• Tag Archives beer

  • The Real Reason Beer Companies Are Going Woke

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The puns were flowing like wine, or rather, beer, on social media this week when Miller Lite went viral for an ad campaign that blasted its own brand for “sexism.”

    “Hold my beer, Budweiser! Miller Lite’s new feminist spokeswoman is here to cuss at you and explain why men are evil,” wrote Not the Bee.

    “Miller Lite apparently wants the Bud Light boycott treatment too,” said Rogan O’Handley, a Hollywood lawyer turned conservative commentator and supporter of former President Donald Trump. “Newsflash: After a hard day’s work, working-class beer drinkers don’t want to be lectured like they’re in a gender studies class at SUNY-Oswego.”

    The ad features Ilana Glazer, a comedian who claimed women were the first brewers in history but were betrayed by corporate America.

    “From Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages to colonial America, women were the ones doing the brewing,” Glazer said. “Centuries later, how did the industry pay homage to the founding mothers of beer? They put us in bikinis.”

    To make amends, Miller Lite is buying up vintage ad art featuring women in swimwear, which it will turn into compost to support female brewers. “That good s*** helps farmers grow quality hops,” one woman explains.

    Many accused Miller Lite of following the “woke” path of Bud Light, which witnessed a collapse in sales following a March Madness ad campaign featuring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney that prompted Anheuser-Busch to issue an apology .

    “We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” wrote CEO Brendan Whitworth.

    What many on social media failed to realize is that Miller Lite’s ad was released before Bud Light’s implosion. It had just received little attention. It’s not clear if Miller Lite’s ad will have the same effect on beer sales as Bud Light’s. Some commentators on Twitter said they appreciated the ad.

    “I actually think that Miller Lite got it a lot more right than Bud Lite in how it approached a female demo,” wrote Emily Zanotti of Fox News.

    That’s the nature of commercials, of course. They are subjective. What might make one person feel uncomfortable might appeal to someone else.

    I’m apparently a Neanderthal who likes the old-school Miller Lite commercials, whether they feature women in bikinis or Bob Uecker masquerading as Rodney Dangerfield at a costume party. I don’t like feeling lectured. That’s just me.

    People naturally have different preferences and tastes in commercials, and that’s OK. The thing is, I’m actually Miller Lite’s target demo: a 40-something male beer drinker.

    This invites questions. Why are Bud Light and Miller Lite making commercials that alienate their own consumer base? More importantly, why are they wading into controversial matters such as transgenderism, third-wave feminism, and nonbinary gender at all?

    The primary answer is the rise of environmental, social, and corporate governance, a term coined during a 2004 United Nations initiative (“ Who Cares Wins ”) that grades companies on social performance.

    ESG was born from the idea that traditional capitalism needs to be replaced with a more caring, socially conscious capitalism that serves other “stakeholders.” And what started as “guidelines and recommendations” have become explicit standards set by ESG rating agencies that impose steep costs on publicly traded companies, especially those that don’t comply.

    The thing is, companies are not jazzed about having to dance to the tune of a small cabal of central bankers and asset managers. A 2022 CNBC survey showed that while executives support ESG publicly, privately, they harbor serious concerns. Yet not playing ball is not an option.

    “If a company has to do disclosures, and it has some executives who are ‘not into ESG,’ it should be thinking about the cost of not becoming more concerned,” Eileen Murray, a former executive of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, told CNBC .

    Miller Lite and Bud Light drinkers have every right to be annoyed by ads they don’t like. But they should understand these publicly traded companies are playing a balancing act on who they risk alienating, their consumers or ESG puppeteers.

    This article was republished with permission from the Washington Examiner.


    Jon Miltimore

    Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. (Follow him on Substack.)

    His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

    Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times. 

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


    📂This entry was posted in News and Politics 📎and tagged

  • Civilization Was Built on Coffee and Alcohol

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment

    Civilization Was Built on Coffee and Alcohol

    No two drugs have defined human civilization the way alcohol and caffeine have.

