This page is a place for my thoughts on the writing and publishing of Brewing Battles, happenings in the brewing industry, and, perhaps, some musings on other aspects of my life. It will be similar to a blog, but more low tech. Think journal instead of web log. There will be a place below for people to comment on what I write. Hopefully some good discussion can be generated.
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Miller Time - Act 3?
July 1 2008
Today's New York Times has a full page ad from the newly merged MillerCoors which proclaims, "We're out to become America's best beer company . . . Our journey begins today. July 1 2008. Cheers to a new day, America!" This "new day" is in some ways Act Three for the post-prohibition Miller Brewing Company.
In 1969 when Philip Morris purchased Miller Brewing from W.R. Grace it unleashed an era of competition and consolidation in the brewing industry, all in an attempt to topple industry leader Anheuser Busch from its top perch. Although this effort did not succeed the world did get Miller Lite. Similarly, in 2002, when SAB purchased Miller from Philip Morris the new owners also attempted to advance the company's market share while once again aiming at Anheuser-Busch.
The express purpose of this new joint venture by SAB and MolsonCoors is to create a bigger company to more effectively compete with Anheuser-Busch. What differentiates this third attempt is InBev's proposal to take over Anheuser-Busch. Will the vulnerability of Anheuser-Busch which prompted InBev's offer leave enough space in the market for MillerCoors to succeed? If Anheuser-Busch is no longer an American owned company will consumers switch to MillerCoors? The New York Times ad is attempting to position the "new" company as American in way that a Belgian owned Anheuser-Busch would not be. Of course, after SAB bought Miller Anheuser-Busch attempted the same kind of advertising. Turnabout is fair play.
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| 1976 point of sale display, courtesy Miller Brewing |
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June 19, 2008
I had intended to write this blog entry about InBev and Anheuser-Busch but my attention was drawn to another news item about Steve Hindy, founder and owner of Brooklyn Breweries, becoming the head of the Beer Institute. His predecessor was August A. Busch IV. The Beer Institute is twenty-two years old; it is the successor organization to the United States Brewers Association, which dated back to 1862. The demise of the USBA and the creation of the Beer Institute was a direct result of intense competition in the brewing industry following the purchase of Miller Brewing by Phillip Morris. In 1986 the Beer Institute was organized to include the big brewers as well as regional brewers. It did not include any micro or craft brewers or importers. Twenty-two years later many of the big brewers including Schlitz and Heileman are no longer in business; in their place are nearly 1500 craft brewers. Phillip Morris no longer owns Miller; South African Breweries does. The federal government has recently approved the merger of Molson-Coors and SABMiller. The rationale for this merger is to create a larger company that can better compete with Anheuser-Busch. Steve Hindy becoming the president of the Beer Institute is significant because it is an acknowledgment of the geography of the current United States brewing industry. The industry has a two tier structure with the mega breweries competing in an essentially flat market; following the Moslon-Coors SABMiller merger two beer companies will control about 80 percent of the domestic beer market. Hindy of course represents the other twenty percent which is made up of craft beers and imports. Despite the fact that the beer industry appears, once again, to be consolidating, the craft beer segment represents diversity and growth. The origins of the modern American brewing industry were individually owned breweries operating in a local environment. Whether there are three major brewers or two and whether or not they are wholly American owned, the mega brewers can not make an effective claim to continuing and maintaining that heritage.
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| "Jacob Ruppert" Time September 19 1932 |
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May 25, 2008
Sorry for the delay in writing this blog entry. My life has been very full with family events and work so I got behind on my intention to write regularly. A few weeks ago I got an email message from Mark Noon, who is the author of Yuengling: A History of America's Oldest Brewery. He had nice things to say about my book and told me that he is now writing a book on beer and baseball. This subject is something that interests me and I wrote a lot about Jacob Ruppert, owner of Ruppert Brewing and the new York Yankees. One thing that I think is worth exploring is why beer is served at ball games as opposed to movies or other cultural events. On a personal note I attended a major league baseball game recently and bought a beer from a kiosk called Beers of the World. They sold Yuengling, Stella Artois, Blue Moon and few others. A 12 oz cup was $8.50. You could also buy Bud Light on tap for $9.50. This is astonishing to me and doesn't seem to make sense that a Bud Light would cost more than imported beer or craft beer. One whole point of the domestic brewers marketing strategy is lower prices.
