In honor of the Fourth of July, here is an article about the top twenty-five beers in America, according to home brewers. I haven’t drunk many of them so the article has given me a goal.
Apparently today is “National Independent Beer Run Day”; a day that the Brewers Association made up to get consumers to buy independent, that is not macro beer, for the holiday. Marketing schemes like this are not new.
After Repeal, brewers attempted various campaigns The most prominent one was for bock beer in the spring. Here is another post from my pre-WordPress blog. It was for the Session, which was a blog carnival, which stopped publishing in 2018.
July 4, 2008
The Session #17: Going Against the Grain: Drinking Anti-Seasonally
In my book, Brewing Battles,I explored the attempts of the immediate post-Prohibition brewers to develop a marketing strategy that would cover all seasons. The centerpiece was bock beer; for the journal, Modern Brewery Age, this beer was the epitome of spring.
In the years before beer marketing was national and also before wide spread air-conditioning, the summer months usually saw an up surge in beer sales. However today it is not clear if increased beer drinking is so synonymous with warm weather.
Brewers vary in their focus on bock beer as a harbinger of spring. On a personal level when it is very warm I prefer a lighter beer such as a heifenweizen with a lemon. I also like a shandy or panache but I have been told that brewers dislike such combinations.
The Session is a blog carnival originated by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer. For a summary of the Sessions thus far, check out Brookston’s handy guide
