Wishful Drinking

Laughs Meet Draughts as Comedian Brings His Brew Tour to LA

The country’s most famous comic-under-the-influence, Zane Lamprey, of Three Sheets, Drinking Made Easy and Chug fame, has taken his comedy show on the road, and comes into LA for the first of several performances at local breweries, beginning June 3, at Los Angeles Ale Works in Hawthorne.

Longtime fans may know that Zane is no newcomer to bringing his shtick to the people — as long as there are drinks involved. In 2008, he launched his first public interaction, ZaneCrawl, right here in LA. I interviewed him for the Celebrator about the endeavor and tagged along on a couple of pub stops. Here is that (slightly edited) article, and some photos, which originally appeared in the June-July 2008 issue of the Celebrator Beer News:

By his own admission, Zane Lamprey is not a big drinker. But he plays one on TV. Lamprey is the amiable zany who hosts the wildly popular drinking and travel show Three Sheets, which just began its third season in April on the [now-defunct] MOJO high-definition cable network.

For the uninitiated, this comedian trots his way around the globe (with a camera crew in tow) –– from Munich to Manila, Galway to Gibraltar, Brussels to Buenos Aires –– imbibing the indigenous alcoholic beverages, partying with the locals, and becoming indoctrinated into their drinking cultures, traditions and, alas, hangover cures. Viewers at home learn (and usually drink) along with Lamprey, who frequently makes a good-natured ass of himself.

“I was more of a drinker before I did Three Sheets,” he confesses. “Now, I only drink when I’m working” [insert rim shot here]. So, for a guy who’s drank everything from absinthe in the Czech Republic to moonshine in Kentucky to snake blood in Taiwan, what’s his poison of choice? “I’m a beer guy, man,” Lamprey says. “But I don’t really have a favorite brand; it depends on the mood I’m in. If it’s a cloudy day, I like a Guinness –– although they drink it in the hot sun in Jamaica.” His favorite place to quaff suds? “I suppose Belgium, but then every place has its own beer –– Germany, Croatia… One of my best experiences was drinking Pilsner Urquell at the Golden Tiger in Prague.”

But this spring, before beginning work on the series’ fourth season, Lamprey decided to capitalize on his show’s popularity and hosted a real, live, interactive version of Three Sheets: ZaneCrawl, a three-day, internationally themed pub crawl for fans of the show, conducted by its namesake in a major American drinking city. Think of it as a personalized home version of Three Sheets –– only it’s not filmed for the show. The inaugural crawl took place over St. Patrick’s Day weekend (of course) in LA,“‘cause I live here; it was easier to scout,” admits Lamprey. “The bars in Koreatown are just like the ones in Seoul.” Over 40 Zane fans, mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings from as far away as Wisconsin, New York and Florida, paid $1,650 for an all-expenses-covered tour of L.A.’s many drinkeries.

After some nosing around and making inquiries about the crawl, your reporter was invited to join the otherwise private party on a couple of its beerier stops. On a late Friday afternoon, the crawl’s pimped-out tour bus dropped the Zanies off at the renowned Ye Olde King’s Head Pub, one of the oldest British pubs in Santa Monica, and the second stop on their excursion. Ensconced in the back Crown Room –– the crawlers got to know each other and drank Snakebites (Boddingtons and cider) under portraits of British monarchs, whilst Lamprey led them through a game of darts. “I take a comedic twist on drinking,” he told them (as if they didn’t already know). “I’m what you call an…asshole.”

Self-deprecation aside, Lamprey ordered a round of imperial pints of draught Boddies (straight this time, thankfully) for the room, and introduced Dave Medley, sales manager from [pre-ImBev] Anheuser-Busch, distributor of that creamy bitter in the US), who spoke of Boddingtons’ over 200-year history and the sadly defunct Strangeways Brewery built just outside Manchester, UK (to avoid the city’s grain tax), from whence it originated. A few of the crawlers seemed genuinely interested.

