The Labor Day Beer-Nerd Fatwa Daniel. J. Flynn 2007
Something wrong invaded my sight in the beer aisle, namely, an obnoxiously named product called Whale Tail Pale Ale. The name sounds like a second grader's poem. It grabbed my attention, and I guess that's the point. But it also raised my ire. This silly-sounding beer (Yeah, "ale." That's right. I'm calling you beer!) cost $10.59 for a four pack. Momentarily stunned that four packs existed, it nearly escaped my notice that, through some marketing Jedi Mind Trick, the beer company charges more for four beers than most other beer companies charge for twelve.
Beer is supposed to be sold in divisions of six, decree the beer gods. Who drinks four beers? Beer nerds
who drink Whale Tail Pale Ale, that's who. Beer nerds? They are effeminate men who would rather be drinking wine but drink beer to convince themselves, their wives, and everyone around them of their manliness. They would chant an affirmation, but Whale Tail Pale Ale works just as well. The $10.59 price and deliberately quirky four-pack packaging says to the beer nerd: buy me. It says to the beer drinker: smash me.
So fascinated/disgusted by the $10.59 Whale Tail Pail Ale, I scanned the beer aisle last night for other offenders. I found something bedecked in fleur-di-lis called Don de Dieu, four of which cost $9.99. This was a deal compared to Scotland's Legends Skull Splitter--$18.59 for a four-pack! Brewed closer to home is the appropriately named Midas Touch; $12.59 will get you four of these "handcrafted ancient ale," made from "barley, honey, white muscat grapes & safron." They are not going for that freeze-wave Coors Light Silver Bullet Train demographic, are they?
There's something amiss at package stores, (that's what we call store-type establishments that sell alcohol in the northeast). I inveighed against excessive prices at bars in a post last year. Now it's the packies that have brought out the Bill Bixby in me. Beer nerds, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
The packaging and price of microbrews hypnotize beer nerds into believing that they're buying great beer. Someone is laughing hard counting his money. My strong suspicion is that there is no such thing as a microbrewery, just one enormous Anheuser-Busch style megacorporation that produces one beer with a wide variety of packaging. The formula goes something like this: 1. Devise a gonzo name, e.g., Salty Dog's Magiclicious Wheat Stout or Big Bob's Bongo Bock; 2. Splash lots of color on the packaging, as if one were buying not a man's beer but a child's juice box; 3. Say that your beer is brewed in Vermont; 4. Charge for a six-pack (or even a four pack) what domestic brands charge for a twelve-
pack; 5. Make the beer heavy enough so that drinking twelve of them at a sitting will surely induce vomiting, or at least the feeling that one has eaten four loaves of bread.
The economics of beer works in strange ways. Instead of low prices attracting consumers, they scare them away. High prices convey the idea that this is a good beer. Low prices are the kiss of death. Budweiser, Busch, and even Schlitz are all good beers who hang out with a bad crowd. If you fraternize in the cooler with Meisterbrau and Naragansett enough, people are going to start thinking you are like them. But Schlitz, Busch, and company are different, even if their prices are the same. Don't tell that to beer snobs, who run from a $15 case as if it were botulism on sale.
Stella Artois is more their style. The advertisement slogans, "Reassuringly Expensive" and "Perfection Has Its Price," are a far cry from "Put a Little Weekend in Your Week." But they make the point:
you are better than the people who drink Coors. It's as if one separates oneself from the riffraff by the beer one drinks. This is what Thorstein Veblen (a beer nerd's name if there ever was one) called "conspicuous consumption." But true beer drinkers know that it's your behavior, and not the beer you drink, that should be conspicuous.
It's labor day, and as a working man--okay, okay, I spend my days reading and writing, but I once hauled hot dogs up the grandstand at Fenway Park, cleaned latrines in the Marines, and bagged groceries for minimum wage--I protest white-collar, snob beers. I protest them by walking past the Whale's Tail Pale Ales and Scotland's Legendary Skull Splitters of the beer world, my nose high in the air, going straight to the bad-beer neighborhood end of the cooler, and grasping a case of Busch. This weekend, every flipped top, every first sip, every finished bottle slammed down on the table, will strike a blow against beer nerds.