Pennsylvania Remains State with Dumbest Beer Law...Or Maybe Not

Update to the premature blathering below: I just got the following from PA State Senator Sean Logan (45th District, suburban Allegheny County, Democrat):

It is not dead. There were additional issues that needed to be addressed and those issues were going to be inserted into House Bill 1420. However, we have not worked these additional issues out yet and therefore needed to table House Bill 1420. It is not dead and we hope that we will have a vote on it before the end of the year.

Sean Logan

So...we'll keep an eye open...and maybe keep our mouths shut. There's a lesson here for me... Oh, and those "additional issues"? The latest iteration of the bill on the PA Legislative website shows language that would allow single bottle sales of "holiday" special beers, the big bottles of stuff that is just ridiculous to buy a case at a time, like magnums of Chimay or Mad Elf, and...Utopias.

Previously... The latest effort to kill Pennsylvania's ridiculous "Case Law," the law that requires beer bought at the off-premise beer stores Pennsylvanians call "beer distributors," is dead. This one had a lot of promise, seemed to have support and reasonable people thinking it had a good chance of getting through. But oh-so-quietly, it died in committee last week, in a quiet Monday of Thanksgiving week. Why? I don't know at this point, but I'm going to ask everyone I know who has an in. I want to know who did this, and why. If you've got any substantive clues, pass 'em on; don't waste everyone's time with baseless speculation about an unholy alliance of megabrewers and Bible-thumpers.

Thanks to Guy Hagner for the news. Guy's real close to opening One Guy in Berwick, by the way.

Lozen Boer

Last night, I opened up another of those DeProef samples I got: Lozen Boer Abt, a 10% Abbey style ale. I'm not sure what "Lozen Boer" means, but there's a graphic of a man walking a cow down a path in the moonlight with the words "Legend of the Cow Smuggler." It scares me.

The beer was not what you'd expect from an abbey style, but maybe exactly what you'd expect from a DeProef abbey. It was dark, with a tight cap of dark cream foam, and it was malty, but the resemblance to the ordinary ended there. Lozen Boer was relatively dry for an Abbey, not richly sweet as they can be, and it had a spicy... no, really more an herbal complexity to it that was quite pronounced. I had planned on having a glass, but it was so drinkable I wound up sitting out on the cool back deck in the moonlight, drinking the whole thing. Very different.

A Mating of Giants in the offing?

Rumors continue to circulate about a true merger of giant brewers Anheuser-Busch and InBev. I've heard them for a while, but the pace is accelerating, and today an industry analyst said that the SABMiller purchase of Grolsch would give such a merger more urgency.

Madness. Take a look at Stan's exegesis of Melisa "Girl's Guide to Beer" Cole's post about the "tumbling" pub beer sales in the UK. It's not beer sales that are down, it's lowest common denominator beer sales that are down. Specialty beers are up 7.5%, and it looks like they'll be up in double digits again this year in the U.S., too. The big guys are so busy merging and consolidating and making the market safe for their one kind of beer, that they apparently haven't noticed that the thing people seem to want less and less of is ... one kind of beer.

Anyone know where these guys can buy a clue? A-B is making some good beers, but it sure looks like they're afraid to go all-in on them. Miller sees that variety means good business, but then executes with Chill, essentially High Life with lime flavoring, which completely misses the point. And Coors has Blue Moon zooming, and seems to have no idea how to handle it, they're scared to death that if they come right out and publicly admit it's theirs, people will stop drinking it.

The hell of it is, Coors may well be right. No one really knows for certain why craft beers are doing so well, and the scary thought is that it may have nothing to do with how they taste. I see it a lot. People are buying this stuff, they have no idea what it is, or what it tastes like, but it's different and it looks different, and it costs more, so...they drink it. Kinda mindless. Kinda scary.

New Jersey Breweries done...

At last! I just finished writing and printed the manuscript off, sent the file to the publisher, it's done. Till the edits come back, that is.

Great job by my co-author, Mark Haynie, a New Jersey native and fellow founding member of the New Jersey Association of Beerwriters, and much thanks to the brewers and bar owners of New Jersey!

And now...back to blogging.

SAB Miller to buy Grolsch

Saw this news and couldn't help thinking (amid the screaming madness of finishing this damnable book) about how frenzied and almost silly all this looks. A-B just took over the importation of Grolsch last year, and now SABMiller is buying it out from under them, which is going to set off another small wave of wholesaler realignments, and chagrin at A-B over the money they spent on some very slick ads on the brand. Did SABMiller do it just to screw them? Probably not, but it must have made it tastier.