    Nature created both to kill creatures much smaller than us — plants evolved caffeine to poison insect predators, and yeasts produce ethanol to destroy competing microbes.

    True to its toxic origins, alcohol kills 3.3 million people each year, bringing about 5.9% of all deaths and 25% of deaths among people aged 20 to 39. Alcohol causes liver disease, many cancers, and other devastating health and social issues.

    On the other hand, research suggests that alcohol may have helped create civilization itself.

    Drunken History

    Alcohol consumption could have given early homo sapiens a survival edge. Before we could properly purify water or prepare food, the risk of ingesting hazardous microbes was so great that the antiseptic qualities of alcohol made it safer to consume than non-alcoholic alternatives — despite alcohol’s own risks.

    Even our primate ancestors may have consumed ethanol in decomposing fruit. Robert Dudley, who created the “drunken monkey” hypothesis, believes that modern alcohol abuse “arises from a mismatch between prehistoric and contemporary environments.”

    At first, humans obtained alcohol from wild plants. Palm wine, still popular in parts of Africa and Asia today, may have originated in 16,000 BC. A Chilean alcoholic drink made from wild potatoes may date to 13,000 BC. Researchers now believe the desire for a stable supply of alcohol could have motivated the beginnings of agriculture and non-nomadic civilization.

    Residue on pottery at an archeological site in Jiahu, China, proves that humanity has drunk rice wine since at least 7,000 BC. Rice was domesticated in 8,000 BC, but the people of Jiahu made the transition to farming later, around the time we know that they drank rice wine.

    “The domestication of plants [was] driven by the desire to have greater quantities of alcoholic beverages,” claims archeologist Patrick McGovern. It used to be thought that humanity domesticated wheat for bread, and beer was a byproduct. Today, some researchers, like McGovern, think it might be the other way around.

    Before Starbucks

    Alcohol has been with us since the beginning, but caffeine use is more recent. Chinese consumption of caffeinated tea dates back to at least 3,000 BC. But the discovery of coffee, with its generally far stronger caffeine content, seems to have occurred in 15th century Yemen.

    Before the Enlightenment, Europeans drank alcohol throughout the day. Then, through trade with the Arab world, a transformation occurred: coffee, rich with caffeine, a stimulant, swept across the continent and replaced alcohol, a depressant.

    As writer Tom Standage put it,

    The impact of the introduction of coffee into Europe during the seventeenth century was particularly noticeable since the most common beverages of the time, even at breakfast, were weak ‘small beer’ and wine. Both were far safer than water, which was liable to be contaminated… Coffee… provided a new and safe alternative to alcoholic drinks. Those who drank coffee instead of alcohol began the day alert and stimulated, rather than relaxed and mildly inebriated, and the quality and quantity of their work improved… Western Europe began to emerge from an alcoholic haze that had lasted for centuries.”

    Coffeehouses quickly became important social hubs, where patrons debated politics and philosophy. Adam Smith frequented a coffeehouse called Cockspur Street and another called the Turk’s Head, while working on The Wealth of Nations.


    Caffeine-Fueled

    After the Boston Tea Party, most Americans opted for coffee over tea, raising their caffeine intake. Thomas Jefferson called coffee, “the favorite drink of the civilized world.” Even today, Americans consume three times more coffee than tea. In the words of historian Mark Pendergrast, “The French Revolution and the American Revolution were planned in coffeehouses.”

    The Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution saw an explosion of innovation and new ideas. Living standards skyrocketed. New forms of government arose. More recently, globalization took the classical liberal ideal of peaceful exchange to a new scale and reduced worldwide inequality.

    Today, despite population growth, fewer people live in poverty than ever before. People live longer lives, are better educated, and many more enjoy the blessings of liberal democracy than was the case decades ago.

    Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive drug worldwide. Alcohol gave civilization its start, and it certainly helped the species drown its sorrows during the grinding poverty of much of human history. But it was caffeine that gave us the Enlightenment and helped us achieve prosperity.

