[00:00:05] Speaker A: A recap of the Super bowl commercials and what everyone drank at the bar.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: California no longer has to have that funk. They're giving up the funk.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: A new low cal, low carb, low fun, active lifestyle beer brand.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: This is. It's all beer.
Welcome to it's all beer, basically the Kansas City cheese of the podcast world, in that no one thought we'd accomplish anything, and we probably never would have without a massive government psyop involving a pot, star of the Illuminati, grey aliens, and a pot of petunias. I think we're still waiting for our psyop, but the point stands. Wake up, sheeple. It's all connected somehow. I'm Jeremy Jones.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Tyler Zimmerman. And why weren't the lizard people involved is what I want to know.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Because all the ad space is bought up by November 2023, and they just didn't get on top of it. That's why. Maybe next year they'll have a showing now knowing that there's a deadline, they were kind of new to Super bowl world.
How are you doing today?
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Oh, pretty good. Can't complain.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Today, just before the podcast, I discovered that it was possible to send a breakup pizza to somebody this year.
Pizza Hut was, who do you send.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: A breakup pizza to that you were not in a relationship with? Because I didn't get a pizza.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: That would be a fantastic way to tell you that I was over this podcast nonsense. Just be like, somebody ring your door with a heart shaped honey. It's one of those hot honey pizzas, which is nothing says, I'm over you like a pizza that is basically a cry for help in and of itself.
We covered a pizza in honey because.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: America, I have had some hot honey pizzas that are actually really good.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: I mean, the combination sounds is sound.
There's something about dumping a honey all over a pizza.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: That is, to dump your honey.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm surprised it took me that long to figure that one out.
But I couldn't help but spare a thought for the delivery drivers who multiple times today had to have the conversation similar to I know you didn't order a pizza. This is a breakup pizza, okay? Don't cry.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Am I going to get a tip?
That's what I'd be pissed about. I'd be like, dude, I'm getting stiffed on some fucking tips.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Best case scenario, some revenge sex. That's what you get to participate in.
She's so pissed off, she drags you in and rides you like a cowboy.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: And every teenage boy's porn fantasy has been achieved.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: That was my evening just before signing on, and I just need to share that with the world. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Question is, did you order a pizza for someone?
[00:03:33] Speaker B: I did.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: And just, like, fuck with someone.
Just, like, send it to a random person and be like, I think we need to break up and leave. No name, no nothing.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Even if I was so inclined, the deadline had passed, and it's only available in New York, Chicago, and Miami.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Find an address in New York, Chicago, or.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Listen, you're right. This was a missed opportunity to just fuck with someone at random. And also, they had to be in, like, two days ago, and I found out about it tonight, so the temporal logistics did not pan out in my favor.
So, no, I was not able to just randomly send a heartbreak pizza to a stranger in Chicago this year. Maybe next year, I don't know. A heartbreak pizza to a stranger in Chicago is going to be the name of my country breakout hit, by the way, Tyler, I'm glad you enjoyed that. Well, what are you drinking tonight?
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Well, in the spirit of Super bowl, and I had it readily available in my fridge and cold, I'm drinking. And since it's Valentine's Day and one of my great beer loves is cheap, shitty beer, I'm drinking Miller light.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Oh, my God. You've just given the fuck up, haven't you?
Hold on.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: It's all beer.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Hold it up. Because this is probably the biggest disparity that we are sharing on this podcast, because sort of to tie into a story that I'm doing later in this episode, I picked up a bottle of ale song's cherry parliament.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Ooh, nice.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: So first, describe a Miller light to anybody who hasn't had a Miller light.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Light, easy drinking, no ght in it.
Yeah, and that's about it. Kind of like having sex in a canoe. Pretty close to water.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: It's fucking close to water. It's fucking close to water.
The cherry parliament is a sour red ale aged with cherry in wine and bourbon barrels.
I get a little bit of, like, vanilla, big cherry nose, a touch of vanilla on it as well.
As far as. As far as the flavor, cherries pop really big along with some pinot noir, like jamminess, like organ pinot noir, jamminess.
A little bit of okie tannins on the back, some decent, moderate, moderate, high tartness, a little bit of barnyard funk. Not picking up a lot from bourbon, maybe a little bit in the oak, a touch of vanilla on the cherries, but not a lot from that particular barrel, but a very nice, moderately tart?
Yeah, cherry sour. It's quite good.
Nice.
Anyway, let's get this heartbreak pizza.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: But is it 96 calories and, like, two carbs or something like that? Whatever this is supposed to be.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: No, it is definitely not that. It's seven and a half percent and 500 ML. It's somewhere along the lines of, like, I don't know, like, 300 and some.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: The fact that you straight up took a guess at it is more than I would have.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: What?
You can't semi accurately guess the amount of calories in a beer?
[00:07:49] Speaker A: No. Don't want to either.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: And that's why you look the way you look. Tons of fun versus me. I am slim, I'm svelte, I am sexy as fuck.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: No one killigurium of fun.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: I got zero breakup pizzas this year.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: You might want to hold off till about 10:00 when that doorbell rings.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Well, let's hurry up and get this podcast over so that you don't have to hear me cry.
Tyler's at home going, when's that pizza going to get there? Fuck. All right, I guess I should go ahead and do. It's awkward if I don't do the podcast.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: I'm like, I was hoping at least Jeremy, pull him in for revenge sec.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: No, a revenge podcast.
This episode. All beer. Why? Tyler's a man. I just. I don't even know who that just.
Am I getting a tip or.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: I don't give you a tip, but you're not going to like it.
It'd be like that Kevin Spacey movie that when it found out he was a fucking creeper, they went back and reshot the whole movie with some other old white dude.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Really?
