In a couple of hours (11:30 am) I’ll be heading over to Swan Market to join my friends for our traditional Saturday, uh, sausagefest. Naturally, this event is lubricated with  fine German beer.

It’s funny. You tell an American that you’ll be drinking beer before the hour of noon and they start planning your intervention, whereas in Europe, responsible consumption of what is essentially a foodstuff is part of the routine and joy of daily life. The traditional Bavarian meal of Weisswurst and Hefeweizen is consumed before noon as a matter of course and pride, born of a time when the highly perishable sausage needed to be served quickly.

Some traditions are worth attending to. Zwei Weiss, bitte, und Ein Fransiskaner vom Fass! 

Second thought 

 I dunno, I kinda feel like I overly harshed the High Falls Brewery in my last post over what basically amounts to an ad. They do a lot for the community and I choose their beer over any other American light lager. Like many regional breweries, the company has had a rough go of it over the past 30 years or so, and it’s not fair to fault them for positioning themselves to remain viable.

I guess it just seems, sometimes, that our hometown brewery has kind of abandoned us as small fry, and the brewery-consumer relationship is so different than in other cities where regional breweries are headquartered. For example, go to southern PA and see how passionate people are about Yuengling. The beer is everywhere and residents are proud of it, even though in composition it’s not wildly different from Genny. In Rochester, we don’t have that same sort of pride in our big brewer. High Falls doesn’t culturally dominate that part of our dining table.

Maybe this ad is the first step in a broader campaign to reach out to the town that built the company through the purchase of its beers. If so, I’ll happily drink my words. Well see.

-Mark

The management of the High Falls Brewing Company does not think very highly of the citizens of its home city. They think we’re simple, maybe stupid even, with the reasoning skills of small children. They are also very disappointed in us as customers.

High Falls ran a full-page advertisement in this week’s issue of City Newspaper (and, I’m told, the Democrat and Chronicle as well) that purports to be a personal letter from President and CEO Norman Snyder to the citizens of Rochester. Now, most people wouldn’t read 7 long paragraphs of 6-point type. I did, and it pissed me off. Over the course of the letter ‘Snyder’ offers platitudes about how much he loves it here, patronizes us with his own simplification of economics, attempts to convince us that his is a craft brewery, and reprimands us for not buying locally enough.

“The Brewery’s Payroll, which is in excess of $18 million, makes a significant contribution to the local economy,” ‘Snyder’ writes. “Our employees pay taxes, purchase automobiles, clothing, groceries and other goods from local companies.” Well, duh. What’s the underlying message here? Is it that, if we don’t buy enough Genny Light, the brewery will be forced to reduce that potential pool of local economic contributors? It kinda reminds me of how PBS used to threaten to pull Sesame Street off the air if they didn’t receive enough viewer contributions.

That’s just hamfisted copy. The more inscencing thing for me is the complete hypocrisy of what the letter goes on to state:

“When you buy the beer in the blue can, you are supporting an economy whose currency is now on par with our own. When you buy the beer in the red can, you are helping the big get bigger. Every time you buy the beer in the silver or gold can, you are not buying the local beer or supporting local jobs.

The next time you order a beer, please consider that some of the best beer brewed in this country is brewed right here in Rochester, New York. Take Pride in Rochester! Take Pride in your local brewery! Take Pride in our products! But please remember to always be responsible.”

Well, Norm, I’ll take that final piece of advice. I don’t think High Falls Brands, excuse me, High Falls Brewing Company, is our brewery anymore. Not when I’m sitting at my hometown baseball stadium, within sight of your building, and the Rohrbach Brewing Company has ten times the retail presence as High Falls. Not when it’s ten times easier to get the beers of Honeoye Falls’ Custom Brewcrafters than a bottle of good ol’ Genesee Lager. Not when you try to pass of Honey Brown as a ‘craft beer.’ Not when you toss aside your locally born and bred Head Brewer, the guy who won a bunch of the awards you alluded to earlier in your ‘personal plea.’

As a local consumer who should ‘always be responsible,’ I will make sure to support local brewery employees and local jobs. I will not buy the beer in the red can. I will not buy the beer in the blue can, or the silver.

I’ll buy the beer that doesn’t come in a can at all.

-Mark

Oak ‘em if you got ‘em

Looks like Bruce got his hot little hands on an oaken barrel– a tool which can only be used for evil once the Buffalo Road Rohrbach Brewery is set up. Let’s just hope he doesn’t go all overboard and brew an “oaky-weizen” or something. You never know with that freak. Anyway, the location is coming along, but it’ll still be a few more weeks before any brewing resumes at Buffalo Road.

