Bud Light toes the line between a good time and alcoholism.

If you were one of the 106.5 million people to watch the Super Bowl (largest American TV audience ever; take that, M*A*S*H series finale), chances are you saw a Bud Light commercial. Anheuser-Busch (or, rather, AB InBev) trotted out about 80 of them in part to assert its dominance on the grand stage of television advertisement but also to ring in the new Bud Light slogan, “Here we go.” My thoughts on AB’s marketing strategies are known, so it’s surprising to me that they’d go with the worst motto in history of beer.

In the spots, some guy finds out Bud Light has entered the equation somehow and exclaims “here we go,” as if a good time is imminent, like the crest of a roller coaster. Frankly, casting alcohol as a party drug the way this does is disgraceful and the implications of alcoholism are blatant. The Times reports “The idea has been to balance rational reasons for buying Bud Light, which were conveyed as product qualities under the umbrella of drinkability, with reasons that would ‘connect on an emotional level,’ (VP for marketing Keith) Levy said.” Here we go, because you can’t help it, you’re addicted. Talk about emotional.

I reproach Anheuser-Busch for highlighting the negative, consuming affects alcohol has on some. Good work, guys. And I invite you to visit my dad’s new blog on recovery and addition therapy if the topic interests you.

Well, will you look at that.

the pentultimate stout

We're all very poud parents.

It seems that I have something in common with Eric Asimov, drinks columnist and blogger of The Pour, both at the New York Times. Besides the odd notion of writing about drinking, we each enjoy a good stout. Thing is, though, Asimov likes my stout – or at least the stout I’m paid to make. (article.)

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

and much of autumn, as well

In this building is a pair or rubber boots that have rubbed bald spots into my leg hair.

Faithful readers of All Hopped Up will have noticed a sharp decline in posting since April. Actually, that sentence is misleading; a “sharp decline” should read “a great nosedive to zero” and “faithful readers” implies that there are more readers than just you, Simon, and that those readers have a body of writing to be faithful to. So in the spirit of turning over new leaves and beginning afresh, I intend to fill you in on my summer. A summer so beer-filled that it would be a shame to leave it to inference and hearsay.

First, and most primary to my exploits in beer and my distraction from writing, I got a job.

AHU: Learning by doing, and drinking

If you have one beer this summer, it better be at Mondial de la Bière

Note: The following is the last installment of All Hopped Up’s print version, in The McGill Daily. The electronic edition lives on right here. -jw

I’ve enjoyed this gig. I really have. But at times I realized that this column might not be the best way to get my message across. Before you call me a defeatist, hear me out. To reiterate an elemental goal of my column since its inception, a beer- drinking public that is informed of the depth and intricacies of the craft brewing movement might think about what they are drinking enough to try something they don’t know but may enjoy. Perhaps more importantly, an informed beer drinking public only strengthens and unifies a local beer culture, providing a better environment for craft breweries to operate in.

Though there are, and will always be, those for whom beer is a golden, tasteless alcohol, but our status as college students makes us receptive to positive encouragement. We seek out variety in all we ingest – food, drink, fields of study – and right now we drink more beer than we ever will again. Writing a beer column in a university newspaper is like advocating safe sex in a whorehouse. Sure, it looks good on paper, but the idea’s a no-brainer.

Beer journalism is important, but if this is your first time reading or your first time paying attention, it’s also your last. So what’s a student to do? Luckily, there’s an event approaching that will accomplish for the novice beer drinker in one afternoon what a year-and-a-half of beer columns might get you through.

Montreal’s largest and most successful beer festival, the Mondial de la Bière, enjoys its 16th annual installment during the first week of June.

AHU: Breaking into the Boys Club

How female brewers are looking to change the face of beer culture

graphic by sasha plotnikova

Errol Morris, the Oscar-winning director of The Fog of War and The Thin Blue Line, is also the director of a lengthy campaign of commercials for Miller High Life extolling the virtues of being a man and enjoying a beer. Each spot has a 1950s air of male hegemony and revels in it, thick arms, hairy knuckles, and all. In one commercial, the gruff narrator asks a newlywed housewife standing before a supermarket beer cooler what kind of man she wants her husband to be. She chooses a High Life man, of course. Another asks a shirtless beer belly, “Is your name Sally? Sally, the salad-eater? No, you’re a High Life man and you don’t care who knows it.”

It’s not hard to admit that the prevailing undertones of the beer world are masculine ones. If we are to believe the dated notions that beer is the working class beverage and working class families are supported by a sole (male) breadwinner, then the brews in the fridge must be Dad’s, right? Wrong, says the growing number of women who drink, brew, advocate, and otherwise enjoy beer, and they want you to know it.