When this reporter next crossed paths with the ZaneCrawl, it was some 24 hours later across town in Silver Lake at the legendary Red Lion Tavern, a German-style bierhaus and garden. Already (and appropriately) three sheets to the wind after a day of drinking, the Zanies were loud, gregarious and now best of friends. Sequestered in an upstairs back room with its own private bar, they were only too happy to be egged on by Lamprey to participate in a chugging contest. The non-competitive among us enjoyed a Spaten Optimator or Kostriker Schwarzbier and watched as the others knocked back half-litres of Bitburger, timed by a stopwatch, to win the prize of a bottle of Dom Pérignon and a beer stein.

Brian from Minneapolis took home the booty with a gulping time of 3.59 seconds. And before you knew it, Lamprey was loading his charges back onto the bus to hit yet another stop on the lost weekend known as ZaneCrawl.

Lamprey hosted another weekend event in New York City in April and there are additional ZaneCrawls scheduled for Boston (August), Chicago (September) and San Francisco (October) for those so inclined.

Back to the present. To hear Zane’s zingers about his past drinking experiences, you can catch his show at La Verne Brewing June 4, Pocock Brewing in Santa Clarita June 5, Alosta Brewing in Covina June 10, and Hangar 24 Brewing in Irvine June 11. For more info or to get tickets, visit zanelamprey.com.

 In Wishful Drinking, Tomm Carroll opines and editorializes on trends, issues and general perceptions of the local craft beer movement and industry, as well as beer history. Feel free to let him know what you think (and drink); send comments, criticisms, kudos and even questions to beerscribe@earthlink.net.

LA Got Over Its ‘Dry’ Spell 88 Years Ago

“I think this would be a good time for a beer.” 

While this sounds like an appropriate declaration to make right now, as pandemic restrictions continue to lift and Southern California breweries and taprooms move closer to normal operations, it’s actually a quote from our 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  

Speaking on March 22, 1933, less than three weeks after his inauguration, FDR made good on his campaign pledge to repeal Prohibition as he signed into law that day the Cullen-Harrison Act (also known as the Beer-Wine Revenue Act), which was the first step toward fulfilling that promise. The law legalized, and taxed, beverages containing no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight (4.0% by volume), which the authors of the new bill were careful to define as “non-intoxicating”; these beverages were previously illegal for consumption in the US since the Volstead Act (aka the 18th Amendment) became law as of January 17, 1920. Under Prohibition, only beverages with 0.5% abv (0.4% abw) alcohol were allowed without a prescription.  

(Why Volstead measured in abv, while Cullen-Harrison used abw has never been explained…maybe because abw sounds lower?)

The Cullen-Harrison Act required that states had to pass their own similar legislation to legalize sale of low-alcohol beverages within their borders, and for those that did, the new law took effect April 7, 1933. Nineteen states had passed such laws, California among them. Eight months later, on December 5, 1933, the Volstead Act was repealed by the 21st Amendment, legalizing full-strength alcohol. This date is known as Repeal Day. 

But since 2009, April 7 has been celebrated as National Beer Day in the US, thanks to Justin Smith, a beer aficionado in Virginia, who started a Facebook page to commemorate it. The Untappd app then created a badge for National Beer Day and it began to catch on through social media. In 2017, National Beer Day was officially recognized in the Congressional Record. 

As we commemorate this deserved hop-fueled holiday in SoCal in 2021, let’s take a look back at how Los Angeles breweries observed this liberating date 88 years ago, when, like today, a long, national nightmare was coming to an end… 

When Prohibition took effect in early 1920, not long after the end of World War I, during the final throes of the H1N1 virus pandemic, and less than a decade before the Great Depression (talk about a string of bad luck!), the city of Los Angeles, with a population of some 570,000, only had three breweries in operation: Maier Brewing, Mathie Brewing and Los Angeles Brewing. 

