Maine: Sea Smoke, Manly Men Beer Club, Bah Ha-Bah

Date: Wed, Sep 22, 2010

A smoked barley wine. It pours deep orange chestnut under a light pale cream froth and rim. At first, it tastes like something I would have made as a fairly unreliable home brewer getting rid of ends of specialty malts. Yet it's not unattractive. In fact, as sips are sipped it gets a little more attractive. On the nose, there are planky hardwood aromas as well as musky things and some sweet pale malt. Mouth-wise, more of the same - plus a bit of whisky and a little orange peel along with black tea as well as ginger root hopping effect followed by then heat with the drying finish. Creamy body. It's maybe like a stronger Raftsman - that hint o'ginger is in there at least.

The bottle says "Brewed by Salisbury Cove Associates, Inc." but the BAers, who have fallen in love, say Atlantic Brewing . I am still left with a couple of math based questions about this beer. Why did it cost $11.30 and not $8.30 even though I bought it in state? Why is it a barley wine and only 7.7%? If it was 8.3% and $8.30, I might be fully satisfied of the bargain between it and I. But I am happy enough.

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Three Tales Of Beery Negativity Today

Date: Tue, Sep 21, 2010

It is a rare day that I do not feel that I am a little too negative. I should, frankly, find more reason to cheer up when thinking about beer. So, it was with some pleasure that I read others being crankier than me or at least turning a critical eye on good beer events and news:

• Pete Brown is the most fun, giving us a tweet by tweet update on the progress of HRH Princess Ann making her way through the opening of the National Brewery Centre at Burton including: "I just got a hard stare from one of HRH's security men. I think the curly wire ear piece allows him instant access to my tweets." Good fun - though the handful of beer nerds Royalists may take offense.
• More seriously, Andy Crouch has inspired a mass of comments at his thoughtful and critical observation of this year's Great American Beer Festival. Not sure if this means that Mr. P, a host behind the GABF, is recommending a "see no evil, hear no evil, read no evil" response to critical discussion. Sad if it were true as no one benefits an imperial approach to the topic.
• Most serious of all, I think, are Lew Bryson's objections to the trend of mistaking the skill of a craft brewer to make a claim to a new style of beer for the skill of a craft brewer in making good beer. As I commented there, I think the fault for this is somewhere between avarice and bad business modelling. I am tired of boring, clumsy, overpriced, unearned 750 ml corked bottles of confusion of or from the self-proclaimed next big thing. Why so many?

I was feeling so happy, even if unkindly, until I stacked these thing beside each other today and started wondering what was wrong. It is true. It is bad enough dealing with just one Royal or even an imperial attitude but to have a market skewing so oddly in favour of false expense and alleged expertise, well, it does get your head scratching skills going. It is not good enough to hear that it is no skin off your nose when you know there is a skinning of the wallet.

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Toronto Beer Week Has Made Me Envious

Date: Mon, Sep 20, 2010

Well, the lack of satellite events a mere two hours drive to the east does disappoint me a little but seeing as the planning and now holding of Toronto Beer Week has gone from zero to sixty in such a short period of time it is hard not to be impressed. It's even on TV. Troy Burtch, one of those lucky bloggers who turned their interest into a full time job, gets well-earned recognition in today's National Post:

Troy Burtch, director of sales and marketing for TAPS magazine, and a key organizer of the week-long festivities, is equally excited about introducing suds lovers and newbies alike to the difference craft brewing brings to the table. He’s talking about “going to the next level” in terms of appealing to the existing drinkers who gravitate towards existing mass-market “premium” beers, people who already spend more money on what they drink and serve at parties, but who don’t know what they’re missing in terms of taste, or aren’t aware of smaller producers. “Beer people are always in search of that perfect pint,” Burtch says, “and TBW is about building on the advances of the Ontario Craft Brewers, introducing people to new beers and new pints, and hitting on those individuals who will go to the LCBO afterwards, pick up that product they tried and keep the ‘circle of life’ moving.”

I hardly ever get to Toronto but when I do I seem to have a beer with Troy. I remember last December telling Ralph at Volo (when I sent Troy off to buy something expensive for the next round) that my money was on him to be the guy who was going to make a move in telling the story of beer in this province. I had no idea it was going to be evident so quickly. And, yes, I felt like such an old fart as soon as the praise came out of my mouth. I'd never admit I even said it now that he's going places.

