cut off signups at 30 and the team (is that the right word?) with the last pick of the first round gets the first pick of the second. So in the second I’ll be drafting 15th. And so on until we’ve chosen hundreds of breweries.

Given that the last two years there has been a definite drop off in value after about a half dozen breweries (using the proposed scoring system, which could change) what should my strategy be?

(An aside: Predictions are always easier to make when you have the results in hand – that’s called data mining. You might have taken Anheuser-Busch high after the brewery scored 17 points in 2005 and got only three points in 2006 for your trouble. Flossmoor Station Brewing won three medals in 2005 for just three points, but in 2006 scored 13 points with four.)

I figure that A-B, Miller, Pabst (seriously, worth 14 points each of the last two years – Blatz and Stag win medals), Pelican, Flossmoor, New Glarus and nine more breweries will be long gone before Appellation Beer makes a pick.

What should my strategy be (for the 16th pick, but also the 45th and beyond)? Go with a brewery that has been dependable, always or almost always winning at least one medal (like Goose Island and Brooklyn)? Pick a newcomer with some street cred (Terrapin, Surly)? Somebody close to home (Chama River, Il Vicino, even Pagosa Springs)? Or those devoted to beers of conviction?

I need your help.

(I’m still working on the prize for the reader who provides the best advice. I’m sure it will be terrific.)

No excuses. Be somewhere Sept. 30 to toast the life and work of Michael Jackson. Make a donation to the National Parkinson Foundation.

The Beer Hunter website has all the information. If your local pub doesn’t have plans, doesn’t know about it then get involved and get a pub involved. The site has posters, information about donating to NPF and more. Got a website? A blog? Grab one of the banners (like this one) and help promote this toast.

I don’t have to tell you why, do I? If so I refer you to the links at The Beer Hunter or Jay Brooks’ well-kept list.

And then two posts you might have missed I think you shouldn’t. Maggie Dutton – whose blog, The Wine Offensive, is one of my regular reads – wrote a wonderful piece for Seattle Weekly.

She offers a different perspective and rightfully includes Charles Finkel, one of Michael’s co-conspirators. She chats with Charles, who tells her, “There’s beer before Michael Jackson and beer after Michael Jackson.”

Also give Martyn Cornell’s (The Zythophile) remembrance some time. The year was 1988 and “Jackson, even then probably the most famous beer writer on the planet, would be joining us later: he was flying in from judging at a beer festival in Finland …

“I believed we all cheered ironically, while secretly thinking: ‘What a fantastic job!’ However, when Jacko did arrive, he immediately showed how hard-working he was: taking extensive notes on every beer, photographing those bottles he hadn’t already got pictures of, while the rest of us were happy just to slurp and trough.”

Did he ever quit working?

When I realize I have a shelf with nothing but books by Michael Jackson it’s pretty obvious he didn’t. We once kidded about adding a “Where’s Michael?” map at The Beer Hunter site, figuring it would look a little like NORAD tracking Santa Claus. It made me sad, sometimes mad, when the beer drinking public just didn’t get it.

One example, from 2000 at the Great American Beer Festival. Michael had judged beers all day Wednesday, and in the evening spoke at a promotional event where he patiently posed with dozens of people for photos. He didn’t get back to his hotel until very late.

He checked his e-mail. There was important news. Samichlaus had been brewed again after a three-year hiatus. He tried to sleep, but couldn’t and was up in the middle of the night, putting together a “Notes from the road” column, firing it off to “rewrite@beerhunter.com” [please don’t try; the address is no longer active] so the scoop could be posted.

Then he put in another day of judging, arriving at the festival at 5:30 as it was opening. “Did you get my e-mail?” he asked (me).

I gulped. I hadn’t been near a computer all day.

We’d only managed to get the Internet connection in the hall working a few minutes before, but quickly collected his story, added a photo, and ran it through our database and publishing program. By the time he sat down to sign autographs the story nobody else had was on a computer screen in the booth.

More than 40 years after he first went to work for his hometown newspaper giving his readers the news first was still was mattered most.

He signed autographs more than three hours that evening, his only break coming when he did an interview for a TV film crew (above). He had no time to do what he loved, to wander around the hall and chat with brewers, always taking notes. He drank perhaps six ounces of beer the whole time, samples from when somebody would run off and retrieve beer for him.

If you ever had Michael sign an item for you, or watched him at work, you know that he’d speak several minutes with a perfect stranger. He never just dashed off a standard note and signed it “Michael Jackson.” He asked questions, just as much a reporter as when he had a notebook or tape recorder in hand. He wrote a personal message.

Not surprisingly, he was dead tired by the end of the evening and looked it. Yet he’d be up and judging the next morning and into the afternoon before rushing to another speaking event, a beer dinner and to the hall to sign books.

The next week a photo of Michael from that Thursday evening in the hall showed up via one of the beer e-mail lists I subscribe to. It was blurry (something most of us would blame on the camera or photographer). The person who sent the e-mail cleverly wrote that this is what Michael looked like “after a day of quote – work – end quote. Nice work if you can get it.”

This from from somebody who didn’t get it. You do. So be somewhere at 9 o’clock (Eastern) Sept 30. Raise your glass. Make a donation to NPF.

Monday I wrote about the new Cicerone Certification Program designed to better educate people selling and serving beer.

But what about beer drinkers? Mostly notably all those novice beer drinkers headed off for a higher education that often includes a fair amount of learning about of beer? (OK, I’ll not be totally naive and think drinking starts with college, but I like the analogy.)

Don Russell (Joe Sixpack) today writes about the Choose Responsibility started by Dr. John M. McCardell Jr., former at Middlebury College in Vermont. Beyond the fact that he advocates lowering the drinking age – ain’t gonna happen even though he is right – McCardell has another fine idea. An alcohol learner’s permit.

“Right now,” McCardell told Russell, “they receive no education in alcohol other than what their friends give them. It’s obvious that’s not working.”

Russell goes on to suggest a “standardized drinking test” and offers questions. They are amusing, but Russell also has some sound advice. Give it a read.