The Maier Brewery, located at 95 Aliso Street (now an on–ramp for the 101 Freeway) was previously the Maier & Zobelein Brewery (1882-1907) and before that the Philadelphia Brewery (1874-1882), and originally the El Aliso Winery (1831-1862). It was LA’s oldest existing brewery at the time. Joseph Maier, the namesake co-founder, died of heart disease at 53 in 1905 and left his share of the business to his sons, Fred, who became president, and Edward Maier. 

The Mathie Brewery, located at 1850 North Main Street (currently the site of a UPS Customer Center) was originally the Ferdinand A. Heim Brewery, founded in 1901 by, and named for, the nephew and heir to the late Ferdinand Heim, Sr., a brewing magnate from Kansas City. The younger Heim originally ran a bottling and distribution business on Ramirez Street. In 1903, Heim sold the brewery to Edward Mathie, who enlarged the facility and began operating in 1905. It was located literally across the street (Moulton Avenue) from Mathie’s previous place of employment… 

…the Los Angeles Brewery, which he co-founded with P. Max Kuehnrich in 1897 at 1920 North Main Street (now the Brewery Arts Colony in Lincoln Heights). Kuehnrich was president and general manager, with Mathie serving as vice president and superintendent. In 1902, a dispute between the principals over the financial mismanagement of the company resulted in Mathie trying to have Kuehnrich ousted, but the board of directors sided with the president, and Mathie himself was removed from the organization. The following year, he purchased the nearby Heim brewery. 

Another clash of owners erupted back on Aliso Street when George Zobelein sued his recently deceased partner’s sons at Maier & Zobelein over company stock shenanigans once they owned half of the brewery. His suit was successful, and the Maier brothers bought Zobelein out for $500,000. With his settlement, he purchased the Los Angeles Brewery in 1907 from Kuehnrich. He named his newly brewed brand of beers “Eastside,” as the brewery was located East of the pre-concrete Los Angeles River.

As Prohibition Grew Near, So Did the Beer 

With the dawn of Prohibition looming closer on the horizon, no brewery owner was happy, obviously. On January 17, 1919 (exactly one year before the Volstead act would take effect), the Los Angeles Herald published an article gaging reactions of Angelenos to the imminent “Dry LA.” “This means the most terrible disaster for business,” brewery owner Mathie told the reporter. “In securing prohibition, the reformers have put thousands of people out of work, and ruined millions of dollars’ worth of business. In Los Angeles alone, about $2 million is affected just in the breweries. It is plain calamity.” 

When the country did go “dry,” at least officially, most breweries in the nation transitioned into producing root beer and soft drinks, fruit juices, unfermented apple cider, even ice cream, as well as the legal 0.5% abv “near beer,” all to varying degrees of success, to stay in business. Some also made denatured alcohol.

Los Angeles Brewing, which changed its name to Zesto Beverage Co. during the “dry” years, would also make regular Eastside beer, but removed the alcohol and provided that alcohol to industrial companies making paint or dye. Alcohol was also sold to the medical market (hospitals, doctors, dentists, drug stores) under the name Tru-Grain. The sale of these products enabled the brewery to keep pace with pre-Prohibition sales, according to the “Zobelein Family History,” compiled by Guilii Zobelein on Zobelein.com, which also claims that prior to 1920, Los Angeles Brewing Company was the fifth largest beer producer in the US. Not surprisingly, the brewery survived Prohibition intact. 

Several US breweries, however, felt they could not, or did not want to, exist producing only near beer or the other sanctioned alternatives, and out of desperation, or defiance, continued to brew full-strength beer illegally, to surreptitiously supply the growing number of “speakeasies” — hidden, secret saloons that served liquor. (In fact, it has been said that at one point during Prohibition, there were more speakeasies in LA than there had been saloons before 1920!) 

