Bars that didn't get their licenses renewed are running out of beer. Miller, which didn't get its trademark paperwork approved in time, faced mandatory yankage of the suds from the shelves. Excuse me, but apparently we haven't learned from history: When you have a depression, there's more beer, not less.
Your correspondent is not a beer drinker, so this is like learning the state has run dangerously low on Nair and nylons, but anyone with a sense of empathy knows this is grim news for small businesses. It's summer. It's hot. As Benjamin Franklin said: Beer is proof that God wants us to mow the lawn, or something like that. What's truly stunning is the number of beers Miller makes. Assuming there's not an enormous vat with hundreds of spouts filling dozens of different brands from the same tank, they have quite a few brands Take a look at the list of beers the shutdown threatened:
Milwaukee's Best, Milwaukee's Best Light, Milwaukee's Half-Heartened-Attempt Dark, Milwaukee's Shame; Henry Weinhard's Special Premium Select Reserve Craft-Brewed Artisanal Ale, which also goes by "Burpo" if put in a different bottle and sold for half the price; Hamm's, Hamm's Select, Hamm's Random, Miller Genuine Draft Draft (sold only in cans) Miller Genuine Canned (sold only on tap), Miller Ersatz Draft, Molson's Canadian Whoopie Pop, Foster's Australian Chunder Sauce, People's Barley-Based Central Nervous System Depressant #23 (for state-owned liquor stores only), Coors, Coors Redundant (trade name: Coors Light), Miller High Life, Miller Intermediary Life, Miller Low Life, Miller, Miller Light, Miller Dark, Miller Yin-Yang Pack (three cans of light, three cans of dark), "Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific" Miller, Miller Whatever and 4,953 other brands.
Well, sort of. They do distribute Foster's, the beer that used to make college students stand in awe of Australians, because the can was about the size of an oil drum. But one name popped out, didn't it: Hamm's.
It occupies an unusual place in our history: a beer of which many have a childhood memory. Many remember the big jovial Hamm's Bear, rolling on a log in a cartoon commercial while the theme played: whump pum pum pum whump pum pum pum. FROM the land of sky-blue waters (waters) FROM the land of pines, lofty balsams, COMES the beer refreshing / Hamm's the beer refreshing. You'd be at the lake, getting minnows from a store: a Hamm's sign on the wall, the water magically cascading in glistening perpetuity. (Until the sign broke.) Maybe an uncle or a grandfather gave you a sip on the sly, just to slake your curiosity. You made a face and wanted to spit it out -- ugh! The top note of hops is completely overwhelmed by an obviously commercial-scale barley mash, Grandpa. He'd sigh and hand you an India pale ale, and think, boy's growing up to be something of a snob.
Hamm's was the singalong brew, but there was also Grain Belt and Schmidt -- local brands with enormous breweries that towered over their neighborhoods, brick leviathans that took raw materials through one door and pushed innumerable boxes of clanking bottles out the other, perfuming the air with the scent of fermentation. They're all closed. There's nothing left but the name, handed off from company to company until the brand and the residual molecules of old-timers' goodwill resides in a trademark registration somewhere in a government office -- a brand that can go poof! if someone fumbles the paperwork.
If you're wondering how we might deal with future droughts of conglomerate beer, simple: People would have to try local varieties. It may be hard, at first -- what are these flavors? How does this beer, which has no advertising campaign, reflect my self-image? Will people know what kind of person I am if I drink a beer that isn't advertised? Is it kreuzened? If so, is it fully kreuzened? There, there. It'll be OK. If it helps, print out some familiar beer labels on your PC and put them over the bottle. Or even make up your own brew. There's probably a good market for Standoff Beer, Shutdown Ale, Bob's Budget Beer with Tabasco (Motto: "When you pass it, you'll know") or any other novelty drink. We could get back to local beer again, made by Minnesotans, for Minnesotans. You could probably borrow the Hamm's song for your ad, too:
From the land of fiscal crises (crises) / From the land of lines drawn by factions / COMES the license snafu DAMNS the icy cold brew.
