Maybe I need to post some older photos to push the posts along in a possibly relevant way for you, the kind readers. If I had a prize I would offer it for the first person to guess where this photo was taken.

You will have to excuse these short meaningless posts. See, I think the issue with the RSS relates to something in that post about taxes and the only way to deal with it is to push it down the posts lists until it gets out of the RSS feed's front page. The upside is that I moved off Bloglines which appears to be dead or at least on life support and moved to Google Reader as my news aggregator. I had no idea there were 3,221 of you following this blog on Google Reader.

The best looking tavern porch upon which I never had a beer.

Here is an odd phenomenon: beer prices have taken off in Alberta over the last year, one of the provinces in Canada which has fairly well entrenched privatized retail beer sales:

The price of Alberta beer is now higher than in any province, a complete reversal from April 2008, when this province boasted the lowest average price in Canada for a 12-pack, at $18.42. That Alberta advantage is now history. Using a 12-pack of Molson Canadian as a middle-of-the-road, universally available barometer, Alberta registers a dubious place atop the price pile. In Newfoundland, traditional home to cod cheeks, drizzle and the most expensive beer in Canada, the price of a dozen Canadian is $22.25, including taxes and deposit. In Alberta, at four random liquor stores in Calgary and Edmonton, the same beer goes for between $23.98 and $24.99, including tax and deposit.

That is a 35% hike in about 12 months. Oddly, blame for the $6.50 price increase is being blamed mostly on the $1.30 - $1.50 tax increase over that time. It appears that this inordinate increase is really a matter of the other mark ups imposed by provincial wholesale price controls as well as the same inputs every other jurisdiction has to deal with. The most recent markups shows a bit of a graduated scale based on volume of sales and a bunch of other factors. Way too complex for little old me to understand.

I don't know why last night's plucky post about taxation didn't get picked up on the RSS feed readers. Hint of a global conspiracy? Or a bug needing fixing? Who knows. So this is a test.

It is interesting to follow beer fans in different jurisdictions in the US and the UK react to various plans to use beer as one way to cope with the global economic crisis. The British Beer and Pub Association backed by CAMRA and many brewers is running the Axe the Beer Tax campaign. States like Illinois are thinking about making changes while others like Wisconsin may leave them where they have been for forty years. Jay points out that the US Federal tax might be tripled from 18 to 45 bucks a barrel but is that really stupid or just reality in an economic collapse? Just as it makes no sense when a certain sort of politician advocates for lower tax on business income to get small businesses started - no sense because they have no profits to call income at that stage - similarly, in a downturn, you can't raise taxes on the limp sectors of the economy economic activity. So, if there are going to be taxes - and, yes, there are going to be taxes - why should beer be exempt?

Amy Mittleman in Brewing Battles points out that modern taxation policy was largely created in the mid-1860s to react to the nation's financial need to pay for the Civil War. Beer and brewing was the chosen conduit for the taxation as was follow existing European models with the aim of creating the greatest level of consumption and therefore the greatest revenue stream. She also points out that the Federal beer excise tax on beer was set at 9 dollars a barrel almost six decades ago under the Truman administration. The tax level now in after inflation dollars has simply not kept up given $100 in 1952 is now worth $798.87. Fully adjusted taxes would make for about $72 per barrel of Federal excise today at Truman's rates. Obama's Senate pals are considering $45. Jay quotes Jeff Becker of the Beer Institute as part of his argument:

In 2008, members of the beer industry paid more than $41 billion in taxes at all levels of government and provided jobs to 1.9 million Americans. Any proposed tax increase would severely offset this important economic contribution.’”

Really? Any tax will threaten it? Will "wipe out an industry"? Seems like the socialists do pretty well on the beer consumption scale. Look at it this way. In these tough economic times there are two western economies which are sort of standing out. Norway is booming and the Obama administration is looking to dull old Canada for banking regulatory lessons. Despite cursing it as we do, both Norway and Canada beer fans live in cultures with a pay-as-you-go mentality with high beer taxation. When I was a kid in Nova Scotia the beer cases even had "includes health tax" written on them right next to "union made" right on top. We paid the tax and were quite happy when the ER visit didn't turn into a question about could we afford it. We also had no choice. Unlike today in the UK, there was no cheap booze alternative undermining the marketplace in the Maritimes. Well, except in PEI... but that is another matter.

Look, I am not going to say "oh, goodie goodie goodie, a new tax" but at the end of the day isn't there an effort going on to somehow roll back the clock to about 1857 when shock and dismay is expressed over taxes on beer even in a time of economic recession?

Alert! Alert! - please read this blog about updating your RSS feeds.

I've liked pretty much all the beers by Stone I have had but do have pick a time when I can have one. All big bottles of big brew. Except I picked up this one at C's of Oswego yesterday and it was neither big... or big. My traveling man on the inside at the brewery told me that this the lighter side of Stone has recently been sent out to take over the eastern half of the continent. Which means we over here on the lightly tie dyed side now get to find out what the Satanic can do with the session.

The beer pours a bright smoky orange amber under a thick fine head. Plenty of hops on the schnoz, including a bright note of what I am going to say is Goldings but likely isn't - it just has that sharp smack of hop aroma that I associate with opening a pack of hop pellets when home brewing. In the mouth, this is clearly a Stone beer with a hard edged balance of multi-layer hop bitterness with raisin malts tempered by lush moreish water. You may be a-feared of a CAMWA beer of the year candidate yet it's almost one third of the strength of Stone usual big bruisers at just 4.4%...but with 45 IBU. Which means you can have one of these chewy hopsters on a Tuesday without ending up later drooling on the sofa pillows as the TV test pattern glows upon you from the corner of the rec room.

Like it a lot. Solid BAer approval meets a little hydrophobia.