[00:09:09] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. It's like all the money in the world or something like that. They initially shot it. It was going to come out in like a month. The whole Kevin Spacey thing came out. They pulled the movie, cut all his scenes, reshot all his scenes with some other old white dude, and then rereleased it like nothing ever, then released it like nothing ever happened. Pulled all the marketing, remarketed it, and just acted like Kevin Spacey. Never heard of him.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Never heard of him.
We cast generic old white dude like we cast for most things. I don't know what you're talking about. This guy touched almost no boys or girls. You haven't, haven't you? I swear to almighty God, if you so much touched a squirrel.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: They check with the legal team. They're like, squirrels are okay, right? Yeah. Okay.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Squirrel, old white man, squirrel fondler.
And on that note, Tyler, this has already gotten way out of. Tyler, what do you have for us today?
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Well, since Super Bowl Sunday was a couple days ago, and for those of you that don't know or idiots like Jeremy, Super bowl is the largest television event in the United States everywhere, I.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Am not completely unaware of what country I live in.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Fair enough. I mean, the Super bowl is basically responsible for this podcast.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Is it that time of year? Do we quickly give the origin story for it's all beer?
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Okay, go for it.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Oh, I was going to let you.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: Okay, long story short, we had been talking about doing a podcast for a while.
It was the year that ab inbev came out with the first of the Bud Light King court. Dilly dilly fucking Bud Light night, wherein they basically accused Miller light of using corn syrup in their beer.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Yep, don't taste any corn syrup.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: That was kind of the final straw for us. We decided that we had to start a podcast about beer news for some reason, and the first thing we did was bitch about AbNbev. And five years on God, we've almost come full circle. I almost feel sorry for them half the time.
That's the interesting arc this podcast has taken.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: But since that happened this last weekend, Beerboard came out with its 2024 big game on premise alcohol report.
If you're like, what the fuck is beerboard? It is a digital alcohol management solution company.
So they kind of know they have a general idea with the companies, the bars and restaurants that pay to use their product. They have an idea, at least in those spots, what everyone was doing for the weekend.
So they took a look at the cities of the competing teams and the host city. So Kansas City, San Francisco, and the host city, Las Vegas, Nevada.
Just an overall draft beer volume was flat nationally. On the day of the Super bowl. They saw an increase of only zero point 34% when compared to last Super bowl in 2023.
The draft style and brand performance. Would you like to guess what the number one style was?
[00:13:22] Speaker B: American lager light lager.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Logger light lager.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Number two was lager, and number three was ipa.
Light lager had a decrease of 3.1% this year.
Last year, they were down 2.3%. So in the last two years, they've dropped 5.4% in the volume.
Loggers saw an increase of 5.1% in sharepoints, while ipas saw a 1.9% decrease from last year.
Jeremy, can you guess? The top poured brand nationally according to this.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Mean, a year ago, obviously it would have been Bud Light, and we'll get into reasons why I'm not going to guess Bud Light this time. Modelo, no.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Modelo was one of the fastest growing that they had and number two.
But Michelobe Ultra was number one.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: We are lost as a country with.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: A 0.7% increase from last year. Michelob Ultra or Modelo had a 16% share growth from last year. And then. Oh, no, sorry. Modelo wasn't number two. Bud Light was still number two.
Good for you.
Bud Light saw a decline of 31.8% this year in share.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Again, we've come full circle. I start to feel bad for them. I'm like, oh, good. They didn't completely lose all their.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: The one place Bud Light fared better was in Kansas City, one of the competing cities.
Overall, Kansas City's draft volume was down about 0.3% compared to last year.
The top draft choice, like I said, was the Bud light. It was still down 12.3% compared to 2023, just not as much as it was everywhere else in the country that they looked at.
In San Francisco, draft volume was up 6.7%.
Modelo, especially all, was number one in California and saw a 14% increase on the day.
And then Las Vegas saw a spike of 22% in poor volume when compared to 2023. And Michelob Ultra saw the biggest increase in Las Vegas of 59% in volume and 1.5% in share.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Decent, I assume.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you're growing a share where you're already everywhere, so you just went even more places. And then you saw a total volume compared to last year this time of 59%.
I mean, that's massive. It also does help that I think Michelob Ultra was like the official sponsor of this year's Super bowl. So kind of checks out that it's going to be everywhere and be on special and be pushed, but that kind of rounds out where they were looking at draft. So basically everything kind of did about the same as it did last year with a few things going up. Bud Light still kind of struggling from their blunder earlier this year and people not wanting to re embrace it, which, I mean, think the average football fan, it kind of starts to add up when the Bud light drinker, who was a football fan, probably wasn't too happy with their marketing campaign.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: Or any of the subsequent fuck ups afterward. Yeah.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: So overall, to me, it really just kind of drove home that, yeah, people are drinking about as much as they did last year. Maybe a little less or a little more, depending where you take a look.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: It sounds like if you take in margin of error, it's essentially flat, which is not a bad sign for a total area of the economy that is largely going down. And so the fact that there is an event, I mean, for this time of year, it's all tied to this one event. And it would seem that beer drinking is still a ritual when it comes to the Super bowl. No one's quite ready to embrace white claw while watching football, at least not any or whatever the Duck fucker is drinking that hard iced tea.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: I think the seltzer that you're looking for would be high noon. That's more the sports fans like, wait.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: There'S a specific seltzer? We're not going to drink that white claw. We drink high noon because we're sports fans.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Because it was like barstool. Sports is like an investor in it. And so, yeah, they all hype it.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: Out to their bros.
People are goddamn idiots.
Speaking of, Jeremy, what do you got.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: On the Super bowl?