SABMiller has been calling the A-B strategy of getting more upscale brands to their wholesalers through strategic alliances a "funnel" strategy; that's what the whole business is starting to look like at the macro level. All the brands and brewers that make mainstream pilsneroid beer are being pushed and herded and squeezed into the ever-tighter neck of the funnel... No, wait. It's not a funnel, it's a horn. A sausage-stuffing horn. Yeah. It's all getting chopped and blended and made into one thing. I like sausage, but I don't think I like this.

About those hops prices...

...almost forgot to mention: a brewer told me today that he'd been quoted $32 a pound for Cascades. Cascades are the workhorse of craft beer, the bedrock of many a pale ale and IPA. $32 a pound is more than insane, it's just ridiculous. Maybe I've underestimated how bad this is.

Beer-In-A-Box

I'm still working on New Jersey Breweries; got one of the very last interviews today at River Horse Brewing in Lambertville (where new owners with new money are starting to rev up this brewery; could be some interesting stuff coming in the near future). But last week I ran up the Delaware River to Milford and talked with Tim Hall, brewer at the Ship Inn.

The Ship's always been a favorite for their cask Ringwood ales, and I've got a lot of fun stuff to share on it -- in the book. But at the end of the interview we did a quick run of the beers, including an ESB Tim had in the tanks, which was excellent: lively, fruity, just beer near the peak of condition. He said that if I liked it so much I should take some home. I think he really wanted to show off their new package: beer-in-a-box.

This is much like the wineboxes: a plastic bag full of beer inside a cardboard box. The boxes come in two sizes: 1.25 and 2.5 gallons. In this case, Tim tapped the still-fermenting beer right out of the tank into the bag for me. He filled it, capped it, and tucked in the little spigot to replace the cap when I was ready to drink. "Just keep it cool, and keep an eye on it," he said. "If it gets too full of gas, let a little off."

I had to do that once, but otherwise, just let it sit until today, when I tapped it before dinner. Man, does this ever work great! For a night, I've got about a gallon of great real ale in my house! It's fresh, lively, fruity, and has a deliciously bitter finish. Best of all, it's got that fine, light carbonation I highly prize in cask ale.

I don't know of any other place that's doing this, but if you get to the Ship, do it. Get the cask in the box, take it home and enjoy it. It's not cheap, but remember: it's more than twice your regular growler fill, and most brewpubs won't even fill a growler of cask ale. This rocks.

Which is why I had to blog about it, even when I'm this busy. Back to work!

Slow Week Again

Just a warning: don't expect much from me this week. I'm finishing up New Jersey Breweries, and I've got two other articles to do as well. I'll see you Thanksgiving week, eh? Meanwhile, here's a picture of Cathy and I at WhiskyFest New York with a glass of Anchor Christmas 2007, the stuff that was brewing the day we toured Anchor. Well, not that actual batch, you know...

A little more Lion dope

A reader sent me this link to a further Times Leader story. Not surprisingly, these former soft drink guys are fascinated by the Lion's work with contract soft drinks. The Lion has two assets that most soft drink bottlers don't have: a brew kettle, essential for making malta sodas, and a tunnel pasteurizer, crucial for juice drinks. As Leo Orlandini told me a few years ago, they've gotten very experienced with a number of different juice and soda packages and formulations over the past two decades. The key quote came at the end: "We don’t think we’re going to break stride at all,” Hammond said. That bodes well for all at the Lion, and for those of us who look forward to further growth and innovation from this big old brewery.

Lion deal updates

Details are trickling in.

It is two soda guys: Ron Hammond and Cliff Risell, two former Coca-Cola bottling senior executives, backed by Blue Point Capital Partners, an Ohio-based investment company. Hammond and Risell collectively have "over 50 years of experience in the beverage industry."

Chuck Lawson and Pat Belardi -- former owners and CEO and CFO, respectively -- will continue on for the time being.

More, from the Times Leader:

“Certainly we want to grow the business,” Hammond said Tuesday afternoon. He said employees should not be affected by the change in ownership and that former owners Chuck Lawson and Patrick Belardi would continue to be involved.

Lawson led the 1999 purchase of the brewery that opened in 1905, paying $18.5 million. Hammond declined to provide the price he and Risell paid.

Love to know that price. One of my sources is guessing $30 million.

So far, all good. And no, folks, no Pabst, no Southampton, and no Yards.