There is lots of news about the book - I am giving a talk at the Jones Library on July 10 and will be hosting an educational forum at the Vermont Brewers Festival July 18, 19. There have been more good reviews which I will post as soon as I get a chance. |
April 30 2008
I have been really busy with other things in my life besides Brewing Battles so I don't really have a beer or alcohol related topic for the blog today. One thing I have been working on was helping my younger son with his high school senior project. He did "Cooking With Tea" and even produced a small fifteen page cookbook, Mastering the Art of Tea Cooking. This connects to Brewing Battles on two levels. It's a book which reminded me of all the issues of writing, rewriting, editing, publishing, and promoting that have preoccupied me for at least the last two years or so. The other is that tea, like beer, is a psychoactive substance that much of the world's population enjoys. Similar to beer it is also a food.
Besides working with my son on his tea project I continue to promote my own work. The May issue of American Brewer has a full page review of Brewing Battles. Ria Windcaller wrote it and an abridged version of it will be in the next issue of Yankee Brew News . I will put both on the website as soon as I get a chance. American Brewer is an excellent journal from the craft brewing industry's perspective. Choice, which is the journal of the American Library Association will have a recommended review of the book in its May issue. Some brewing blogs have also had reviews.
Some people have finally started to respond to this blog which is thrilling. One person thought that perhaps I wasn't getting comments because of the format. Unfortunately I am limited in how I can structure the blog because of my hosting package. I wanted to have my blog within the website and this was the only way I could do it. Other comments have been about drinking in Asia, Canadian prohibition, and the Coors-Molson merger. To read my responses click on the message board links above, below, and throughout the website.
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| Mastering The Art of Tea Cooking |
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| Beer Belly |
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April 21 2008
Fat Taxes
California is apparently following Wisconsin in considering an increase in the beer tax; raising the cost of a six pack by $1.80. This rate would make California's beer excise the country's highest. The state has always protected the wine industry by keeping its tax rate low; the proposed legislation would continue this practice since it would only affect beer.
A Democratic State Representative Jim Beall has brought forth the tax increase which would require a two-thirds majority of the state legislature to put the bill before the voters who would also have to approve it with two-thirds voting in the affirmative. This seems unlikely. Pamela Pennock, Advertising Sin and Sickness: The Politics of Alcohol and Tobacco Marketing 1950-1990, (Northern Illinois Press,2007) showed that issues of alcohol and tobacco control often fell along party lines on the federal level with Democrats advocating greater restrictions while Republicans more often voted for commercial free speech. (The next issue of The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs: An Interdisciplinary Journal will have my review off Pennock's book.)
KNBC, a San Diego television station, covered the story on April 10. On the website, knbc.com,the story had several photographic side bars. One was thirty slides of a variety of beer and people drinking beer. The second was pictures from the 2007 Octoberfest in Munich. The third was entitled "Best Beers to Avoid Beer Gut". All of the side bars indicate that the tv station may not be taking Rep. Beall's presentation of the public health issues and their connection to an increase in the beer tax that seriously.
Guinness Draught (126 calories and ten grams carbohydrates) is a "pick"" while Redhook IPA (188 calories, 13 grams carbohydrates) is a "pass". Rolling Rock Premier and several light beers also "pass". KNBC got the caloric information from menshealth.com. That website must have done its own nutritional analysis because beer labels do not contain caloric information, ingredients, or alcoholic content. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a neo-temperance group, has pushed for an alcohol fact label that would inform the public about alcoholic content, calories, and ingredients The issue of labels and what they should say about beer and other alcoholic beverages - positive and negative - has been an ongoing battle since Repeal. Brewing Battles discusses this in greater detail.