While some Volstead-violators undoubtedly got away with it, one such brewery that did not was Maier Brewing. On March 30, 1932 (ironically, just over a year before the production and sale of 4.0% abv beer was made legal), “a spectacular raid was staged by ten Prohibition agents on the plant of Maier Brewing Company,” reported the May 1932 issue of the journal The American Brewer. “The brewery and bottling plant, and all of their contents, valued at $3 million, were seized…” and the sales manager and another employee were arrested. “This is the first instance where a brewery operating under Government permit to make near beer has been padlocked on the Pacific Coast,” the article added.  

Despite the denial of then president (as his brother had died in 1909) Edward Maier of any knowledge about the illicit brew, the Feds claimed they had discovered “unshakable evidence” of the violation, according to “From Eastside Lager to Maier’s Select Malt Tonic: A Brief History of LA Beer,” a 2011 article by Nathan Masters on KCET.org. 

Another blurb in the same issue of The American Brewer reported that the Maier bottling plant “had just been leased by owner Edward Maier to parties who were to enter into an extensive sales program for selling Cereal Beverages [Prohibition-era euphemism for near beer].”  

The brewery reopened in May 1932 under a $10,000 federal bond, with its operations limited to “the movement of manufactured [legal] product on hand,” the July issue of The American Brewer wrote, also revealing that petitions in involuntary bankruptcy were filed in mid-June against Maier and his company. In June, Maier Brewing was forced into bankruptcy by creditors and put into a court-appointed receivership, but did not resume brewing until after Prohibition was repealed.  

It wasn’t until 1940 that Maier finally regained control of his brewery in a court settlement — seven years after Prohibition ended. But tragically, he perished in a house fire three years later. Although it was never again family-owned, Maier Brewing eventually regained its status as one of LA’s biggest breweries over the years, and was responsible for the (in)famous Brew 102 in the 1950s. The company existed into the early 1970s before being renamed General Brewing, and then fading away. 

Confirming the aforementioned fears of its owner, as quoted in the Los Angeles Herald, Mathie Brewing was out of the brewing business even before January 17, 1920, when Prohibition took effect. That month, advertisements began appearing in the Herald hawking apple cider from Watsonville, California for delivery, and recommending “Serve Cider — the 1920 Beverage — for Health.” The cider was “stored in glass enamel-lined steel tanks” — the same ones Mathie had bragged about installing in articles and ads when he built out his brewery. The ads were for “Atlas Beverage Co. (formerly Mathie Brewery),” apparently a bottling plant and local distributor.  

On June 23, the Herald ran an article announcing that one of the warehouses at the brewery would be used for preserving and dehydrating fruits and vegetables, as well as making by-products from them. 

Then, in the February 18, 1921 edition of the San Pedro Daily News, an article announced that Mathie and his company’s board of directors had decided “the plant should be sold for the best possible price and at the earliest opportunity.” The newspaper added, “When Mr. Mathie was first asked [before the Volstead Act went into effect] what was to be done with the plant, he said he guessed he’d dedicate it to the prohibition element of the country…” Hence, the soft cider company.  

By late March, the brewery was sold to the Imperial Cotton Mills Company of Los Angeles, to be converted into a 20,000-spindle textile mill. That spring, Mathie was selling those glass enamel-lined steel tanks, the brewhouse, bottling line and other equipment in Herald classified ads, and in October, harvest season, classified ads ran to sell the brewery’s trucks for hauling grapes.  

The Mathie Brewing property did become a brewery once again, however — after Repeal. San Diego’s Balboa Brewery purchased the facility as its second location in 1934, according to a 2018 article in West Coaster by Sheldon Kaplan entitled “A Look Back: San Diego Beer History from 1868 to 1953,” then changed its name to Monarch Brewing in 1936, but went out of business in 1942. 

Mathie himself eventually returned to brewing as well. In the November 1935 issue of The American Brewer, it was announced that he had become the brewmaster at Lynwood Brewery in Los Angeles County. 

