I'm on record as supporting rational drinking. You can read my earlier posts by clicking on the index link titled "rational drinking."

So of course I was more-or-less glad to hear that 100 college presidents support lowering the drinking age to 18. (There's are lots of reports online; here's one of them.)

But let's get real. Lowering the drinking age won't solve the underlying problem. It'll make the life easier for the nation's police (fewer lawbreakers to arrest), but . . . that's about all it would do.

Because, as I've said here before, the real problem isn't the drinking age. The real problem is that Americans demonize rather than respect alcohol, and infantalize drinking. Worse yet, we ignore the fact that alcohol is an ancient and normal part of human life.

No surprise, we don't teach kids to respect alcohol. We don't teach them how to drink. So what we get are teen-agers and young adults who, ya know, don't know how to drink.

Why do we treat alcohol and drinking so differently than, say, cars and driving? We know that putting an untrained driver behind the wheel of a car is dangerous. We TEACH kids to drive before we turn them loose with the car keys.

We should treat alcohol the same way: In the hands (mouths) of the inexperienced and untrained, alcohol can be dangerous. So we should TEACH kids about alcohol's role in human life and how to use it responsibly.

Until we start doing that, lowering the drinking age ain't gonna do a bit of good.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Beer-drinking advice and suggestions from 1958.

-- "Don't stick to one beer. Try various kinds."

-- "Judge each beer as you would a person, play, or book -- on its merits as an individual."

-- "Rinse the beer glass with cold water before you use it."

-- "Serve the right beer with the right foods, mating light with light, rich food with darker, stronger beers and ales."

What to drink?

Imports:

Amstel
Augustinerbrau
Bass Ale
Beck's
Carlsberg
Carta Blanca
Guinness Stout
Heineken
Kirin
La Batt's (her spelling, not mine)
Lowenbrau
Pilsner Urquell
Turborg
Whitbread
Wurzburger

Prefer a domestic?

Andecker (brewed by Pabst, a "rich all-malt beer" available only "unpasteurized on draught")

Ballantine's India Pale Ale (a "remarkable ale")

Iron City lager (its fans are "enthusiastic and eloquent"; a "connoisseur type" beer)

Michelob (claimed by many to be "America's finest beer, one of the greatest in the world.")

Miller High Life ("great delicacy and elegance")

National Premium ("This beer has had its ups and downs, but is now doing better than ever ...")

Olympia (made with "pure glacial water . . . from exceedingly deep artesian wells....")

Prior's Double Dark ("...the only all-malt bottled beers made in the U.S.A.")

Rainier Old Stock Ale ("ancestral spores of the yeasts came from England," and the beer is aged in "the staid old British manner..."

Source: Poppy Cannon, "The Changing Taste for Beer," House Beautiful 100 (October 1958): 209, 231-237. Cannon was, at that time, one of the nation's most prominent food writers.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ohdeargod this sounds good.

(Me being a major fan of ice cream floats...)

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bob Townsend, beer's man-on-the-scene for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has a nice interview with Amy Mittelman, author of Brewing Battles. Check it out!

(Although the accuracy-fanatic in me is compelled to point out that MillerCoors is a joint venture of SABMiller and MolsonCoors, and as far as I know, Miller does not own Pabst.)

Thanks and a tip o' the mug to the indefatigable David Fahey, the energy behind the Daily Register at the Alcohol and Drugs History website.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sunday, August 31, 1-5 pm at Millstream Brewing Company in Amana, Iowa.

Yes, okay, it's a small festival -- but hey, it's ours.

I'll be there, talking about and signing copies of my book. (Millstream's press release omitted that information. Bummer.)

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 07:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Ted McClelland is back at Salon with another look at American beer.

Worth reading, especially to learn what Dick Yuengling has to say. HUGE relief to know that he's keeping his cool (and his common sense) in the face of all this "last American beer" hooha. (I weighed in on that a few weeks ago here.)

By the way, Ted's earlier Salon piece is here.

For a contrarian view of Ted's piece, see Jay's take. Another reason why I love the guy! (Jay, not Ted.) (Although Ted is a nice guy, too.)

All of this, of course, brings to mind Pabst's most recent effort, namely a revival of Schlitz. My quick take on that is this:

Ooooh, boy.......... Are these people serious? ("These people," in this case, is the folks at the company known as Pabst Brewing Company. See my note *1 below.)

Okay, sure, I understand the logic behind the revival of the Pabst brand -- an "anti-marketing" campaign aimed at hipsters. (*2)

But marketing Schlitz as "the beer you remembered in your youth"?? Using the slogan "Your Schlitz is back"?

Are they NUTS?

Anyone who actually remembers Schlitz is, well, old. And statistically speaking, old people (and I'm one of them) don't drink much. (You can read about that here and here.)

Plus, I remember Schlitz from the 1970s -- and I remember it because it was foul, skunky crap. (*3)

Second, anyone who remembers Schlitz from the 1960s (before the company screwed up the beer) is REALLY old. And drinks even less.

This is surely one of the great exercises in pointlessness. Although I guess it's a great example of precisely the kind of pointless exercise that make capitalism go 'round. (You know. Like altering the recipe for Cheez-Its or the ingredients of Tide so they can be marketed as "new.")

Anyway, my prediction? The new "old" Schlitz is doomed.

Okay, back to work. (Again, I'm laying low because I'm working on a new book.)

*1: By "Pabst," I mean the holding company (Kalmanovitz Family Trust) that owns and markets a bunch of old beer brands. It's not a brewing company; it's a marketing company that, well, markets beer. You can see the list by going here. After you've assured the website you're legal age, click on "Our Portfolio."

*2: By the way, Neal Stewart, the guy who concocted that now-legendary Pabst campaign, maintains a blog. He's currently working his magic at Flying Dog Brewery in Denver. (Although I gather he's also about to go to grad school.) (But wait. It's an MBA program. Shouldn't he be teaching MBA students, rather than being one of them?)

*3: Turns out I wasn't imagining it. As I explain in my book, in the 1970s, the brains at Schlitz tried to increase profits by slashing operating costs. Among other measures, they changed the beer's ingredients and altered the brewing process. The beer was undrinkable. The company imploded.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

File this under "the incessant infantalization of drinking" and "dumbass liquor laws."

Thanks, Jay, for the providing the coverage and links.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 07:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)