    Read the rest at USA Today.


    Chelsea Follett

    Chelsea Follet works at the Cato Institute as a Researcher and Managing Editor of HumanProgress.org.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


    📂This entry was posted in Misc. 📎and tagged

  • Growler bill pits Florida microbreweries against big-money beer interests

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Florida’s Republican lawmakers frequently talk about creating a business-friendly climate. But Monday, the Senate Rules Committee voted 9-4 for a bill that would heavily restrict a burgeoning industry in Florida: craft breweries.

    What started as an effort by Florida microbreweries to sell beer to consumers in popular half-gallon “growler’’ containers has morphed into a measure some say could put them out of business by strictly limiting retail operations.

    SB 1714 is heavily backed by the Florida Beer Wholesalers Association, which has controlled beer distribution in the state for decades. The group has at least doubled its contributions to the re-election campaigns of senators who have voted on the measure, which was approved Monday by the powerful Rules Committee.

    Call it a sobering civics lesson in the power of campaign cash.

    “It’s classic crony capitalism,” said Joey Redner, the founder of Tampa’s Cigar City Brewing, after the Rules Committee vote.

    Specialty beer establishments can already sell their beers in containers of a gallon or more, and in containers of a quart or smaller. Fans say the half-gallon — equal to four, 16-ounce servings — is ideal for home consumption in a day. Only Florida, Idaho and Mississippi forbid craft beer to be sold in the half-gallon size.

    SB 1714 would allow micro-breweries selling up to 2,000 kegs a year of their own brew to sell growlers of any size. But if they sell more than 2,000 kegs, they would be prohibited from selling their brew in sealed cans or bottles for home consumption directly from the microbrewery.

    Instead, they would be required to funnel their business through one of the state’s established beer distributorships. Then, they would have to buy back their own product — at marked up prices — before they could sell it to consumers for home consumption.

    The purpose, according to the bill’s sponsor, is to preserve the state’s beer distribution system, implemented to protect consumers in the chaotic post-Prohibition beer market.

    “Once you’re at a level where you’re brewing that much beer, you’ll have to play by the same rules as everyone else,” said Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland.

    But brewers who drove up to Tallahassee from Tampa Bay to object said the 2,000 limit was too low.

    Redner said Cigar City sells about 100,000 kegs a year, which hardly puts it on par with Anheuser Busch, which sells about 100 million kegs a year.

    “We’d lose $175,000 in profit,” Redner said. “We can survive that, but other small brewers can’t.”

    David Doble of the Tampa Bay Brewing Co. agreed. “I break even at 14,000 kegs,” he said. “So 2,000 kegs is absolutely nothing. If this bill were to pass, I am done. For people to say no jobs are to be lost are fooling themselves.”

    As Americans have thirsted for a more complex brew, craft beer pubs have exploded in recent years. About 100 craft beer establishments are expected to be open for business in Florida by the end of the year. In Tampa Bay, the number has climbed to 31.

    But the traditional distribution system wields enormous clout. The Florida Beer Wholesalers Association has contributed at least $65,600 to the 2014 or 2016 re-election campaigns of senators who so far have voted on SB 1714. That’s twice the amount than the last election cycle for the same senators.

    Those who voted for the bill in its two committee stops have received a total of $51,500 from the beer distributing industry, while those voting for craft breweries have received only $2,000.

    Stargel collected at least $6,000 from beer distributors since late last year for her 2016 Senate re-election race, or about 12 percent of her total. The same interests contributed $500 to her 2012 campaign, when she wasn’t sponsoring such a bill.

    Sen. President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, brought attention to this pay-for-play dynamic when he told the Associated Press in March that he didn’t object to microbreweries. However, he said, they are an issue to one of his friends, Anheuser-Busch distributor Lewis Bear. Distributors contributed at least $8,000 to Gaetz’s 2012 campaign, with Bear kicking in at least $2,000.

    Full article: http://www.tampabay. … er-interests/2176120


    📂This entry was posted in News and Politics 📎and tagged