[00:19:34] Speaker B: Speaking of having your dumb sponge light brains manipulated, beer ads suck news now. I didn't watch the Super bowl. Couldn't give two shits, not even, to, quote, watch it for the ads, which struck me as. That's always struck me as a strange brag, like someone coming, listen, I'm not interested in meathead millionaires crippling each other and kind of post industrial bloodsport. I'm too sophisticated for that.
I simply watch the vacuous corporations hawk their garbage right into my brain in a fancy way. That's what I'm there, you know? That's me. The anti corporate asshole that you know and love. I assume you did watch the Super bowl, though, Tyler.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: I did.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: How were the ads this year in your professional marketing type person overall?
Have you paid much attention to Super bowl advertising? And where would. Would you put this year's ads in general? Like, mediocre? Worse. Exceptionally good. I mean, it sounds like slightly below.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Mediocre, like the lower meaty part of the bell curve. There were a couple of funny ones. Found it funny that the E trade babies came back. I was like, oh, hey, I remember those from being a kid.
And then, yeah, it was just like nothing really stood out as, like, a fucking hilarious commercial.
And I kept. Man, Jesus must be spending a shitload of money to advertise, because there was a lot of Jesus commercials.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: No, hobby lobby. That's hobby Lobby. That's doing so. No, it's not Jesus.
It's someone even bigger than Jesus. It's a billionaire that runs a craft empire.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: What gets me.
I have a whole soapbox I could stand on about hobby Lobby.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: It's a little bit beyond the purview of this podcast, but who knows? Maybe at the end of it, we'll just like. We got a few minutes. Tyler, go.
I found this opinion piece from David Fonte in Vydenper, and his stance was that advertising, particularly beer advertising, has gone downhill.
I really don't have a dog in this fight, so I'm going to defer to you on pretty much all opinions. I'm willing to accept what Infante says at face value, but I don't know beer commercials themselves.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Thoughts? I only really remember the Budweiser commercial. I don't even know if I remember any other beer commercials.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: Well, save your opinion for the Budweiser commercial till the end. Well, we'll get to a. I think that is a reasonable statement right there. That's a reasonable review right there. There were other ones.
I don't remember them.
Infante waxes poetic about a kind of golden age in beer advertisement when beer commercials were not only popular, they created their own cultural phenomenon. At times, lest we forget, the most irritating and lingering Budweiser smear in all cultural land.
You know it. Yeah, that was 20 fucking years ago. A child conceived when that commercial was running is almost old enough to drink the beer and probably recognizes, at least in general terms, what that refers to.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: I think my favorite, like Budweiser Super bowl commercial at all times was the Clyde Stales playing football. And it's a zebra as the ref because the stripes watching the replay and it just keeps like rewinding. And the farmer goes, man, this ref's a real jackass. And the other farmer looks at him and goes, I think he's a zebra.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Cute.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: That was great.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Got the Budweiser frogs. Which, fun fact, that was actually my first beer shirt. Long before craft beer was something anyone, much less myself, thought about. My grandmother, I think she bought me. I think it was her. The Budweiser frog shirt. Now, one might, I want to buy.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: The Budweiser frog neon.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: Someone might have some just foul criticism for giving a beer shirt to a teenager, but things were different back then.
His point was, at one point they were cultural touchstones. My retort would be, yeah, some of them. Other times it was a horse that full on farted in a woman's face. I remember that one.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: I don't remember that one.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: I think it was a Budweiser commercial. And it was a year when people were losing their shit a little bit more than they normally would. Oh my God, these commercials were so tasteless. And one of the ones I remember that them pointing to was, yeah, a horse lifting his tail and full on blasting ass in a woman's face.
I think it was a Budweiser commercial. I'm not 100% sure, but I remember that being a factor. I can't tell you anything else about it.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: But.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Talking about Budweiser, I find it interesting that infante wax nostalgic about glitzy beer commercials when a selling point of craft beer, especially early craft beer, was the fact that it was above such vapid bullshit. Craft beer didn't need millions of dollars. In fact, stone spent a whole paragraph bragging about how they didn't. It was about selling a good product as opposed to recycled raccoon urine. People would drink it willingly and not have their neurons all dilly dilly into fucking submission so they could put a funnel down your consumer hole and pee directly down your gullet.
But on the other hand, that was then. Maybe Dave Infante was a fan of beer ads back in the day, regardless of what they were peddling. Or maybe as all beer seems to be facing an apocalyptic marketing condition, we've sort of made peace with the corporations buying up what's left of the smoking landscape, and we decided to just admire the evil empire's handiwork back in the day. I don't like, again, I think we've come full circle, almost feeling sorry for Budweiser. Maybe that's the whole thing. Like, oh, come on, buddy. It's okay.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: No fun kicking them while they're down.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: We seem to be even pining away for a time when Bud light had the balls to release brewed the hard way. Do you remember that?
Put a burr up every craft beer lover's asshole.
For a week after that commercial came out. Holy shit, we were impossible to be around, all of us. I distinctly remember for a week after that, us making a fake. I think that was what started emo Budweiser back in the day.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Actually, that was.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: It was the precursor to this podcast. Yeah, it was a spoof Twitter account that I've long since deleted after just going.
Even just on the off chance list will ever be traced back to me. Let's just delete this. But are you admitting it on a podcast? Yeah, but nobody listens.
And of course, occasionally accusing rival brewers of filling their beer with corn syrup.
