Beer News

Capitol Hill’s battle for the barstool

In Washington D.C., even the bars can get political. And when the number of Democrats (and, thus, Democrat drinkers) increased earlier this year, the political press began documenting the changing drinking habits at its local watering holes. Among the main questions: Who’s drinking more beer? And why?

“I think Republicans have a tendency to drink more high-end stuff…I think of Democrats as more beer drinking,” Matt Weiss, owner of Lounge 201 on Capitol Hill, told The Politico, a new political newspaper. The Hill, another area paper, quoted a healthcare lobbyist as saying, “For the Republicans, I have witnessed a steady increase in midweek drinking and a shift from beer and wine to bourbon, tequila and grain alcohol.”

“I think Republicans have a tendency to drink more high-end stuff … I think of Democrats as more beer drinking.”

What does that say about beer—that it doesn’t drown Republican sorrows fast enough, or is more befitting the working-class-minded Dems? Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean beer is a partisan drink. In 2004, Coors Brewing Co. chairman Pete Coors ran (and lost) as a Republican for Senate. And, as The Politico noted in a recent article called “You Are What You Drink,” in the past seven years Republicans have received more donations from Anheuser-Busch and the National Beer Wholesalers Association.

So drink early and often, politicians. By November 2008, you’ll be glad you did.

Smuttynose sniffs for a home

Here’s a familiar tale for growing breweries: A company sets up shop in an industrial building, works hard developing its name and beer, finds success, brews more and more beer, and then gets too big for its home.

Last year, those growing pains really hit Smuttynose, a brewery in Portsmouth, NH. For the first time in its 13-year history, it had shipped more than 15,000 barrels in a year—a reason to celebrate, because it meant graduating from “microbrewery” status. To keep up with demand, the brewery bought a 200-barrel fermentor—but because the thing is 25 feet high, it didn’t fit inside Smuttynose’s bland, industrial building. They had to build an extension to house it. Now they have to do it again, in order to bring in another new fermentor.

Clearly, it’s time to move. Smuttynose plans to do it in style, with a new brewery that will be eco-friendly, have a 60,000-barrel capacity, and will be more welcoming to the public. An adjacent restaurant will serve food and, of course, plenty of beer. “We’re not creating Busch Gardens here,” says company president Peter Egelston. “What I think we’re doing is helping to promote that idea that’s already taken root in a lot of different ways—of people connecting with not just artisanal producers in a handcrafted way, but in a much more profound, personal way.”

Details of the plan are still being worked out with the city of Portsmouth, and Egelston hopes to start construction in a year.

A swan song for free publicity

Musicians have a knack for delivering free product placement, especially of the boozy variety. Rappers heaped praise upon a high-end Champagne called Cristal. Busta Rhymes released a song called “Pass The Courvoisier.” And when British songstress Amy Winehouse started breaking into the American market a few months ago, she seemed an easy pitchman for alcohol of some sort: Winehouse is an unapologetic drunk; her single, “Rehab,” is about her refusal to get help.

At least two breweries won’t be getting any love from her, though. In the rider that’s distributed to every venue she plays, and which was unearthed by thesmokinggun.com, she demands bottles of wine, vodka, Champagne and Courvoisier in her dressing room. Then, there’s this order: “1x cases [sic] of Lager (Corona or similar—NO STELLA—NO CARLING!)” Well then! Picky, picky.

But that’s just the way things go with celebrities. Jay-Z recently called for a boycott of the Cristal he once promoted, so maybe one day Winehouse will be caught with a can of Carling. Meanwhile, Carling is doing the next best thing: It’s a sponsor of this year’s V Festival, an annual music fest in England—and Winehouse is on the bill.

Lawrence Schwartz | Photo courtesy of Stampede Brewing

Health benefits the government doesn’t like

Dallas entrepreneur Lawrence Schwartz made beer for a very specific purpose, but you’d never know it from looking at his beer’s label. The beer, Stampede Light, is fortified with vitamins, which Schwartz says replace the vitamins that are naturally lost when someone drinks alcohol; but when he tried to put that on his label, the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau stopped him.

Federal regulations on beer labels prohibit “any health-related statement that … tends to create a misleading impression as to the effects on health of alcohol consumption.” Schwartz says the bureau feared that if he mentioned vitamins on his label, it would appear as if the beer was a health product. That’s not his intention, he said: “What I’m doing is taking vitamins that are naturally occurring in beer, and boosting them up to offset the negative effects of drinking.”

The feds shrugged. So he figured that if he can’t speak to consumers through his label, he’d have to do it through the media. And they came calling—the varied likes of CNN and WWE Magazine have mentioned his brew, and sales have been steadily growing since it hit the market last summer. It’s still only available in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, but Schwartz hopes to expand soon. The label won’t hold him back.

In Oz, it’s toads versus the tap

Australia has a lot of invasive cane toads, and a lot of beer. The two don’t naturally go together, but they could: The toads are pests that have overrun the country and destroyed natural wildlife, and must be reined in. And the beer? “Beer tends to motivate most Australians,” says an Aussie named Michael Beatty.

So in the past year, bars in Darwin and Cairns, Australia, have tried fighting toads with the tap: They’re offering free beers to anybody who collects a bunch of cane toads and brings them to the nearest chapter of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “It wasn’t the RSPCA’s idea,” says Beatty, a spokesman for the group. “We said we’d go along with it because it was better than the toads hit over the head with golf clubs and cricket bats and everything else.”

Aussies have a long, maddening history with the toads. They were brought from Central and South America in 1935 as a way to combat beetles that were destroying sugarcane crops. But instead of doing their job, the toads multiplied and began attacking local wildlife. They now number in the millions, and nobody’s figured out a way to stop them.

Beer, while a nice idea, probably won’t do the trick. Cane toads are difficult to catch, and, Beatty says, the hunting efforts of local beer lovers just aren’t enough to tackle a national problem. “It does mean at least those animals will be put to sleep humanely,” he says. “But in terms of making an overall difference in the overall cane toad population? No.” ■