Where are the ladies at?

I question where the ladies of beer are hiding, when I am at a tasting, talking to sales reps, going to homebrew events..I mean really...there are many times where I am the only girl in the room.  I understand that it is still a male dominated and often stereotypically geared towards men.  But with the most buying power in the house hold why women aren't more aggressively marketed and catered to is beyond me.  It's starting to make me seriously angry when someone tells me their wife doesn't like beer events. 

Really? 

It's unfortunate how many times reps and sales people barely look me in the eye, let alone listen to my questions.  If I get the ' little lady' speech one more time  I will scream.

At a sales event for a distributor, I was talk to like I was stupid about beer- even though I was ordering several cases of this guy's beer.  He proceeded to tell my husband, as he barely looked at me, how 'a little lady like myself might even like a dark beer if I tried it.'  I almost fell over when he asked my husband about the malts used in some beers only for him to turn to me and correct the sales rep by saying 'she's the brewer, I would ask her.'   

The ladies of beer need to take a step forward and start demanding better.  Better beer, better events, and more emphasis placed on them in marketing.

Seriously people...seriously

Parade Day's 3am afterglow

It's becoming a usual trip for me, visiting the bars as they are closing from Parade Day in Scranton, to pick up my husband from a late night bar tending shift and visit our bar owner friends.  Somewhere between midnight and 2am there is a strange comradeship amongst the bartenders, servers and all the late night restaurant crowd. It seems to defy all daylight and exists in the same way as hanging out with your brother or sister, natural and unplanned, punch drunk and lamenting.  Amongst the stagnant water and old cigarette smell of downtown Scranton, the few remnants of the day are swept aside, the streets are cleaned, the bars are mopped, and somewhere around 3 am the traces of disinfectant, dirt, and party trash co-mingle. 

I can't tell if it's my disdain for Miller Lite pounder cans, or just the virtue of getting older, but this 29 yr old isn't too thrilled about going out early Parade Day to drink.  It kind of kills me to pay a crazy cover and only be offered and array of yellow beer in plastic cups.  Call me when we start planning the craft beer festival for 9am in Scranton, I will be there with bells on.
 
The more I thought about the parade the more I thought, 'What if the bars all had floats in the parade?' What would they look like?  All this questioning brought me to seriously wonder about the state of our choices in Scranton when it comes to beer, because most bars may choose to advertise the cheapest beer they have available rather than the craft brews.  Can you imagine every bar competing for the most obscure brew? Or dare I suggest their own crafted beers?

Next Parade Day I will be hosting my own tasting, a drinking for adults party, complete with early morning drinking, music and a real glass.  In the mean time, I will be secretly hopeful that a real craft beer festival- one without all the distribution reps- would plant itself in downtown Scranton.  So that the new budding regional brews would have a proper showcase with college student attendance.  Perhaps in time by bar tender/ brewer friends and I will organize a festival , but so help me, if I see one more plastic cup........

I want a brewery in my town

Last night I went down to the Wilkes Barre Twp Bldg to see if Breaker Brewing Company would be granted a variance to use an empty church as a brewery.  And although I have been to many city council meetings, planning commissions, and the like, I couldn't help but think 'What if they were asking to put in a bakery?'  Would the neighbors have as big of a problem with cinnamon buns?

I understand the concerns, and opening a local brewery in any town in PA has it's share of difficulties, but it's the community that benefits the most.  Local brewpubs support the immediate local community by purchasing food products and goods from local stores.  The area will no longer be vacant and sustain a taxable business income benefiting the local budget for public works, plowing, and residential tax relief.  The business may generate a few jobs in a previous place that held no job opportunities for local residents. The parking lots will need to be plowed, the grass will need to be cut, food will need to be served and general maintenance will need to be done on the building.  These are all potential job growth areas that the property will need to source from  the local community. 

Breweries are low waste, sustainable businesses that help communities more than people know. But the above jobs could also describe a bakery as well- the businesses are similar in scope.  It has been interesting to see Mark and Chris expand and build their business from the ground up, from the permits, labeling, brewing sales, and now expansion from home production to a separate business.  It reminds me how difficult this business can be and all the hurdles you face as a new business owner. 

It would be great to have local brew pubs in every town committing themselves to the local community in every way.  What has InBev/Miller invested in your town?  I can think of a few bars towns could vote on deleting from the city limits in favor of a family owned, small brew pub.  Good luck to Breaker in their new venture.  I can't wait to sample some brews in the new tap room.

The wine's of beer

As I was standing in my kitchen, drinking a glass of Chimay out of my goblet wine glass, I thought about all the ways this ale was similar to my usual glass of wine while cooking dinner.  The ritual is the same, Open bottle- Pour glass- Decide on dinner- staring endlessly into the fridge at an array of seemingly impossible matches of food left in the fridge. 

Chimay is admittedly 'wine-y beer' as are most of the Belgians in my beer fridge off the kitchen.  But it is also so similar to wine, that lately I've been diving in for the ale over the wine for my ritualistic 'glass before dinner decision'.  Usually the quintessential 'cold one' after a long day was preceived to be the light refreshing drink with lots of carbonation and not too heavy on the flavors.  But the wine drinker in me wants to relax with a stronger punch of alcohol and a left hook of tanic bliss before hitting the couch.  Switching to the Trappist style ales, rich in flavor but not super heavy on the mouth feel was as easy as it was fiscally responsible.  I would open a bottle of wine and have a glass- put the bottle in the fridge and forget about it until the next evening- usually dumping it down the drain a week later.  I can pop a bottle of ale for myself and enjoy a fresh one each time for virtually the same alcohol content and cost of the glass of wine without the waste.

I know there are plenty of other examples of a wine like beer- Dogfish's Midas Touch, Cantillian Geuze, Duvel, Rochfort 10, or many of the Lambics- but tonight Chimay is in my wine glass.  It reminds me that the crossover between the beer, wine, and most things fermentable, can be so similar in texture and content that it has lost it's 'cold one'  or wine snob status- and becomes end of the day dinner decision maker- staring in the fridge- deciding to call for take out.

Here's to the first pint

Writing about the Scranton area (and not so Scranton) beer culture is the gourmet hot-dog. Does the Electric City really have one? Or is it the mythologized reverence for the era of production-blue collar jobs that drives us to believe that the only thing to be imbibed here is the cheapest beer possible. Many people prove otherwise.


I hope this blog will showcase the area as much as the beer.  I don't think Scranton's beer culture needs reviving, it is already on it's way to creating something unique in the American craft community.  We have a grassroots, home brewing, adventuresome culture forming that our area has scarcely seen in this century.
So here's to the first pint, Scranton.