So this year, what was on offer? Well, Bud light still reeling from what PTSD riddled Budweiser distributors still refer to only as the event, they decided to roll out the Bud light genie the genie.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: I do remember that one.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: The genie himself who looked like what would happen if Freddie Mercury was tragically born without taste, shame, self awareness, or any semblance of talent. He poofs. Peyton matting, post Malone, Dana White. For some reason, I'm guessing, they are so desperate for approval, they will give you a commercial if you just tell a bunch of barely functional Andrew Tate rejects. That's their patreon duty to guzzle your piss.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: No, because Bud light paid a fuckload of money to sponsor UFC.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: That, too. I mean, look, listen, buying friends is still having friends.
And if those are the friends you can get, well, so be it. It was dumb. It was annoying, but I didn't seem to be trying to stir up trouble. Thoughts?
[00:28:28] Speaker A: No, I mean, it was light hearted. It was funny. They were trying to do the old same playbook of the be funny, be whimsical, be oh, that'd be so cool, and just roll on. They did have all the actors from that commercial in a box at the game. And right after that commercial, then cut to them at the game.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: See, these people like us. Please don't like us.
The next one on the list was the Budweiser commercial, the one that you remember, which was a tear jerker about a distributor raving a snowy Mountain pass, deliver a keg to a snowbound bar. It's got horses, it's got the Clydesdales. It's got a dog making out with said Clydesdale. It's got so much grit, glory that at least one executive probably jizzed red, white and blue in his pantaloons just from seeing it. I don't know. That was the one you remembered. But again, you got two. Bud light does the. Ooh, we're being all whimsical. And Budweiser does the semi serious.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: We're fancy.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Well, not. Well, no, we're fancy, but in, like, a hard american working class. Yeah, we're working class fancy. We polished our boots and brushed the dog shit off of them hand put on.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I was unimpressed with that commercial. I was like, okay, cool.
I know plenty of distributor people. Ain't no fucking distributor delivery drivers. Going to be like, yes, there's a travel don't travel order put out right now. It's dumping snow. Let's load up this unheated, uncovered wagon full of half barrels, then ride through a mountain pass to get to this podunk bar that everyone's sitting at getting hammered because they can't go anywhere. And then wheel it in and be like, wow, we're here with the beer, they'd be like, I'm going back to bed.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: The part that I think, yeah.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: Besides, you get beer delivery drivers that bitch about having to take a cake downstairs.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Well, and a little bit rich since Budweiser is among the beer distributors facing a possible strike coming up through the teamsters. So good luck with that. Hopefully they see the commercial and think longingly about their corporate masters. But historically, that's not been the case.
Michelob Ultra had Lionel Messi playing soccer on a beach while waiting for a beer to be poured. At some point, Dan Marino, while standing on a boat called the Dan Marina, catches a soccer ball and says, dan the man, for some reason threatening so much self referential naval gazing as to break spacetime.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: The.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: The Lazo dude.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: I do now remember that.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: I watched all of them, and that one was like, Jason Kudakinsu. Yeah, that dude. Ted Lazzo.
I've been told that I need to watch that show and I don't give a shit, so I haven't.
But the commercial was okay. So he's just playing soccer on a beach and there's as well.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: So he tries to order a Michelo Boltra, but the bartender pours one for his two friends, and as she's pouring the one for him, the keg kicks. Yes. She's like, oh, sorry, we'll have to go another beer. And he's like, no, I'll wait. Go change the keg. And then someone kicks the soccer ball over to him.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: And then.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: So he just goes and murks. Which, if anyone got close to stopping a soccer player of that level as a random schmuck on the beach, like he should be drawn and quartered. Of course you're going to murk all these Joe schmos that are hammered on this beach.
And then he scores a goal. Basically, when she's like, Mr. Messi, your beer's ready.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: As Infante pointed out, it was basically, look, we've got sports guys. You like sports guys? Oh, how we love our sports guys. Michelob Ultra for sports guys.
Bolson cores for only the second year in a row for being able to run their commercials during the Super bowl. And after a four way clusterfuck from last year on which, oh, which brand are we going to feature? Surprise. All of them. And also draftkings. For some reason this year there was a train that froze everything, including a nearby couple of dude bros on a beach in the middle of their corona ad. That was actually. I was kind of like, ll cool J was driving the train. And that was fine.
Infante mentioned that it didn't bring anything new. It just adds more to their chill train campaign. But of all the commercials, I was kind of that one.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: I'm like, I missed that one.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: As beer ads go, and you can probably feel my ambivalence through your headphones at the moment, or car radio or however you're getting this, it's like, yeah, that was fine.
It was nice to see Miller Coors sort of give a roundabout fuck you to ABN Bev, but, yeah, I don't even remember that one.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: Nope. I must have been going pee or something.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: At best, I guess the point was, at best, they were like. And at worst, they were like.
Or at worst, I mean, given the fact that the whole point is to stick in your mind, we're 50% for you, at least.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: I remember three out of the four. On unassisted recall, I remember one out of the four.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: So what gives? Well, Infante says some of the blame belongs at the feet of the right wing. Hate farmers for screaming, woke at Bud light until they cowered in the corner like a naughty puppy who did a tinkle on the carpet. But if you're going to blame them, I'm sorry. I'm going to both sides. This one, Dave Infante, among the golden age ads that he brought up. He brought up spuds McKinsey and the Kors twins as well.
Right?
There's a lot they got away with in decades past that would have people getting apoplectic on TikTok, and, by the way, paid handsomely for it as well.
While I think it's better overall to have gotten to a place where a model pressing your d cups barely contained in a bikini against the screen is considered in bad taste, we didn't get here because beer execs finally looked into the mirror and decided they need to be more respectful to women, it came because of real blowback, and blowback that's still waiting to be unleashed. If you've even used shows so much as a side boob.