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April 14, 2008
Wisconsin Beer Taxes
The website Wausau Daily Herald.com had a posting yesterday discussing the possibility that Wisconsin may raise its beer tax. Apparently the state is facing a rising problem of underage drinking and some legislators as well as police officers believe one response should be increased beer taxes. The state is also facing a budget deficit of $250 million.
Wisconsin has not increased the beer tax since 1969. It remains at 6 cents a gallon; the national average is 26 cents. During the thirty-nine years that the Wisconsin beer tax has remained stationary tobacco taxes in the state have increased eight times. They are currently $1.77 a pack. Wisconsin ranks first both in percentage of high school students that drink and binge drinkers.
Given Wisconsin's historical image as a center of brewing, the author of the posting suggests that, "Proposing a beer tax increase here is like suggesting higher tobacco taxes in North Carolina." The author actually understates the potential opposition to a beer tax increase since he cites only Miller as a factor in the current Wisconsin brewing industry and claims primarily sentimental value for the industry today.However there are over fifty breweries and brew pubs in Wisconsin; several of which are among the top fifty brewers in the country. Miller Brewing is of course the country's third largest brewer while Minhas Craft Brewery of Monroe, Wisconsin is fifteenth.
In 1991 when the brewing industry faced the first federal tax increase for beer in forty years, brewers large and small joined to fight the proposed increase. In fact most brewing industry organizations including the Beer Institute, the Brewers Association, and the National Beer Wholesalers Association maintain that tax should be rolled back.
Although craft brewing has a certain cachet that would imply it is something other than a business, craft brewers are no different from Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors in seeking the least possible federal and state interference and regulation via taxation or other means. Given the poor economic landscape as well as the particular problems facing brewers such as the hops shortage, it is very likely that the brewing industry will argue against the tax as a regressive measure that would fall unfairly on middle class and working people. Because the brewing industry has always emphasized the heavy tax burden it already bears, it will argue that further taxes are not appropriate.
Increasing taxes to cover the societal costs of alcohol and abuse is something that the brewing industry has always rejected and will most probably continue to. It is very interesting that these arguments date back to the beginning of federal taxation of beer and distilled spirits in 1862 and have not changed very much.
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April 7 2008
Repeal - Seventy-Five Years Later
When Franklin Roosevelt became the 32nd President of the United States on March 4, 1933 the country was in the worst economic depression in history, with 13 million people unemployed. Roosevelt set to work trying to repair the nation’s economy. On March 12 he addressed the nation in the first of his many “fireside chats.” The president declared a bank holiday. Immediately after the fireside chat, he sent a message to Congress requesting immediate modification of the Volstead Act to exempt beer with an alcoholic content no greater than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight. Roosevelt believed that “now would be a good time for beer.”
[1] The President was calling on the beer industry to provide the nation with a much needed boost in morale as well as assist him in his agenda of reform and repair of the economy. In turn the brewers would get a much desired chance to start anew.
As the movement to repeal Prohibition gathered steam, proponents for reestablishing legal liquor sought to remove federal control and return regulatory powers to the states. State regulation of liquor prior to Prohibition had involved licensing of retail establishments as well as sumptuary legislation. States generally did not tax liquor before 1933. The Twenty-First Amendment repealing Prohibition and legalizing the production and sale of alcohol achieved the return of regulatory control to the states. The federal government resumed its primary concern with taxation.
The states, as well as the federal government, saw the brewing industry as a source of economic relief. Following Repeal, many states established Liquor Control Boards and began taxing alcoholic beverages. The highest tax the brewers had paid prior to Prohibition had been $3 a barrel. Modern Brewery estimated that the newly reestablished brewers were facing tax increases of “400 to 600 percent.”[2]
After fourteen years of Prohibition, on April 7, 1933 the legal production of beer resumed. The New York Times proclaimed that “beer flows” in 19 states. The newspaper was recording the return of legal 3.2 percent alcohol beer to many cities across the nation including Philadelphia, St. Louis, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and San Francisco. All of these municipalities held “gala night” in honor of modification of the Volstead Act.[3] Prior to Prohibition the country had approximately 1250 brewers; by June there were 31 brewers operating. In 1934 there were 756 brewers who produced 37,678,313 barrels. Production for 1914, the last “normal” year prior to Prohibition, was 66,189,473 barrels.[4] The brewing industry had achieved an amazing rebirth; the public was extraordinarily grateful. The challenge for the brewers, as the nation sought to regain its economic footing, was to maintain their good public image and restore their industry.