You know when we talk about beer and value we talk about the price of hops, whether only snob appeal justifies a forty-three dollar price point and that sort of stuff but we don't really get at the real issue: middlemen. A report today out of the UK's Business and Enterprise Committee highlights another form of the middleman's plumage, the tied pub contract:

An estimated 30,800 pubs - more than half the UK total - are under tied contracts. The arrangement has come in for criticism amid charges that the tie, under which a tenant often pays much higher prices than free houses or managed pub operators, is pushing them out of business. In the report, MPs are demanding greater transparency over rent-setting and an independent system for settling disputes. They want tenants to be given the opportunity to run pubs free of the tie - although the report stopped short of calling for its abolition.

But isn't the house tied to the brewery, you ask? Well, I would think that a brewery with a "real property division" is more absentee landlord than brewery. And in any event the layering of profit of the tied system is no different than the distributors of Pennsylvania or The Beer Store of Ontario. In each case, legal structures are used to create less than open market systems through which a mandated middleman of some sort is put in place and given a cap to have in hand to get their cut. The suits, the board rooms, the expense accounts must be paid for somehow, you know. I'll pay some today when I shell out the 10% "lost mark-up" fee to the LCBO for bringing beer back into Canada from the USA. The form actually says "provincial liquor mark-up fee" but it means lost profits due to me buying beers elsewhere that the government store does not offer. The beast must be fed.

Middlemen. They are a huge price input who provide questionable or illusionary value. They cost you money. Is it not worth noting that it must be the only word not lobbied out of existence in favour of gender neutrality?

I watched Crocodile Dundee last night. I didn't plan it. When I bought the DVD player a few years ago - quite behind the curve of technology I'll admit - I bought a stack of old '80s movies thinking that each would be a welcome way to spend an evening for the $3.99 plus microwave popcorn. Spinal Tap was good but, well, City Slickers cured me of any illusions that I should hope they would all be happy walks down memory lane. It wasn't so much bad as dated with too many Comedy Network 3:30 am Tuesday night quality jokes. So the movies of my twenties gathered dust for a while, until last night.

Watching Crocodile Dundee was something else altogether - not good or bad. A little shocking. Naive? Sweet puff? A vision of the former exotic but now commonplace? Hard to believe that it was the second highest grossing film in the USA for 1986. Did we really know so little about Australia that simply playing a rustic Australian was diversion, a giggle-fest? I hardly recognized the me I was happily taking it is from the twelfth row half my life ago.Then again, I did dance to Rick Astley even for all my lps by Bill Bragg and The Smiths, didn't I. It made me wonder about how we judge our own pop culture as well as pop culture past.

See, I have been thinking of craft beer as part of pop culture recently. For all the dreams of beer matching dinners in every fine restaurant and new government funded tourist trails, craft beer is an entertainment - and light entertainment as the BBC used to call it. This is not a bad thing. Pop culture is pervasive and what brewer turns up his nose to "pervasive". But there is a down side, too. Rather than telling us what we might experience were we able to afford the daily matching a beer to a certain squab or squash, rather than telling us what we might have been were all the historical branding of ales and lagers actually true... it may tell us something about ourselves right now, where we are and what it may mean. E.S. Delia over at Relentless Thirst (a photo contestant) has some very interesting thoughts about where craft beer might be right now - heading to saturation:

How many styles of beer appear in the marketplace to confuse the average consumer, let alone the serious beer shopper? If an unknown brand comes into your market with mediocre beer, does it deserve a space on the shelf? It seems that curiosity alone can drive initial sales, but its fate ultimately depends on the whims of the customer. If a beer gains traction in the beer community, but also brings some lesser-known, less tasty offerings, what about all that unsold, out-of-date beer? I can’t be asked to keep buying mediocre beer just because it calls itself “craft,” so I can’t say I’ll miss some of these brands when they’re gone.

I think there is a lot to that. From a continental point of view, there may simply be too much for everything to be everywhere. And market tension creates the need for to create a distinction. Tension causes some to aim at concentration, at experimentation, at haute, at preciousness all the while risking offending the customer (ie the hand that feeds you) when the value proposition is just not there or even when the economy is not what it was from no fault of either brewers or customer. It also causes some to aim for authentic, the traditional, the culturally pure - which it had damn well better be if the business model (or the respect of Ron) is supposed to go past a few months.

This is what makes Stan's quest for "local" so appealing. It requires mainly the two qualities of "good" and "near" and, as far as craft beer goes, "near" is one of the more important factors in "good" as far as the effect of careful handling on well-made but fickle real ales and lagers goes. It relates to what beer is rather than what we wish it was. That is what makes me wish the Session Beer Project got more traction in the brewing community. Makes you wonder about what it is in the economics of craft beer makes that makes it less profitable - because if there was more money in 3.5% than 9.5% you know where the seasonals would be like. And it certainly speaks to the difficulties of breaking through into greater sales for any beer outside those niche areas like the Allagash White zone of Maine or maybe New Glarus in Wisconsin.

What will beer in these times look like to me a couple decades on, when we look back as I looked back at Mr. Dundee from 23 years on? Will craft beer have asserted itself in the market and macro be pressed to the sides? If 5% to 8% annual sales increases continue, well, mathematics alone tells us that's supposed to be where the market will be, right? But will it be real and local (and even brought to you by horse cart) or just trade association authorized real craft beer? Will we scratch our heads and wonder who the hell thought turning the mash tun to eleven¹ and focusing on 10% or 20 dollar beer² could ever be popular? Or will we have access to enough tasty 4% beer that the strong stuff makes sense in the context. Or will it all look like a Flock of Seagulls haircut?

¹[Ed.: do you really need a footnote for that one?]
²[Ed.: you know, we will say, back when 20 bucks could get you a beer.]