Not this this festival is all his idea or effort. It has taken a lot of other people to push the city known as the Big Smoke in such successful beery leaps and bounds. Mr. B has posted his picks. And look, there's Greg out there drinking while slurping oysters on a school night... for you, if tweeting is the new news. Heck, the taxidermist is even coming by. I do hope the wave of excitement moves further out of the urban core but these things take time. I fully expect it will take Troy until about next June.

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Units And "Man Walks Into A Pub", 2nd Ed.

Date: Sat, Sep 18, 2010

You know, I have often wondered about the odd measurement of alcohol strength that the UK uses - aka "the unit" - because it is so obscure. For me, I would like to see the number of ml of pure alcohol listed on every bottle. Wouldn't that be the easiest thing to do? Instead, we in Canada get percentage meaning we have to do simple math. Such a task can leave a simple soul like me lost.

But the British take it one step of abstraction further with this "unit" stuff. I have in front of me a 500 ml bottle of the overly-named "Duchy Originals from Waitrose Organic Old Ruby Ale 1905" and see two diagrams. One has a glass with "1.4 UK units" in the drawing of the glass and 284 ml below it. The other has "2.5 UK units" super imposed on a silhouette of a bottle. I don't know what the 284 ml exactly means but I presume it is a half pint. So, it suggests that I need to consume 500 ml bottles of beer in 284 ml portions. Silly advice #1. These measures each seem to be two "units" of procurement and consumption. But neither are a whole "unit" in the sense of the health warning, if only because each diagram displays a number with a decimal. So what is this sort of "unit"?

Pete Brown to the rescue. He sent me a set of the new paperback editions of his three books on beer. I plan to give the autographed set as a gift in the 2010 Christmas photo contest but, as Man Walks Into A Pub is now in its second edition with new material added (and a far less ugly cover) since I reviewed it back in 2003 - actually before this blog separated off of the mothership - MWIAP will be presented with a dog-eared gift. First passage I read? It's about "units" at page 392:

The invention of safe limits for alcohol unit consumption was one such "unverified fact". A unit is ten millimetres of ethyl alcohol, the amount the average healthy adult can break down in an hour. In 1987 the Health Education Authority and Alcohol Concern agreed that units were a good way of teaching people about alcohol consumption, and recommended that men should drink no more than twenty-one units a week, and women no more than fourteen. Above that level, they claimed, the risk of alcohol-related harm increased exponentially. What they didn't see fit to mention was that only five years earlier, the Royal College of Physicians and the British Medical Journal had been advising that the safe limit for men was fifty-one units a week.. There was no new research to back up the reduction to twenty-one units five years later, and not reason for doing so.

What I find extraordinary about this passage is not the shift in official advice during the 1980s but the confirmation that a unit is "the amount the average healthy adult can break down in an hour." Because it gets me wondering what that means in terms of comparison to drunk driving standards. Here in Canada was happily have a dual law. You can be, generally speaking, convicted for driving while intoxicated or convicted for blowing into a breathalyzer and being found to have over 0.08 mg (I think "mg") of alcohol per "X" litres of blood. So, on the one hand, you can be intoxicated and be under the scientific test if you have low tolerance. You can also be not intoxicated but have too much booze in you to drive if you have high tolerance. As a public standard for safe driving, it works as far as I am concerned. I am, after all, a Beer Blogger Against Drunk Driving.

The thing is, I am not sure that you come anywhere near those limits by sticking to "the amount the average healthy adult can break down in an hour" and I thought for some reason you would have to. Let's review. The bottle of "1905" says as part of the UK warning that it is recommended that I have no more than 4 "units" - or one litre of 5% beer - a day. Two bottles of "1905". According to this blood alcohol calculator, that would give a 200 lb man an level of 0.047 after one hour since the first drink. Me, I am bigger so the level is lower. Please check my math. Have I got this right?

Now, I am quite a happy taxi hirer and have absolutely no issue with grabbing a cab at any occasion. I would have to sit a bit longer for two pints of 5% to be comfortable driving and, still, probably would not. Personal decision. But I would in no way think that I have done myself a long term physical injury by having a third pint over a span of two hours. Yet that is what the UK standard of "units" suggests. I think I might feel dragged out if I did that every day Monday to Friday. I might even start to tweet too much as we all are witnessing from the Great American Beer Festival right now. But even if I did have three pints for five days in a row, I am still well under the pre-1987 recommended level for weekly intake and would feel my best again after a couple of days on black tea and cucumber sandwiches. Check my math. Is that correct?