Yeah, the hate farmers have something to do with, but you're playing to an audience that is almost sure to go shit throwing ape insane the minute you say anything that makes them remotely sad, and then they're going to throw out the most. When you're doing that, if you got a population as tense as we are now, they're just going to throw out the most non offensive drivel they can. Which, of course, led to a spoof ad on the late show by Stephen Colbert.
I was trying to figure out a way to play this through the podcast in a way that you could hear it. I couldn't figure out how to do that, but that's okay, because I can just read the text of the ad. You get the joke.
Just imagine, while I'm reading this, just imagine, like, stock beer drinking footage.
Every ad like beer ad. You've seen beer going to glasses, people enjoying the.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: Well, Jeremy, I think we can share our screen.
[00:37:06] Speaker B: I'll just read. It'll be just easier to read this. Looking for a beer that has no agenda? Then try neutral light. Just one sip and you'll say, I feel nothing. Neutral light is an adequate beer to share with your friends that are gay or straight or not gay or straight. Whatever, we're cool with it. Neutral light. We agree with whatever you think.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: What's hilarious is Bud Light's hard. Or Anheuser Bush's hard. Seltzer is called neutral.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: And there's even a bigger problem than the culture wars.
The real problem is that the Super bowl is the headline event of a medium that's increasingly getting irrelevant for people my age and younger. And remember, I'm 42 fucking years old. I know.
The Super bowl is really the only time we engage with network television. If we do it all, it's still the biggest advertising event on broadcast television. But as infante points out, none of the car companies even bothered to try to put anything in. Miller Lite did an Internet campaign featuring Rob Riggles nipples for some reason, but they just look it up. Essentially what they did was a running of the beer ads where they just had a bunch of ad they basically, it was an audience participation as well. I didn't look too much into it, but among them was like, people from ads in years past. Just like running a ten k, including Rob Riggles with his chest painted again, nipples prominent.
The media landscape has been smashed to dust, and that pretty much marks the end of signature events in advertising or television in general. Nothing that's likely to become anything that brings. There is no going to be wazap anymore. And thank God. Or as infante ended his piece, quote, Super Bowl 53s beer commercials are pitching to an imagined american middle that barely exists on the other side of the screen. The ads are rote, over, reliant on celebrity, and instantly forgettable. As Tyler just demonstrated, they'll barely exist after the Super bowl is off screen. It's not the way things were, but it's the way things are now. Grieve accordingly, to which I reply, good, fuck them. But then again, I'm a curbudgely, anti corporate asshole. Tyler, are you shedding a tear for the beer commercials of old?
[00:39:41] Speaker A: I am. I think this is my anchor moment.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: Really?
So if I had a go fund me to bring back to make beer commercials great again, you'd go, yeah, I'll give you $20. Yeah, just one more waz up. Or just give me a dilly dilly for old time's sake.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: No, I was never a dilly dilly fan.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: No one was a dilly dilly fan except for I actually did. Like, I was in bars after that aired and listened to people out in the wild, like, raise their glass and go, dilly dilly.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: Yeah, you fucking. It happened a lot.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: Goddamn anybody who did that and then later claimed to have free will. Fuck you, Tyler. What's next?
[00:40:41] Speaker A: Well, there's a new beer company out of Boston called Hero 95.
So it is a crisp, low calorie lager. A high end, low calorie, low carb beer brewed for active lifestyles.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: I hate it. Make it go away.
[00:41:05] Speaker A: When I saw four active, I was like, oh, this is a lifestyle brand for Jeremy?
[00:41:14] Speaker B: That does sound like something that you would make up just to irritate me.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I wish I was.
So it's a 4% alcohol beer, 95 calories, 3.6 carbs, and developed by beer industry veterans formerly from Boston Beer Company.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: What is up with Sam Adams?
They have lost their way.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: So this company is made up from. One of the founders is Tod Simon, a former brand strategist for Boston beer company head brewer David Sips, former brewer at Sam Adams and cider maker at Angry Orchard Brewing.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: Boston lager and angry orchard so broke the man that this was what he wanted to do. Is he punishing the world? Is this like, his form of fuck you to everybody?
[00:42:19] Speaker A: They also have as an advising partner Rich Doyle, who is the former co founder of Harpoon Brewing.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: But the harpoon, I should know what that I think I ran into their beer and until this moment, probably mistook it for anchor.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: But the idea of this was born from Todd Simon looking for beer choices that would not only fit his active lifestyle, but also tasted good. He realized there wasn't a lot of options and they just weren't cutting it on taste and brand values perspectives.
[00:43:07] Speaker B: I'm sorry.
What the fickety fuck are you doing that you can't fit a beer in?
Seriously?
Maybe I'm a bad example, but you can fit a beer into your life. And if your life is too. Oh, I'm too active to chug a decent beer then, I don't know, hard seltzer. What the fuck is the matter with you?
[00:43:33] Speaker A: So they decided to create fucking Michelobultra.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: I mean, besides everything.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: See, there you go defending bud ab again.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: This is what you brought me to.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: But it's a vision that goes beyond the pint glass. According to Simon, hero 95 is born from the spirit of everyday heroes. This includes both the traditional heroes who serve our communities every day and also the hero within all of us.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: Go fuck yourself.
Go fuck yourself hard.
Someone actually typed that sentence non ironically into a, I'm guessing a website. Or is that on every can of this shit?
[00:44:27] Speaker A: This is an article press release that I
[email protected]. A human typed that sentence in and.
[00:44:38] Speaker B: Didn'T immediately go, hit, delete, go. No, that's too.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Fuck.
[00:44:42] Speaker B: That's too fucking corny. My God.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: I'm like laying it on thick, man.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: That's the kind of thing I would say as a joke and then erase it going, that's too far.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: But they're committed to supporting the community, including charities chosen by the drinkers.