Last Brewery Standing 

The only LA brewery still in operation come April 7, 1933, Zobelein’s Los Angeles Brewing retired the Zesto Beverage name, and now was also known as Eastside Brewing. The whole state of California had only six breweries that were capable of producing “non-intoxicating” 4.0% abv beer by that date: three in San Francisco, one in Oakland, one in Stockton, and Eastside here in LA. Part of the reason was that the government gave breweries just over two weeks notice of the date that real beer would be no longer be illegal. 

But Zobelein was in good shape, and ready to restart his old business immediately. Because Eastside was already brewing real beer, only removing the alcohol, all that was required was to bypass the denaturing process. According to Zobelein.com, as well as a March 2005 article on RustyCans.com, a beer can collecting website, “Numerous trucks were parked at the brewery, loaded and ready to go as the day when legal beer could be shipped approached… [E]ach truck was filled with bottles and barrels of beer, and then, accompanied by two treasury agents, moved to its parking spot to await 12:01 a.m. April 7, 1933.” 

“When the night was done, one executive for the brewery reported they had a stack of money 18 inches high, and when they counted all the night’s receipts they found they had taken in over one quarter of a million dollars for their beer,” according to RustyCans.com, adding, “Things were so chaotic that they got payments for beer they didn’t even remember selling. Of course, the fact that Harlow [a heavy drinker], stuck around partying with the brewery employees probably didn’t help!” 

Zobelein was doing his best to quench the thirst of LA, and the region. City population was about 1.3 million — more than twice what it was when Prohibition began. But with Los Angeles down to a single brewery, there were not enough suds to go around in the months between April and when Prohibition was repealed, so Eastside had its work cut out for it.  

Under the headline “Shortage of Beer in Los Angeles,” the June 1933 issue of The American Brewer reported: “An acute shortage of beer is being experienced at Los Angeles, where but one brewery is in operation. Retailers there are willing to pay as high as $6 a case for beer that sells in San Francisco for $2.40. Out of the State brewers are finding the Los Angeles field a splendid market and beer is coming in from Mexico, Japan and Canada, as well as from Europe, despite the high duty.” 

Los Angeles/Eastside Brewery continued successfully through the 1930s, producing Eastside Lager Beer (which remained its best seller), Eastside Ale, Eastside Bock and Luxury Extra Dry Pilsner, among others, including Brown Derby Beer (named for the LA landmark) for Safeway stores. Eastside was bought by Milwaukee’s Pabst Brewing — the first of the big breweries to expand to the West Coast — in 1948, but continued to operate as a separate company until 1953, when Pabst built a new brewery next door to produce its own beer. Eastside Lager was still brewed, but became a low-priced discount beer, and renamed Eastside Old Tap — which, appropriately, was sold at Dodger Stadium on its opening day in 1962. 

Pabst continued brewing in Los Angeles until 1979, when it closed the facility and sold off the property. Fortunately, some of the structures of the original Los Angeles Brewery remain and, as previously mentioned, is now the Brewery Arts Complex. Fittingly, carrying on the beer legacy of that property over 120 years later is the restaurant and expertly curated beer bar, Barbara’s at the Brewery. Unfortunately, Barbara’s had to close this past December, and is trying to raise money to reopen. If you’d like to help bring back Barbara’s at the Brewery, please visit this link: gofund.me/c9c8e6ca 

Celebrate National Beer Day! 

Since we can’t toast the holiday at Barbara’s, why not pay homage to LA’s brewing history by visiting one of SoCal’s many craft breweries to drink/eat onsite, or drop by to pick up some beer to go if you’re not ready to visit establishments quite yet. 

And if you’re staying in, there is an old movie that would make the perfect film to watch on National Beer Day. Only 65 minutes long, What! No Beer? is a screwball comedy starring an aging Buster Keaton and a young Jimmy Durante as two guys who get the idea of opening a brewery just before beer is legalized after Prohibition, in order to get rich when it does. Released in theatres February 10, 1933, its timing couldn’t have been better, despite the fact that MGM studio and the filmmakers at the time had no idea that two months after that date, 4.0% abv beer would become legal — which may explain why it was a box office hit when it opened. 