What does this tell us? First, that the medical advice for, what shall we call it, "drinking and living" presents a significantly stricter standard than the criminal one for "drinking and driving." Second, it tells me that I want to know much more about the difference between 20 and 51 units a week. What exactly does it mean? Is the liver so fragile that it cannot take a pace of alcohol consumption that is greater than "the amount the average healthy adult can break down in an hour"? How is it that the body is born with a capacity to break down a naturally occurring substance like ethyl alcohol and yet it is prone to being damaged by it at a level of consumption far lower than the level that causes the minimum level of motor control disfunction requiring legal intervention for the safety of others?

Third, it tells me that you need to get the second edition of Pete's first book even if you bought the first one seven years ago. It's full of handy stuff that gets your unaddled brain going.

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Are These Short Run Beers Actually "Rare"?

Date: Fri, Sep 17, 2010

A pretty good story in the The Patriot News of the efforts some go to to get one time release beers and the lengths people go to get them... or even to be left disappointed.

The brewery planned to sell only 400 bottles to the public. Cochran, who came from Farmington, N.M., after hearing about Splinter Blue on the "Beer Advocate" website, got No. 401, a bottle originally reserved for one of the brewery's sales representatives, who gave it up after hearing how far Cochran had come. Beer lovers began lining up outside the Paxton Street brewery shortly after midnight. By 5 a.m., there were close to 50 people in line. Sales were limited to two bottles per person. The brewery handed out bottle caps to the first 200 in line, similar to the wristbands used when concert tickets go on sale.

Quibble? Just that the newspaper chose to use the word "rare" to describe the 400 bottle release in question. I have no problem with special but shouldn't "rare" be reserved for the uncommon? There are so many of these short run beers going around its well beyond hard to keep up with them - it's hard not to run into them, trip over them, be pushed around by them. Frankly, there is so much brettanyomyces going around, I hear that Gold Bond is looking at putting out a new product.

"Rare" can't really mean something that happens as often as short run brews any more than self-assigned connaisseur should be implied to be up there with completing a doctoral program. We all like our hobby. It's nice to have a hobby - and this is a fun one - but just because you have the postage stamp the kid on the next block doesn't, well, it doesn't make it news.

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Belgium: Scaldis Blond Triple, Brasserie Dubuisson

Date: Wed, Sep 15, 2010

Enough of the art: "...more Bergman than Fellini."!?! What a thing to say. I can't believe it. What a comment. I simply can't believe it. I am simply gutted. Only one thing to do. Have a beer.

I got this one a couple of months ago at Finger Lake Beverages as part of The Attack of the Gueuze. No receipt handy so I don't know what I paid. It pours a bright light orange under a clingy egg white froth. Extraordinary aroma - pear and peach and orange. In the mouth, more of the same from pound cake malt� with a deep seam of heavy booze well earned at 10.5%. But there is also a very well placed layering of hops: spicy at one point playing with the alcohol, black tea at another tempering the rich fresh juicy fruit. And then, as it opens, there's that icing sugar white pepper thing that defines tripel for me. One of the most deceptive beers I have ever had. Quite more-ish yet also should-not-ish.

Scaldis aka Bush Blond Ale, a copyright issue as the brewers explain, BAers give great respect.

�Stole "cake" from JA but it entirely works. Not sure I ever I have gone past butter cookie to cake to describe a malt presence before.

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Fellini's "I Am A Craft Beer Blogger" Found!

Date: Tue, Sep 14, 2010

[Ed.: We are stunned to discover we were not the first to present a scripted response to "I am a Craft Beer Drinker" and applaud Reluctant Scooper for no doubt leading the charge. While we wait, we are happy to report that the following story board was found in the records of the Museo di Cinematrografico Equivoco in a file labeled "F. Fellini (non imparentato)."]

Scene 1: The Origins of Ice Cold.

[Soundtrack: Howling Blizzard Sounds.]

Light opens on an Arctic wasteland in black and white. The camera pans across a frozen Nordic plain before a rocky mountain range... until we seems something. A dot. Zooming at ground level we move towards a figure. He wears fur. As we zoom in closer, slowing we see that his mouth is wide, eyes wild. We realize is shouting once close enough to hear the scream over the wind. Subtitles tell us this is Knut. Knut of Norway. Zoom into his parka fur wrapped body, then face, then one eye as scream overwhelms the wind. He is screaming "�l !" He screams a long bellowing "�l !" to the four corners of the world. "����������������l !!!! He screams. Then, he stops. Silence. The eye closes.