With the launch of the beer, Hero 95 is unveiling their Hero 95 boost campaign, which is.
I pulled it up here, so Hero 95 will donate $95 to up to 95. People who are age 21, have a registered and active fundraising page, and are actively planning on running the 2024 Boston Marathon. You need to submit a brief summary that explains what cause you are raising money for and why it is meaningful to you. And this must be your first time running the Boston Marathon and you can get $95 donated to you. Potentially they're going to be doing more events throughout the year. Eligible events can include anything from road races to five ks marathons, cycling events, triathlons, crossfit challenges, golf outings, and more that you're doing to help fundraise for some sort of foundation.
But that is the new brewery hitting the Boston area. So if you are in the Boston area, you can find there's six pack of twelve ounce cans and retailers near you soon, as well as on draft at select bars and restaurants. The six pack is suggested to run between 1099 and 1299 and it's a lager with two row pale malt, a touch of Munich malt and noble hop varieties.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: This had better fall flat on its face in Boston or I'd know nothing about that. I guess all the angry Celts have been run out of that city, I'm guessing.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: I'm assuming there was a time.
[00:47:12] Speaker B: I think they would have thrown that six pack at your head and kicked you into the street. But again, I need Bill Burr to.
[00:47:24] Speaker A: Just come unglued on this.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, essentially what you would get is a population full of drunken bill burrs, which is to say a bill burr.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: But again, if we have any listeners around there that want to buy us a six pack, you can reach out. We'll give you an address to send it to, and we'll try it live on the podcast.
[00:47:48] Speaker B: I'd rather have a breakup pizza.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: Jeremy, what do we got next?
[00:47:54] Speaker B: What the fuck happened to sour beer news? Now, there was a time. Oh, okay. Well, this has been. It's all beer, if you want to know. There was a time, a rather magical time, toward the end of the height of the craft beer craze, after they'd picked all the low hanging fruit from the european beer styles vine, they'd brought back pale ale, India pale ale, delved in the german tradition. Really did the India pale ale, did it even harder, made it a session, made it an extra pale ale, made it a pale ale, made it an extra pale ale, put an x in front of it.
That was later. But my point is, once they pretty much brewed everything they'd ever brewed in Europe, they found the little known gems still being produced, although in very small numbers. They were the wild fermented beers that were nothing like the world had really been introduced to, and then they were a huge craze for a second, and then they weren't. This comes from the San Francisco Chronicle by Esther Mobley. It documents the rise and fall of sours around California and central California specifically. But a similar story has played out over much of the country, or at least I felt it here in where I sit in Idaho. And if I felt it here, I guarantee you it reached beyond just us in California.
I actually selected this one because ale song came into town last year, and it was at one point in time.
Ale song was one of those breweries that people would bring in. They're like, oh, my God, I just brought. I was in Oregon. I found this beer. It's fantastic. And people were clamoring for it. I brought a couple of cases of it in when they came into town, and they're still there.
Almost all of them are still hanging about. And so I went ahead and grabbed one.
We're even considering doing away with that particular door in our shop. Just because you get some movement, you get some movement. But largely, that door looks pretty much like it did a year ago. And if current trends hold, it's going to look a lot like it does in a year. Luckily, the beers, they age particularly well. But you still want to see the fucking beer move.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: You don't want to just be sitting on that money.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: Yeah, but back in the day, speaking of waxing nostalgic, the height of beer nerdism, where the release of something as, like, pedestrian as a sour beer with cherries. Cherries, damn, you would have brought a lineup. Bespectacled, bearded men line up around the block.
Rare barrel out of Berkeley was a big name. Saint Andreas.
St. Andreas. Rustic ales out of Capitola, yeast of Eden, Russian river, with their sour lineup still highly sought after.
Sour, funky, fruity, rustic. Horse blanket was a term that got thrown around a lot, much the chagrin of those who had no idea what was happening around them.
Horse blanket can be a good thing. In fact, it's actually quite a nice thing, depending on how you feel about horses.
It was a rediscovery, and if you.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: Want them to be warm and cozy, it's a great thing.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: And smell a little bit horsey.
It was a rediscovery of what beer was and could be. It transcended beer, which is more of an engineering or a mechanical art, and winemaking, which was much more of an agricultural art. And it blended the two for the first time. Beer had a toir, as wine enthusiasts would describe it. Or that is to say that the beer produced in that place could not be produced anywhere else. The environment that created that beer was part of it. You could not reproduce it anywhere else in the country. But as Adaira Patero, the owner of St. Andrenis, mentioned in the article, quote, we've seen a decrease in the craze. Bottles still sell here and there. They do eventually sell out, but it's more of a trickle, which, yeah, that sounds about accurate. And I'm talking specifically about wild fermented sour beers. We'll get into their prodigal children soon enough. But these are the beers that are largely out of european tradition, which are to say, like your lambix, your flanders reds, your old bruins, and then all your american versions thereof, which sometimes just became creations in and of themselves. This is a great example.
It mentions a host of different microorganisms, actually, fairly proudly. Where is it on there? The microbes. Bread of aniaces, sacramentiaces, lactobacillus, double barrel, aged in wine barrels and whiskey barrels in the general spirit, american spirit, particularly of. If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.
It was the stuff of myth and legend. Well, sorry, largely started in California and indeed the rest of the country around 2012.
That was when both rare barrel and St. Andranius was founded.
I don't know, 2012, where were you and had sour beers entered your lexicon yet?
[00:54:22] Speaker A: No, because technically I wasn't old enough to drink.
[00:54:25] Speaker B: But you were drinking?