Repeal proponents had touted increased revenue as a benefit which made liquor taxes inevitable. Amazingly, a week after beer became legal, legislators passed a tax bill. Echoing their Civil War predecessors, Congressmen sought the highest possible rate from the beer tax that would not cause fraud and corruption. They settled on a rate for legal brewers of $5 a barrel plus a $1,000 annual license fee for each brewery.[5]
In the immediate aftermath of modification of the Volstead Act and prior to ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment, the government was looking forward to the economic benefits that Repeal would bring. Postmaster General Farley predicted that “it will provide approximately $800,000,000 annually in revenue.”[6] Taxes on beer had helped to reduce the government’s operating deficit and Farley was optimistic that the end of Prohibition would help reduce federal taxes on everything else.
Michigan was the first state to ratify the Twenty-First Amendment and the amendment became final on November 7, 1993 when Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Utah voted their approval. The amendment’s language made Repeal effective December 5, 1933. The Eighteenth Amendment and its antidote the Twenty-First stand as unique events in American history. The first outlawed a legal industry and deprived thousands of business people of their livelihood. The Eighteenth Amendment is the only amendment to have been repealed. The Founding Fathers used state constitutional conventions to enact the Constitution; the Twenty-First Amendment was enacted in the same manner. Joseph H. Choate, Jr., as head of the Voluntary Lawyers Committee, contributed this expeditious and successful legal approach as part of the anti-Prohibition movement.[7]
Both the government and the liquor industry were quite comfortable reestablishing their old relationship, particularly since officials were willing to limit tax increases, citing concern over the continued presence of bootleggers. Tax revenues had fallen to 1.5 billion in 1932 — the lowest collection since 1917; following Repeal they began to rise. In the first six months that legal 3.2 beer was available, Americans drank 7,037,969,264 eight-ounce glasses. This gave the government $84,917,539 in revenue.[8] Liquor taxes continued to grow in strength; by 1936 excise taxes on alcohol contributed thirteen per cent to the federal tax system, providing fiscal support for New Deal legislation.[9]
The brewing industry, newly legal and providing a product for which there was pent-up demand, was well situated to meet the goals of New Deal legislation that sought to increase production and reduce unemployment. Unlike other industries, they also had a history of government regulation and control. The challenge for the brewers would be to flourish in a new regulatory environment.
[1] Schlesinger, Almanac, 461-462; Quoted in Kenneth S. Davis, FDR, The New Deal Years 1933-1933 (New York: Random House, 1986), 63.
[2] Oregon State Archives, “Prohibition in Oregon: The Vision and the Reality,” http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/50th/prohibition1/prohibintro.html (accessed January 20, 2006); Modern Brewery, February 1933, 20. Modern Brewery Age began as The Brewer’s Art (1923-1932), and then became Modern Brewery (1933-1935), Modern Brewer (1936-1940), and then Modern Brewery Age (1940-2004). It is now available online only at http://www.breweryage.com/.
[3] “Beer Flows in 19 States at Midnight as City Awaits Legal Brew Today,” New York Times April 7, 1933, 1.
[6] “Farley Holds Liquor Will Balance Budget,” New York Times, September 1, 1933, 36.
[7] Brewers Almanac, 1940, 60; United States Brewers Association, Brewers Almanac (Washington, D.C.: USBA: 1980), 110; Robert LaForge, “Misplaced Priorities: A History of Federal Alcohol Regulation and Public Health Policy” (Sc. D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1987), 135-136.
[8] New York Times, October 28, 1933, 32.
[9] Amy Mittelman, “Taxation of Liquor (United States)” in Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Encyclopedia, ed. by Jack Blocker, et al, (Santa Barbara, 2003), vol. 2, 609-61.