Scene 2: The Man Who Slept Under Cans

[Soundtrack: "BabaYaga" from Mussorgsky's Pictures from an Exhibition.]

Eye snaps opens, now in colour. It is yellow and bloodshot. It darts around, gathering understanding. Slowly we zoom out from the eye to see that the eye is all we can see peeking out of a very large man-sized pile of Rodenbach cans, the only furnishings inside a bright sun lit London bedsit. Suddenly the pile moves. Suddenly upright, we see Mark Dredge. Empties clatter aside. Rising, he is fully dressed. To the beat, he marches out of the small can strewn apartment and out into the busy street. Crossing streets through traffic, pushing through high street crowds, he reads aloud from his mobile device: "Ales on now: Purity Mad Goose, Woodforde's Wherry, Harvey's Best. Next: Box Steam DeRail Ale." At 3:30 minutes 27 seconds in Baba Yaga he walks into The Gunmakers takes a long pull on the offered pint and drinks with deep satisfaction. Drinks for another 5 minutes as nothing much happens. Then types into mobile device: "Insanely hungover but saved by this pint of Mad Goose before me." The camera moves away and we start to spin. We move and zoom around the pub like an out of body experience with the closing majestic crescendo and suddenly down into - then through - the screen of his mobile device.

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Beer Stings In Kanawha County And Beyond

Date: Mon, Sep 13, 2010

Hats off to the working with the Sheriff's Underage Drinking Division in Kanawha County, West Virginia who rolled out their beer sting strategy over the weekend:

Lt. Bryan Stover said deputies working with the Sheriff's Underage Drinking Division went out Friday evening with three juveniles, all 17 years old, to hold an alcohol compliance check. Deputies used the juvenile informants to approach adults to ask them to buy beer or alcoholic beverages at various convenience stores throughout the county. Stover said of the 104 people approached by the teens only two people took their money and agreed to purchase the beer. Those two individuals were given warnings.

As far as I can tell the real lessons that might have been learned may well have been picked up by the three 17 year olds who now know who to hit up for beer and what sort of line actually works. Will the warned repeat? Not with these kids. But these kids, now trained, don't need them.

I have always wondered a little about these sorts of entrapment techniques. Whose kids gets picked. What are they told to say? What about this 15 year old girl in New Zealand sent repeatedly into taverns and beer stores? What did she gain from the experience? And what would those caught in the net have been doing if they hadn't been set up. It even makes you scratch your head when you realize that they are most successful when they totally fail.

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I Am A Craft Beer Marketing Consultant...

Date: Sat, Sep 11, 2010

... or sales manager or bar owner or... or... or...

The wonderful and ever posting Jay Brooks has posted the latest version of this odd video meme (pronounced "me-me" for obvious reasons) and it has me scratching my head as much as that Craft Brewer video of a year ago. Here it is:

As I noted at Jay's, how many of these drinkers are really marketers in their day to day life? Can they not actually find 12 or 23 real, honest to goodness average Joes who like craft beer? And what the hell is it about the soundtracks of these things? Does anyone actually associate classical string quartets or whatever the hell that stuff is with craft beer? Would a little heavy metal or bluegrass not send the right marketing message? It makes me want to fall asleep about half way through.

It's a form of denial, we know that. And a form of spin. But wouldn't it be interesting to have one of these promotional video thingies based on the following:

• I am a craft beer drinker. I am a fan of good beer. I buy good craft beer.
• I earn my money through hard work and expect craft brewers to earn it from me.
• I have no time for the floaters, the makers of dull amber ale, the brewers who are there for the government grants.
• Me and people like me reject badly made craft beer or beer stores that pass on soaking costs for trendy unbalanced crap.
• We have the conviction of our own ability to determine what tastes good. And know a great craft beer goes with a bag of chips.
• We know when it is stinking hot nothing goes down like a Miller High Life and respect our friends who like that stuff just fine.
• But we also know that when the BBQ smoker in the backyard is pissing off the neighbours, when we are sick and tired another mouthful of steamed corn gak, when there is extra money in the wallet and when our mouths demand something that has extraordinary taste...
• ...that is when we buy good craft beer.

Background music? Metallica's "Enter Sandman" morphing into a little early Johnny Cash ending in a crescendo of grunge. "Smells Like Teen Spirit," perhaps?

