National Lager Day 2012

Today is National Lager Day!  A holiday after my own heart.

Sam Adams brewery is encouraging everyone to check in on your favorite social networking site and "then log off, just for a bit. Shut off your phone, your laptop, your tablet and anything else that will distract you from enjoying an evening with your friends and join Samuel Adams in celebrating National Lager Day with a Samuel Adams Boston Lager, free from distractions!"

While the Sam Adams event is technically the "Boston Lager Log Off Event,"  I'm celebrating tonight with a nice Sam Adams Winter Lager.  I'm pretty sure that still counts.

To learn more about lagers or events for today, go here. 

Meanwhile, I'm logging off as directed.

Ringing In the New Year With Sam

Happy New Year!

Mr. SIGIS and I are headed out for dinner (Asian) and then to our local hangout with friends for a bit.  We'll make it an early evening and get home before the crazies get on the road.  We like to be safe at home on New Year's Eve and there is plenty of Sam Adams in the fridge.

Happy New Year to my SIGIS readers and stay safe out there.  Here's to a prosperous 2012!

Sam Adams in Danger and It's All My Fault!

I'm sorry...it's all my fault.  The Boston Beer Company, AKA Sam Adams, is in danger of losing its "craft beer" or "artisan beer" status because their sales will top the 2 million barrel threshold for craft beers next year.  It's all my fault.  I did it.  I should not have stocked my dining room to the ceiling with Octoberfest.

But its okay.  They'll still be making the same great quality product, just charging more for it.  When brewers lose that "small brewer" status they pay more taxes.  InvestorPlace offers some hope, however:

Help could be on the way in the form of a bill introduced last month to the U.S. Senate, increasing yearly production limits to 6 million barrels. The bill would also cut the excise tax rate for small brewers to $3.50 per barrel from $7 for the first 60,000 barrels produced and to $16 from $18 for each additional barrel, according to The New York Times. But with so many more weighty issues at hand in Congress, it’s hard to imagine that the beer bill will get priority any time soon.

I can't imagine what could be a "more weighty issue" for Congress than beer.  I mean, how else are we to cope with oil spills, Obamacare and encroaching socialism?  

A Comment on Booze-Blogging

Stacy McCain is booze-blogging this morning. Well, not really, but he's taken on the subject of booze snobs and touches on how the internet has affected the booze business.

I'm with Stacy in that I usually avoid wine and whiskey. There are occasions where I deviate from that rule, but not many. But talk to me about beer and I can go the distance with you unless you want to get all into the intricacies of microbreweries and then I'll call you a snob. Like Stacy, I abhor beer snobs, and snobbery in general.

For a moment there I thought Stacy might be calling me a snob when he said:

Beer snobs get on my nerves. It pains me to see these poseurs pestering a bartender in quest of some obscure imported premium ale -- dark as sin, with the flavor and texture of a peat bog -- just so their friends won't see them drinking a Bud.

To me, beer snobs are those microbrewery idgits who know where every microbrewery in the country is, what their last rank was at the latest beer festival.

Lord knows I've enjoyed my fair share of Bud Light, Miller Lite and other watery domestics, but once I discovered the richer tastes of the dark German beers, it was all over. Now I am one of those folks at the bar asking the bartender for what "dark as sin" beer they have so that I don't have to drink a tasteless domestic. Steve and I have Sam Adams Octoberfest hoarded in quantities to last me well into next spring.

Does that make me a snob? No, probably not. Stacy seems to be saying, and this is my rationalization anyway, that those are "poseurs" and only trying to impress. Not so in my case. I could care less who I impress, as anyone who takes a look at my fashion choices will tell you. No pretensions here. You probably won't find me on the internet trying to find the latest fashionable beer, Veblenian theory or not.

So, while I adore Stacy McCain, we must sadly part ways when we belly up to the bar because while he says "a beer is a beer is a beer," I have to differ. No more watery domestics for me unless I have no other choice. As a Corona man, I think Stacy might possibly agree (even though I think Corona tastes like equine urea). I guess I am a snob.

The First National Thanskgiving

Ira Stoll has written a nice article in the Wall Street Journal about Thanksgiving (maybe those nut-cases in California should read it). Stoll is the author of the new Samuel Adams book (I've ordered it!) which is receiving great reviews.

Some excerpts:

When was the first Thanksgiving? Most of us think of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1621. But if the question is about the first national Thanksgiving holiday, the answer is that the tradition began at a lesser-known moment in 1777 in York, Pa.

After the Revolution, Adams, who was eventually elected governor of Massachusetts, maintained the practice of declaring these holidays. In October of 1795, the 73-year-old governor proclaimed Thursday, Nov. 19, as "a day of Public Thanksgiving to God," recommending that prayer be offered that God "would graciously be pleased to put an end to all Tyranny and Usurpation, that the People who are under the Yoke of Oppression, may be made free; and that the Nations who are contending for freedom may still be secured by His Almighty Aid." It turned out, though, that the ideas of thanking God for America's blessings -- and of praying for the spread of freedom everywhere -- would long outlast Adams's career.

The concepts still meet with skepticism from time to time. But they are reason enough to pause during tomorrow's football game or family feast and raise a glass to the Founding Father who began our Thanksgiving tradition.