Excerpted from Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer (Algora Publishing, 2007) copyright Algora Publishing 2007
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In 1934 the 756 brewers operating breweries faced a world they could not have completely prepared for and there was nothing preordained or predetermined about who would survive and who would fail. Some breweries intially succeeded butnow no longer exisit. One such brewery was the Theo. Hamm Brewing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota. The Theodore Hamm Brewing Company dated form 1864. Theodore Hamm, the founder was from Baden, Germany. The company incorporated in 1896; Olympia Brewing bought the brewery in 1975. William Hamm gave St. Paul Hamm Park in 1910 to honor the memory of his father, Theodore. The park still exists as does the site of Hamm’s original brewery. The brewery is no longer operational and there are plans to turn part of the building into an Asian Community Center.[1]
William Hamm’s son, also named William was famous for having being involved in a kidnapping which remains notable because the case, in 1933, was the first time the FBI used a now standard procedure for identifying finger prints. The “latent fingerprint identification" procedure uses silver nitrate to obtain fingerprints from surfaces that can not be “dusted” for prints. Using this method the FBI determined that the Barker/Karpis gang had been behind Hamm’s kidnapping.[2]
[1] Downard, Dictionary, p. 87; “A Walk Through Historic Upper Swede Hollow by Karin DuPaul St. Paul, Minnesota © 1994”, http://www.daytonsbluff.org/old/SwedeHollowWalkingTour.html, (accessed on December10, 2004); New York Times, June 12, 1931, 16; personal communication, Tom Brock, Marketing Projects Director,St. Paul RiverCentre Convention and Visitors Authority, March 26, 2007.
[2]“A Byte Out Of FBI History: Latent Prints in the 1933 Hamm Kidnapping”, http://www.fbi.gov/page2/sept03/kid090803.htm , (accessed on 1December 10, 2004).
View of the Theodore Hamm Mansion at 671 Greenbrier seen from the top of the bluff. The building was destroyed by a fire in 1954.
unpublished material - copyright Amy Mittelman 2008
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| Hamm Mansion |
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April 3, 2008
Obscurity
I found out today that there is a review of my book, Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer, in All About Beer by Maureen Ogle. She is the author of Ambitious Brew: The History of American Beer. Reading the review helped focus some thoughts I have been having about beer history and the history of Repeal and Prohibition. This post will be about those thoughts and my response to the review. Sometimes it feels like I am writing this bog for myself since no one ever comments although I continue to hope that people will. I wrote the book I wanted to write. In many ways writing Brewing Battles was the fulfillment of long held ambitions. This is what is important to me.
The post-repeal brewing industry's campaign for bock beer is neither obscure nor an old story. Brewers sought to generate mass desire and a place for beer in American society. These goals are not that different from the goals of the 2008 brewing industry as they seek to promote April 7th as the day to commemorate the end of Repeal. It is interesting that the Beer Institute, the arm of the big brewers, the Brewers Association, trade association of craft brewers, beer bloggers such as Maureen Ogle and others all want April 7, 1933 to be the historical moment that is celebrated.
Other segments of the liquor industry might be more motivated to make December 5 2008, the seventy-fifth anniversary of Repeal. Historians realize that the whole period from April to December 1933 constituted Repeal and that the interaction between the federal government and the liquor industry is essential to understanding both the 18th and 21st amendments.
Most modern industries have trade associations to facilitate their relationship with federal, state, and local governments as well as to promote a positive image of the industry. From 1862 to 1986 the brewing industry had the United States Brewers Association to fulfill these services. In 1933 the USBA, founded by brewers whose breweries no longer exist and thus could be consider obscure, stood ready to join the government in reestablishing beer as a legal beverage.
History is on one level about winners and losers. The nature of battle is that the winners often write the history. In the brewing industry of 2008, Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Coors, Boston Beer, and some other craft beers are the winners. But how did they obtain their winning status? If we tell that story from today back, solely from their perspective, we lose much of the richness that is historical narrative. Frederick Lauer, Christian Moerlein, George Ehret, and Frank Jones are no longer household names. This fact alone does not mean they do not have historical significance.