[00:54:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Not really crafty at that time.
[00:54:32] Speaker B: That would probably not be a thing you reach for as an underage.
You're 19. What do you want to drink? Oh, a really nice, funky, tart sour beer. That would be what I'm going for.
[00:54:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:47] Speaker B: If for no other reason, then you can't chug these and get shit faced. You just can't. You are going to hurl.
[00:54:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:54:58] Speaker B: These kind of have the kind of acid that will take the enamel off your teeth if you let them.
There are festivals and specifically like.
Well, I started to hear about sour beers around this time.
I had yet to run into one. It would be probably another four years before I finally would run into one. It would be 2015, 2016 before I finally got a hold of one.
[00:55:34] Speaker A: I think it'd be about the same for me.
[00:55:38] Speaker B: By that point in time, it had, well, taken off sour. Sunday, it was held as part of San Francisco Beer week. It was becoming the place where beer nerds went to achieve pure nerd vana. And as legend has it, as I understand, they kept a great big old bin of tums handy for people tasting, because a lot of sour is a lot. But the event was described by John Martin, owner of one of the brew pubs.
He described the event in rather modest terms like this.
We always loved imports, but when we saw all these brewers in California experimenting with sours and barrel aged beers, it was really exciting. Growing segment of the market to the point where he actually started his own brewery that specialized in sour beers. Drake's brewing.
[00:56:39] Speaker A: I've been to Drake's brewing.
[00:56:41] Speaker B: How was it? Do you remember?
[00:56:43] Speaker A: Delicious.
I went to their Oakland tap room and then proceeded to be stuck in the Oakland airport for like 8 hours after that.
[00:56:55] Speaker B: Which is the prime place to be stuck in this world, I think it was.
[00:56:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Another level of hell I never wished to go back to.
[00:57:04] Speaker B: Not only was it interesting, but there was a thirst for it. From 2012 to 2016, these were the years where liner stretched around the block. Bottles would disappear from shelves in a matter of days.
Picking them up through beer trading websites was almost a competitive sport.
And then almost overnight, bottles that wouldn't have survived a day on the shelf began collecting dust.
Part of it was good old fashioned oversaturation. A lot of sour is, as I mentioned, a lot.
To quote Martin from the article again, quote, sours are not for everyone, even at sour Sunday, after you've had a bunch of them. Oh, boy. It can be a little bit too much sour after that dip in sales to be. Well, that dip in sales proved to be uniquely devastating for this style of beer. Sours are, from a pure material standpoint, relatively cheap to produce, especially if you don't get all wild and crazy with the fruit additions. But also, people are getting wild and crazy with the fruit additions.
But also there's a long period between the initial production and return.
There's a lot of overhead, especially when it comes to storage. St. Andranius takes a lot of space.
[00:58:20] Speaker A: To store all these wild ales.
[00:58:22] Speaker B: They would store their sours for a full year, and that's really not outside the norm. You have to sit on these beers for months, if not years, before the character fully develops. And then there's the unpredictability of the project.
It's weird to think about now, but here in Idaho, grand Teton brewing went into sours in a big, bad way.
They were producing some stuff out in victor that I would put up against russian river rare barrel any day. Not saying it was better, but it was competitive. Their stuff was.
[00:58:55] Speaker A: Some of those american sour series that they did were phenomenal.
[00:59:00] Speaker B: I had the privilege of being able to tour their facility right at the end of this craze, and they pulled some samples out of barrels for us to try, and it was really eye opening to show not only how the process worked, but also, in some cases, how much it didn't. It was surprising how many barrels had just turned out bad.
You kind of a roll the dice. It was part of the game. You put a bunch of things in a barrel. Would it turn out good? Well, hopefully. Maybe the very nature of what you're producing makes it unpredictable. And the microorganisms that play can be fickle, even if you have, like, a solid house strain going.
[00:59:47] Speaker A: It's just there could be something that survived in that barrel and turns the batch to fucking vinegar.
[00:59:54] Speaker B: Well, or, I mean, mutations in specific microorganisms. And typically, the whole point is you're not rigidly controlling what organisms are at play like you are in normal brewing. So it sounds wrong to say your sanitation isn't as good, but sanitation is kind of the opposite of what you're trying to do to a certain degree. But that also means other organisms are being introduced, and one barrel could be sublime perfection, and the other one a fucking disaster.
[01:00:32] Speaker A: They mentioned, and you could have done the same thing or even split the batch.
[01:00:37] Speaker B: The article mentioned at rare barrel not tasting like feet and blue cheese.
They mentioned, like, trying a barrel and then dumping it. Dumping a barrel. That would have been worth $50,000, because it just wasn't good enough. It just wasn't as good as they felt comfortable putting out, I'm assuming.
And from a craft and traditional standpoint, it's interesting and weirdly invigorating. But from a business standpoint, it's fucking brutal. And especially once the shine wears off and the bottles that people were clamoring for a year ago are now a shelf turd, the amount of time, effort, and everything else that goes into these beers suddenly goes from being something to pursue to being, at best, a vanity project.
Also, a lot of what people may have found interesting or desirable about mixed fermentation beers sort of got eaten up by kettle sours. And that's the bastard child I was talking about. They're much easier to produce, they're much faster, they're predictable.
But you're back to making beer into a mechanical process very, very shortly. I don't know, Tyler, you experimented with kettle sours more than I did. You want to give the overall.
Tyler makes some fantastic copper cleaner on the industrial scale.
[01:02:15] Speaker A: It's a lot easier to monitor that than the homebrew scale, but they're okay. Kettle sours were what got me in with the gozas, and I don't know. The last time I've had a kettle sour, though, I got into the wild fermentations, and I still think there is a market for wild fermentation.
