The war on small scale food producers moves into brewing

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Not for the first time, craft brewing is under attack by the big boys. The Brewer’s Association, a consortium of professional and home brewers and the parent organization of the American Homebrewing Association, has formed a coalition to bring national awareness of issues concerning this industry to the general public. The AHA sent a disturbing message out this morning to it’s members living in the State of New York, which I’ve cut and pasted because it puts it more succinctly than I can. I’ve put it below the fold as non-New Yorkers might not be interested and it’s pretty space intensive. This IS an action alert, so if you live in NY State please take a look.

The history of brewing in this country (and others) echoes the history of man in other ways. There’s greed, there’s corruption, and there’s forcing the little guys out of work in favor of the big boys.

Most people living today agree that Prohibition was a stupid law that didn’t work. It led to a huge rise in organized crime and utterly destroyed many small businesses that made quality beer and wine. Many pre-Prohibition recipes are lost to us forever.

What most people living today don’t realize is that Prohibition had lasting effects on the industry. People have joked for decades about the insipid weakness of American lagers and pilsners, they call it “Crudweiser” or “piss” and most everyone I know has heard the “sex in a canoe” joke. Many parts of the country still don’t have much of an awareness at all of what an ale, a stout or a porter are.

The difference between American beer and that made in other parts of the world is so vast that, well, this should give you an idea: eight out of ten people stationed in my unit at Ramstein Airbase, Germany had a DWI arrest and conviction by the second year of their tour of duty.

The weakness of American beer is ON PURPOSE. Budweiser, Coors, Miller, etc are all brewed to post-Prohibition “near beer” standards. Most of it is no more than 3.2% alcohol. The reason for this was rooted firmly in capitalism at it’s most cunning and manipulative. To the disappointed Temperance movement, the beer industry said, “Look! We’re not making the beer as strong anymore.” To the drinkers, they said “Be glad you’re getting anything at all, and like it.”

Then they made the containers four ounces smaller than the customary Imperial Pint, and they marketed them in sixpacks. If you wanted to get drunk, you were going to have to buy six cans or bottles, not one.

Here’s a picture of some pre-Prohibition turn of the century beer bottles from my antique glass collection, next to one that I drank tonight. Guess which one doesn’t date back to before 1903? Hint: look at the size. Congratulations, USA. After the religious fanatics were done driving you batshit with their draconian crap, the cutesy-clever marketing scumbags of corporate America nerfed your beer to hell and gone and pretended they were doing you a favor. For those interested, next to the modern Brooklyn Brewery IPA those are Excelsior Brewing and C. H. Evans, both pre-Prohibition breweries now defunct, next to the still-extant Pabst.

In some ways this formula looks very, very familiar. “Bad guys” come in and screw EVERYTHING up, and fanatics push the envelope on the issue from both sides of the law. “Good guys” eventually step in and put it all back together, but it’s never quite the same. It’s watered down. You get less for your money. There’s a lot fewer players on the field than there were before, and those who have survived are expected to conform to new, lowest-common-denominator standards. And you, the consumer, are expected to be grateful that you have anything vaguely resembling what you had before at all.

Can anybody tell me if they see a parallel or two in the modern age? How about our civil liberties? Our national honor? Our economy?

But I digress…

The Coors Brewery, during their tours of the facility, will brag to visitors about how they make their beers with rice “to cut down on the caloric content of the product” and will pretend that they are concerned about the health of their customer base. Bull twinkies. They’re doing it because RICE IS CHEAPER than other grain, and makes the beer lighter, which means you’re going to have to drink a lot more of it to get anything resembling a buzz. It also turns beer into a beverage consumed strictly for one purpose – to get drunk. Most people don’t know that the reason there’s a genre of especially dark, “chewy” beer called porter is because porters and other heavy laborers used to all but LIVE on it – it was as nutritious as liquid bread and was very often all they could afford. When made to the original specs, beer has a lot more vitamins and in those days was often safer and more healthy to drink than the local drinking water.

While I agree that drinking beer shouldn’t be all about getting a buzz, neither should it be all about having to buy MORE and CRAPPIER beer. Industries should be enabled to serve their customers, NOT the other way around.

That this philosophy has been turned ass-backward is the heart and soul of the problem of how most small-scale food producers are being treated by their respective industries throughout the nation today. Currently also under attack are small dairy farmers and food cooperatives. We are being turned into a nation of sheep dependent on large corporations for our food supplies, to the degree that laws are being passed to inhibit us from producing our own or distributing it across state lines.

The craft brewing and the homebrewing initiatives had a renaissance in America during the early 1970s. It became very fashionable to drink imported beer in some places, while more remote areas of the country started making their own after a repeal of federal Prohibition-era laws controlling homebrewing (still on the books since 1933!) were passed by Congress in 1979 and signed into law by Jimmy Carter. The nation currently enjoys a wide variety of commercial craft brews. Some large breweries encourage this, Sam Adams “Longshot” brewing contest winners have their most exemplary recipes for sale in your local beer distributor. But for every Sam Adams, brewer and patriot, we have an Anhaeuser-Busch brought to us by McCain’s sugar mama and their eight houses; trying in the grand old greed party style to crush the little guys all around them so they can keep marketing their Crudweiser to a not-so-much-wiser American public.

In New York State, all this could change for the worse as once again, the industry whispers in government’s ear and tries to de-level the playing field. If you live in New York State, check out the AHA’s original message under the fold and notify your local Assemblyman and Senator.

Support Your Local Brewery Action Alert

736 Pearl Street  Boulder, Colorado  80302  USA    www.SupportYourLocalBrewery.org May 4, 2009           Dear New York Beer Activist,           At the request of the New York State Brewers Association, we are alerting you to an issue which could dramatically affect your access to the craft beers made by small breweries all across the country.           As you have likely learned, the state of New York recently enacted a requirement that bottled products sold in your state must bear a New York-specific UPC code for bottle deposit and redemption purposes. This requirement will have severe negative impacts on many businesses, including and particularly, small breweries. The cost to produce a state-specific label with a unique UPC and the inventory and shipping challenges that presents, will mean many small breweries will be forced to pull their beers out of the New York market because the cost of doing business in the state will be simply too high. And just think of the precedent this potentially sets for other states should they enact similar requirements…small brewer out-of-state sales could be decimated coast to coast.           Several brewing companies have already weighed in on this issue with the Governor, explaining they would have no choice but to discontinue distribution of their beers. This is bad for the state of New York, bad for small brewers everywhere, and perhaps worst of all for New York residents who are craft beer drinkers. Access to the wide range of beer you currently enjoy will be severely limited in the future should this requirement remain on the books.           Please take a few minutes and call or email your State Senator and Assemblyman. Let them know that you feel the New York-specific UPC is a bad idea for business and a bad idea for Empire State residents who drink craft beer and vote. Ask them to support a repeal of the New York-specific UPC requirement as contained in the recently passed Bottle Bill.           To identify your state elected officials by zip code and for contact information:           Assembly: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/           Senate: http://www.senate.state.ny.us/sdlookup.nsf/Public_search?OpenForm           Thanks for standing up for consumer choice and America’s small brewers.           Charlie Papazian                            President              Brewers Association           Gary Glass                            Director            American Homebrewers Association            [email protected]            888.822.8273 x 121                  E-Action Alert       Protect craft beer, support a repeal of the New York specific UPC requirement.