I began Brewing Battles in the colonial period because the early colonists came from beer drinking societies and they sought to replicate that practice in their new home. The early American brewing industry was small and fragile; it existed as one among many beverages competing for colonial favor. This early period set the stage for the subsequent rise of beer as America?s premier alcoholic beverage. It is interesting that in her review Ogle did not mention the one book that deals in detail with beers' early history - Gregg Smith, Beer In America:The Early Years . Her own story starts in the 1840s with Phillip Best, one founders of Pabst Brewing. Pabst Brewing which many observers would have been considered a winner in the 1980s, is now an anomaly and may yet fade into obscurity.
My book is heavily footnoted; interested readers can easily find the sources for my analysis. Many non-fiction books toady do not have any footnotes. The reader must take on faith that the author can substantiate his or her claims. Other books footnote only the quotations. Once again the reader must take the validity of the rest of the information on faith. I was determined to write a book that would have high scholarly standards while being interesting and accessible to readers. The many positive reviews I have received indicate that I have succeeded.
Finally most writers do not have any say in the design of their book's covers. I fall in with the majority.
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March 27,2008
Home Sipping?
In today's New York Times, Eric Asimov has an article discussing introducing adolescents to alcohol in a family setting. His children are sixteen and seventeen and he is contemplating giving them sips of wine with dinner. He only discusses wine although many people drink beer with meals and the alcoholic content of a beer, a glass of wine, and a serving of whiskey in a cocktail is the same.
Asimov reviews some of the debate over the wisdom of allowing young people under the age of twenty-one to drink and discusses, to a limited extent, European models of family and adolescent drinking. The personal decision Asimov and his wife are contemplating is a small example of an long standing debate in the field of alcohol studies.
Temperance and prohibition advocates in the nineteenth and early twentieth century were adamantly opposed to young people drinking and they developed Scientific Temperance, a curriculum designed to educate students about the physiological dangers of drinking. The lessons often included a demonstration of a shriveled liver. For prohibitionists drinking and alcohol abuse were societal problems which required a societal response. In this world view there was no room for individual choice or decision about when and where it was appropriate to drink.
Following Repeal, the liquor industry worked hard to reestablish liquor as an appropriate beverage and reintegrate drinking in family life. The medical and scientific community helped brewers and distillers in this endeavor by reformulating problem drinking and alcohol abuse as a medical and individual problem.
Brewers,both before and after Prohibition, saw beer as the beverage of moderation which could be enjoyed through out society. German immigrants enjoyed drinking in a family setting, the beer garden. The beer garden represented brewers highest ambitions for the place of beer in American society. However the saloon, a less wholesome public place for drinking, predominated in the years prior to Prohibition.
Although the alcohol studies field has been successful in defining alcoholism as a individual disease, since the 1970's an alternative formulation, in many ways closer to the views of prohibitionists, has emerged. Because of societal problems such as drunk driving, cirrhosis, and fetal alcohol syndrome, neo-temperance advocates have argued for societal responses to these problems. The raising of the minimum drinking age in 1984, warning labels on alcoholic beverages, and ongoing battles to restrict television advertising of beer and distilled spirits are examples.
It is this social and cultural context that is missing from Asimov's discussion of his personal decision about introducing his children to alcohol. Although he does reference the issue of drinking and driving, he seems to assume that the only influence on young people choices around drinking will be that of family. Beer, in particular, is so integrated into our society on so many different levels that its cultural influence on young people must be accounted for.
Acknowledging the cultural influence of beer doesn't not mean that an individual family which enjoys drinking in a moderate way, whether it be wine,beer, or a cocktail, can not convey those responsible habits to the children. It would be naive however to accept that this "normalizing" of alcohol will alone provide "significant" protection against dangers of young adulthood such as binge drinking or ritual drinking around the life cycle event of reaching the age of twenty-one.
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| Sex Sells |
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| This image is from a power point presentation of the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division entitled "Alcohol Marketing 2005." "Sex Sells was their title for the advertisement. This Coors Light ad is just one example, perhaps a provocative one, of some of the other influences on young people facing choices about drinking. http://www.iowaabd.com/ |
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