A beer journey

Bruce and I are doing another beer trip this weekend. We’re heading down to Tap NY to pour for the Rohrbach Brewing Company. It’s a long drive with four kegs in a Honda Element, but epic journeys are our thing. We live for the danger, baby. The excitement. That’s how we roll.

Tap NY is one of the premier events for New York State breweries, and this will be the first time in six years that Rohrbach has a booth. It’s held a picturesque Hunter Mountain in picturesque Hunter, New York, in a picturesque ski lodge. It’s my understanding that action has been taken this year to reduce the heavy crowding that was becoming a turn-off to many festival attendees.

High Falls

No specifics yet, but I’ve heard the sad news that Dave Schlosser has moved on from the High Falls brewing Company. That’s a loss not only to the brewery, but also to the entire beer lover’s community in the Northeast. Details are nonexistent, but my gut tells me High Falls might be prepping for a sellout to the majors. Of course, folks have been speculating about that for 20 years.

Custom Brewcrafters

Brewing has commenced in Custom Brewcrafters’ monolithic new Honeoye Falls brewery, but the brewing area is not quite ready for tours so don’t go rushing down there and bothering Jason, Greg and John. The retail area of the brand-new, custom built brewery is open to the public; I’ve heard it has the feel of a Finger Lakes winery tasting room: inviting, warm and spacious. I’ll be checking it out over the next few days. With a designated driver.

-Mark

I’m a huge soccer fan, and a huge fan and season ticket holder for our local professional soccer team, the Rochester Rhinos.

Local Rochester readers will know of the team’s financial struggles, and near demise, over the past couple of years. Now, thanks to the team’s purchase by Utica banker Rob Clark, our season is saved. Our stadium is saved.

Our team is going to be out on that pitch.

For many fans, one of the most glaring issues was the ineptitude of godawful concession company Delaware North.  They’re the ones who tried to carge me the import price for a bottle of J.W. Dundee’s IPA, brewed half a mile from the stadium, last season. Well they’re gone, and Clark is looking for a more local approach to concessions.

Mr. Clark, in addition to the historic High Falls Brewery, we have two local breweries who’ve just invested in Rochester the way you’ve invested in the Rhinos. The Rohrbach Brewing Company and Custom Brewcrafters have each built new, larger facilities to produce more and better beer than ever before. You need this beer in your stadium. With growth rates of up to 40% last year, these beers are now the beers of Rochester and of Rochesterians.

Who’s with me?  If you want to see the best local beer at PTP this summer, leave me your comments, and I’ll forward this informal potition to the PTP front office as soon as it looks impressive.

-Mark

The virtue police are striking again, and this time it’s hitting close to home. New York Upon his recent visit to Rochester, State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz announced a proposal for a 25 cent surcharge on every bottle of alcoholic beverage sold. The money thus raised would go to fund substance abuse treatment and after-school programs.

Ortiz was quoted as saying “It will probably be an unpopular angle as I stand right here, but I believe if we don’t pay today, we pay tomorrow.”

Such nobility! Such willingness to take an unpopular stand! Such a pantload!

He’s definitely right about the likely popularity of the proposal, not just because of peoples’ resentment at having to pay more for their booze, but also because it’s a blanket punishment of every New York Stater over age 21 for the irresponsible actions of one segment of the population. Ortiz’ words veil a fallacious belief: that those who enjoy alcohol in any form are part of the problem, and that, by buying wine beer or liquor, they share some of the moral culpability for those who allow alcohol and far more physically and socially damaging substances (crystal meth, I’m looking at you) to take over their lives.

Ortiz is essentially levying a punitive tax to subsidize abdication of personal responsibility. And he wants to do it by funding programs that work for only a small minority of people who enter them.

I’d also like to know exactly how Ortiz thinks we’ll “pay tomorrow.” More DWI? By lowering the legal  .BAC to levels where it’s almost illegal to drive past a bar ad through increased funding for enforcement, New York State is doing everything in its power to increase DWI anyway.  We’re already paying to pay for tomorrow. More addction? Is the high relapse rate of addicts who went through rehab purely a result of underfunding, or is it that addiction is a psychological labyrinth from which many people never really break free?

Thanks to Client 9, I guess it’s a good time to make a splash as a defender of public health in New York State. Yankee Stadium has less grandstanding than the Ortiz proposal. It behooves New Yorkers to give it the attention it deserves:

Substantially less than this piece,

-Mark

It turns out beer is consumed by people. Not pie charts, not growth numbers, not share prices. Regular normal people like you and me. Well, me, anyway.