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Tolerance Just When You Don't Expect It

Date: Fri, Sep 10, 2010

People rant. Have you noticed? And people think the ranters represent the rest of the people ranters rant in favour of. Or at least don't rant against. Ranters need to be separated from the rest of us. Then things like this happen and we glimpse what is what - and what remains a puzzle. :

[Idaho Senator] Crapo's effort, with senators from Oregon, Massachusetts and Maine, illustrates the deep bond between Idaho Mormons and the beer industry. Mormon farmers raise barley for Budweiser and Negra Modelo beers, and last year, Mormons in the Idaho Legislature helped kill a plan to raise beer and wine taxes to fund drug treatment, fearing it could hurt farmers. Crapo touted the tax cut for brewers during a recent appearance at the Portneuf Valley Brewing Co. in Pocatello and said his position is simple: He won't impose his own religious beliefs on others, especially when it could affect a growing industry. "The (Idaho) wine industry is growing, too," he told The Associated Press. "I'll probably get asked to help the wine growers out. And I probably will."

I like this. Right now there's a little too much intolerant crack pot-ism going around for my liking. So it's good to see a community asking questions about its principles and factoring in the issue of tolerance. Yet the ethical conundrum remains compelling - does the believer grow for malt or not? Are the people who drink the beer made with the malt bad, misled or just on another path? I like this.

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Beau's Makes One Beer For One Ontario

Date: Thu, Sep 9, 2010

Brilliant. I was back at the Kingston Brew Pub for lunch today after yesterday's get together with Ian Coutts. Chicken Vindaloo special today. And with it I had a half of Beau's special one day offering of Festivale Plus Sticke Alt:

Brewers of Alt Beer in Düsseldorf will occasionally, and secretly, brew a special, extra malty, extra hoppy version of their beer and only announce it the day before its release. It’s known as ‘sticke’ – German slang for ‘secret’. Beau's All Natural Brewing Co. is happy to attempt an Ontario recreation of this happy event, by brewing an amped up version of FestivAle – our summer seasonal beer which recently won a GOLD medal at Mondial de la Biere in Strasbourg, France. Festivale Plus will be available TOMORROW (Thursday September 9th) in a limited amount at the brewery and select restaurants and bars, which hopefully will sell out in one day in keeping with the ‘sticke’ tradition. Check below for a complete list.

While I really liked the beer - nutty sweet malt with a the wall to wall shag carpet of hopping all over softish water - I really really liked the logistics. Twenty six 30 litre casks of the stuff quickly made there way all from the neighbourhood of Montreal to London Ontario and were sucked back with glee... or in my case vindaloo.

Too often good beer in Ontario fails to make it to, well, Ontario. Craft beers from west of Toronto stay there and brews here never get beyond Mississauga. And most of the special brews and even the entire output of County Durham only get to those who live in Capital City aka the Big Smoke aka the place where the souls of Maritimers go to die. This was a good move to play Bob Marley in terms of one beer, one heart and making sure much of the south of the province at least had a chance at this small batch of tasty brew.

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Book Review: Brew North, by Ian Coutts

Date: Wed, Sep 8, 2010

I had lunch with author Ian Coutts at the Kingston Brew Pub today after finding out we lived in the same town. He provided me with a review copy of his new book, Brew North as well as an invite to the book launch a couple of Sundays from now. It was all like living in Toronto - the Big Smoke itself - for a moment there, talking face to face with someone involved with beer.

We talked about his interest in beer and sources for his book, including the great collection of breweriana as well as booze can images from the 1700s to the twenty-first century. After reading In Mixed Company, it easy to point out that this is a pop history but it is a good one. The thing that caught my eye immediately was the quality of the images. The high production quality of this paperback results in very crisp and detailed photos, including a number in my favorite section, the one on the little discussed dreary phenomena know as the "beer parlour." The Canadian standard drinking establishment from the end of prohibition to the 1970s regulated to be the opposite of a saloon, these were dark, male, dull places without a bar, music, women, windows, air or until a certain point the right to stand up with your beer and walk across the room. I recall around 1982 being offered a raw steak in one of the last of these places, Halifax's Ladies Beverage Room or LBR. It was still in its Dominion Store wrapper, flashed from under the coat of its shoplifter.

Logically divided in to eras based on the regulation and restrictions on beer, on homeliness and later homogeneity of brewing in Canada, this is a book worth giving to the newbie and intermediate good beer fan with an interest in history - including up to the present day with a photo of Bar Volo with Ralph himself looking out from amongst the crowd from under his hat. It is a great addition to the still all too small selection of writing of the history of beer in Canada. I suggested to Ian that he could put another ten of these books out - one on each province. I couldn't tell from his expression if he thought I was mad or if there was a proposal to his publisher being made mentally right in front of me.