I wouldn't be going out to invest in a barrel warehouse or a full sour facility, but I think breweries doing a couple of barrels a year as fun one off projects. I can 100% get behind kettle souring.
[01:03:03] Speaker B: Just if you're kind of wondering what the difference in the process is. Essentially, you take your work, you add lactobacillus, you're controlling the organisms going in, and you raise the temperature to where they can work, and you let them work to the point where the ph falls exactly where you want it to. Like every time.
If your ph needs to start at 3.2, you let them work long enough until you take your.
[01:03:32] Speaker A: And then you boil it to kill all the bad or all the bacteria and organisms in there that you don't want. And then you pitch your yeast to get your alcohol. So typically, kettle sours are lower alcohol because the lactobacillus has eaten some of the sugars that the yeast would eat.
[01:03:50] Speaker B: Also, because you're mixing it like 50 50 with fucking fruit puree anymore.
[01:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Or if you're Tyler homebrewing, you let it go a little too low to get it really tart and a little too low eats over sugar.
[01:04:08] Speaker B: Still one of my favorite moments. Like, Tyler asked me to take a grade. Like, hey, Jeremy, can you take a gravity and I get a sample and a hydrometer?
I go, one what? One.
If you don't understand why I'm, like, apoplectic about one. One is the gravity of water. Like, if there's any sugar into it, it should be like, one point something or other. I think you're expecting 1.3 or something. It was one. All the sugar was fucking gone. It was nothing but water and lactic acid. It was beautiful.
[01:04:49] Speaker A: That was the cleanest my equipment had ever been.
[01:04:52] Speaker B: That's not to say kettle sours are not as good as wild fermented, at least in my opinion.
[01:04:58] Speaker A: They're not as rounded, as full flavor, as complex.
[01:05:02] Speaker B: I wouldn't put them in the same category. A real, really good fermented wild beer is to a kettle sour what Dom Perignon is to fucking lacroix, especially when slushy sour started gobbling up Instagram feeds.
If you want to know what my opinion is about slushy sours, go back and listen to any of Tyler's rants that I've prompted. Tyler. That's pretty much my feeling, without the unbridled rage.
If you like slushy sours, fine. Go with God. I maintain what you want. It's not beer. But if it's keeping you going to local tap rooms and keeping them afloat, so be it. I have made peace with this.
These are easier to produce. They are quicker to produce. The results are a sweet lactose fruit bomb. People like that sort of thing.
But it has regulated wild fermented beer into a passion project.
I'm sad to say. Grand Teton sour program is over, as it is in many breweries. Rare barrel is now a producer of ipas. And thank God, because there's certainly no breweries that have produced twelve fucking ipas on draft.
Yeast of even Eden hadn't produced a new beer since 2022. As for Russian river and St. Andranius, it's something they do as well. Does it bring people into the brewery? Sure, but they're not chasing the market anymore. They're doing it for a reason. It's almost quaint these days. They're doing it because they love the craft, they love the style, and they do it for those who also love the craft and love the style. It's a niche product. And weirdly, I like it that way. As much as I will miss the days when wild, fermented, barrel aged beers were common to the point of oversaturation, simply because I like that there is some weird shit to go get my hands on. It's a bit of a treat. Now, a true rare find.
A competitive sport with no competition, which is the kind of competitive sport I fare best in.
[01:07:01] Speaker A: You still got the guard holding out pretty strong.
[01:07:05] Speaker B: Again, there's a few.
[01:07:08] Speaker A: Although the guard did just get into winemaking as well.
[01:07:13] Speaker B: You have a few places that produce strictly sours, and especially now, I worry about the overhead there. Now, maybe they can make the economics work. Maybe they're shifting into wine and they will be a winery that produce sour beers as kind of a one off. Who knows?
I don't think they're going away.
[01:07:42] Speaker A: No.
[01:07:44] Speaker B: Again, they're going to be rare to find and maybe a little bit special that way.
That's the end of that.
Good night, everyone.
[01:07:59] Speaker A: Wow, that got really.
[01:08:03] Speaker B: You know what? I almost wish that that's how I stopped the recording.
[01:08:10] Speaker A: I mean, you're the one who edits it, so you could.
[01:08:13] Speaker B: I could. I could just cut it off at that point in time and just be.
[01:08:16] Speaker A: Like.
[01:08:19] Speaker B: But I'm not going to do that. What I'm going to do is do my normal pitch where Tyler, I was.
[01:08:24] Speaker A: Going to say, part of me kind of wants you to do that, Jeremy. And then we take like two weeks off and just go radio silent just.
[01:08:32] Speaker B: To see how these people going. Are you guys okay?
Was that it?
And then just send poop emojis in response. This has been. Do you have anything else for us, Tyler?
[01:08:48] Speaker A: No.
[01:08:49] Speaker B: Well, this has been. It's all beer. If you have an idea on how to end one of our episodes in a really awkward fashion, or if you'd like to send us a breakup pizza, you can send it to Tyler's house in Mampa. As far as where to get that address, you can send email to us at it's
[email protected]. If you don't want to break us up with us, if you'd rather stalk us all creepy like, you can do that on Instagram or on Facebook.
You download our podcast on iTunes or overcast or listen to it on Spotify or just wait for it to come down on the feed. I think it's probably a large number of people listen to it on the feed, which is weird to me, but there you have it.
And finishing off in awkward fashion. That'll be quite enough from us. I'm Jeremy Jones.
[01:09:49] Speaker A: I'm Tyler Zimmerman.
[01:09:50] Speaker B: I'm gonna have a beer.
[01:09:52] Speaker A: Have fun.