An article in today’s New York Times outlines an increasing use of regional advertising as by the nation’s largest brewers in an effort to retain the market share that’s slowly being eroded by smaller breweries. Instead of approaching their market purely on a national level, the big brewers are running locally themed campaigns in places like Texas, where the ads feature the state flag, cowboy hats, and other stereotypes of the type which people love and embrace.

This is a sound approach, probably a necessary one for Big Beer. People are proud of where they live and proud of their customs. These customs include, often revolve around, food and drink. Across the nation, where breweries had long been snapped up or put out of business by the conglomerates, new regionals are moving beyond the kitschy microbrewery phase and working themselves into the cultures of their areas.

Craft and regional brewing isn’t a secret anymore. It’s no longer an exclusive club of homebrewers and mildly eccentric connoisseurs. 22-year-old sorority girls know about and relish their local beer. People know they have a choice again. And often, they know it’s their hometown choice.

In the Times article, Beer Marketers’ Insights Editor Benjamin Steinman drops a quote I love: “Everybody’s fighting for a bigger piece of a pie that’s not growing,” he said. “What’s really growing at a rapid rate are smaller brewers.”

As Big Beer is realizing, these smaller brewers are growing radially, out of their home regions, and they’re reaching across a nation, an ocean, soon a world. But it’s the local love that provides the strongest fuel. By addressing people on a regional level, the national conglomerates hope to tap into that sense of pride.

We’ll see if it works. At any rate, it shows they’re scared of mice that roar.

-Mark

In the classic tradition of the “Black and Tan,” the “Half-and-half,” the “Snakebite,” and the “Cleveland Steamer,” I’ve invented a new layered beer drink: the “World War II.”

Guinness and Spaten Bock.

The interesting thing about this combination is the stratification betwixt the layers. The border between the inky Guinness and russet Spaten undulates and seethes in ripples of pure disdain. It’s like international soccer in a glass. Surprisingly, the flavors meld well.

Stupid? yeah. But sometimes that’s the result of drinking beer.

It seems an increasing number of craft breweries are rejecting the traditional brewpub/restaurant model. Personally, considering the high rate of new restaurant failure, I’ve always wondered if the kitchen really added a viable profit stream, or acted as an albatross around the neck of the brewing venture. We lost three big brewery/restaurants in Rochester within the span of a couple years.

From where I’m sitting, it looks as if the greater consumer acceptance- check that- expectation of good beer has made the dining room less of a must have. I think brewers are looking much further afield for their customer base than their own premises. Traditional brewpubs are becoming small breweries that very much resemble the old breweries that dotted the nation prior to prohibition and hegemony.

I think that’s an encouraging sign. Craft beer is no longer a boutique product that’s out of place off the premises. It’s a vital part of the American beverage industry. Personally, I find having my beer of choice available at my chosen restaurant is preferable to having to constrain myself to the best of brewpub food.

Any brewers want to shout out on this issue? Is the brewpub becoming an anachronism? Is a kitchen a liability? I’d love to hear from the industry.

-Mark

People get this romantic notion about the Germans and their veneration for beer… with their special fancy beer law and their big-ass Mass glasses. But a lot of them treat beer with the type of indifference that only comes with not knowing the forest for the trees.

An article from today’s edition of Forbes.com talks about how German domestic beer sales declined by 2.7%. The German Brewers’ Association blames a rainy summer which put the kybosh on afternoons in the Biergarten, as well as a general health- consciousness for which the stool-inspecting Germans have grown notorious.

But what’s most disturbing to me is the article’s mention that the German propensity for mixing beer with fruit juice or soft drinks is becoming more widespread. Really, Hans, what is the freakin’ point of having the freakin’ Reinheitsgebot if you’re just gonna dump half a liter of apple juice into your Bitburger? And how does diluting one’s beer with a drink full of high-fructose corn syrup seem like a healthy choice to anyone?

Maybe we Yanks will benefit from this. The brewers of Germany have to find their market somewhere. If they can’t do it at home, more of them just might look to the thirsty huddled masses in the USA.

-Mark

Anheuser-Busch is hosting a series of beer dinners at fine restaurants. According to this article from the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch:

On a muggy night last September, Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Clayton brought out the fine white tablecloths for a $100 Anheuser-Busch beer dinner for 60 registered guests. Menus laid out seven courses of haute cuisine: coconut shrimp and Michelob, beef tenderloin and caramelized onions with Michelob Amber Bock, and Caesar salad with Budweiser in pilsner glasses.

Now I appreciate that A-B is trying to get people reacquainted with beer as a dining companion, but it seems that getting Budweiser with your salad is precisely the thing that would drive people to choose wine.

Even if it does come in a fancy-schmancy pilsner glass.