Mark your Google calendar mobile apps. Book launch at the Kingston brew pub, Sunday September 19th from 3:30 to 6:30 pm.

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Book Review: In Mixed Company, Julia Roberts

Date: Mon, Sep 6, 2010

Anyone interested in beer in Canada - or even colonial North America - really ought to have this book on the shelf. 2009's In Mixed Company: Taverns and Public Life in Upper Canada is a series of essays on topics related to the structure, regulation and use of taverns in what later became Ontario but what was called Upper Canada during the era in question. Covering roughly 1790 to 1860, Roberts describes a certain sort of drinking and socializing experience, showing where the lines of class, race and gender existed and also showing how some of those lines were far fuzzier than we might presume.

Be warned: this is an academic text. There are 169 pages of essay and 48 pages of endnotes and bibliography. But like Hornsey or, say, Xhosa Beer Drinking Rituals, it would really do you all a bit of good to get some proper reading in. You'd learn things like the first wave of taverns built after the creation of the colony in 1791 were owned by the government, run by tenants as part of the necessary roads and communications infrastructure. Until the development of more exclusive principle taverns and then hotels in the larger centres, taverns provided space where different backgrounds met and interacted, where people in transit or transistion lived, where business and political debate was conducted. You'll see how Upper Canadians saw themselves as different from what they called Yankees and, as the late Georgian became the early Victorian, how they developed internal divisions to distinguish themselves one from another

I have been fumbling around unsuccessfully for a reference from Nova Scotia confirming the meaning of "tavern" as a late 18th century offering wine, tea and other proper fare - a great change from my late 1900s use as a beer hall. As the author points out, during this era and in this place, the tavern was a licensed facility, regulated by law, providing civic purpose. It was subject to social and legal rules but offered a location for every thing from the holding of court to the holding of cockfighting. And, while there is no real focus on the drinks consumed, there is interesting information including how hard spirits appear to be quite popular including punches and what we would now see as simple cocktails, including gin slings.

Robert's style is precise and dense but quite enjoyable - especially given the fairly brief length of the interrelated essays forming the seven chapters of the book. Her observations and conclusions are interesting and well supported both in terms of argument and endnote. The most interesting portions for me were the chapters focusing on diaries, one kept by a tavern keeper in what was then York around 1801 and another on excerpts from one kept a regular tavern goer in my city of Kingston in the early 1840s. The comparison of the earlier period when the colony had a population of 34,600 and 108 licensed taverns to the 1840s when there were over 400,000 more Upper Canadians and 1,446 taverns provides illustration of the growing complexity as well as development of peace in a colony that was born of and suffered threat of war from the south regularly until the mid-century.

This era covered in this book is largely just after the era I wrote about in my Ontario Craft week posts on Kingston and its roots in New York state. It is an important era given that it is when this newly formed part of than British North America distinguishes itself in its controlled settlement patterns from the rougher experience in the United States. By placing us in that era, illustrating its social and civic centres, Roberts provides us with a useful context for understanding even at this distance of years.

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What Price Principle When Talking Beer Styles?

Date: Sun, Sep 5, 2010

This is almost the opposite side of the coin compared to the minor Black Bitter dispute in the US. In the case of Black IPA or whatever it will end up being called, people have plenty of pet names and hope they might even have a style to match them up with. Conversely, beer fans in New Zealand are fighting in court to stop the trademarking of a word for beer from another culture - and a style that no one really likes or even associates with New Zealand:

If DB is allowed sole use of the term Radler, Soba argues, it may attempt to trademark others, preventing New Zealand's growing craft beer industry from using them. Mr Owen said it was unlikely that Radler was among the favourites of its members, who generally preferred fuller flavoured beverages. "No, probably not. It's basically a shandy," he said. "But this is a point of principle; we're not defending a style of beer that's one of our favourites but it's important because it is a style of beer and if we let this one go, then there's no reason why they won't try to take others."

The funniest thing, of course, is that a colonial culture like that of New Zealand could suggest that it is the source of a concept like a beer style at all. Maybe that argument does not play well amongst Kiwis. But, according to the article, the brain trust at this DB brewery also thought it owns rights to the concept of saison, a position that they seem to have backed away from. Cheeky Antipodeans

Does this matter? If they corner the market on Radler, shandy will still be made and called whatever people want to call it. If they attempted to trademark anything less obscure, the brewers and beer nerds of the world would oppose the registration now that the warning has been heard. So why fight? What principle is really at play?

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