Filmed around LA at the time, it includes some great shots on Silverlake streets, including multiple beer barrels rolling down a steep hill chasing Keaton and disturbing “traffic” (such as it was in the early 1930s), as well as scenes at Echo Park Lake. Hilarity, hi-jinks and slapstick “brewing” scenes ensue, along with some pre-Hollywood Production Code sexiness. The film can be rented or purchased through Amazon Prime or YouTube. 

In Wishful Drinking, Tomm Carroll opines and editorializes on trends, issues and general perceptions of the local craft beer movement and industry, as well as beer history. Feel free to let him know what you think (and drink); send comments, criticisms, kudos and even questions to beerscribe@earthlink.net. 

Love it or hate it, one of the novel aspects of the “drinking-at-home-now” conditions during lockdown is the ubiquitous Zoom video and audio conferencing platform that allows one to drink beers with multiple friends and acquaintances, virtually at least, via their computers, tablets or phones. If you’ve tippled or toasted with others at Zoom birthday parties, classes, curated tastings, festivals, happy hours, lectures, meetings, memorials, panel discussions, seminars or any occasion (and who hasn’t?), you know the experience.

It allows you to be a “social” drinker while still being not only socially distant, but self-isolated. And you can not only gather with friends you’d normally hang with, but also with those across town, or throughout the country and (subject to time zones) around the globe. And best of all, no one has to be concerned with driving home after the drinking session!

Just as “Zoom school,” or virtual learning, remains a part of K-12 education even as schools begin to reopen, it seems more than likely that virtual attendance at physical gatherings like beer festivals or concerts (once they are allowed) will continue to occur as a component of the whole event. Yes, technology can foster inclusivity.

So as tiresome and draining as back-to-back Zoom-athons can be and often are, count me as one of the fans of this social medium. It took a global pandemic to make Zoom, literally almost overnight, the indispensable app.

But, alas, all is not well in Zoom-ville when it comes to those who drink, love, understand, care about, and — yes — respect (Cheers, Alström Bros) beer. After a year’s worth of drinking-while-Zooming, I am extremely disillusioned to see, and feel that I must call out, what I consider the worst virtual party foul, or faux pas (well, not as bad as Jeffrey Toobin’s; Google him if you don’t know) for beer drinkers WHO KNOW BETTER!

I’m talking about Drinking. From. Cans. (Gasp!)

Catch your breath yet? We’re talking craft beer here, not soda or hard (or soft) seltzer, or even an industrial lager. And, without naming or shaming names, I can attest that these are professional brewery owners, brewers, beer writers, beer judges and beer teachers (in the US as well as the UK), some of them heading up guilds, and many of them award-winners. Not all of them do it. And not all of the time. But, respectfully, WTF?

And these were all folks Zoom-drinking from desks or tables at home. They were not atop brewhouses or on boats, not out in nature or on beaches, not hiking or biking or Pelotoning or driving (god forbid) — situations where can-quaffing could be considered at least excusable, if not understandable.

I am not a craftier-than-thou beer snob, but I just don’t get it: Are there no clean glasses at home? Dishwasher full of all your dirty shaker pints? I’m not talking about “appropriate” glassware for the beer style, just any drinking vessel — a Mason jar or a coffee mug or a plastic cup even. Something that will let the beer “breathe” and the aroma “open up” as the foam forms when poured.

But don’t just take my word for it. “Beer is a fussy beverage,” writes noted beer author, teacher and public speaker Randy Mosher in his book Tasting Beer (Storey Publishing). “It cares about the size, shape and cleanliness of the glass it is served in and really responds to a great pour… Sure you can just grab a bottle [or can] and gulp it down — and there are beers made for this — but most beers need to be treated with a little more respect if you want them to reveal their inner souls.”

Kimmich Gimmick

Then again, John Kimmich, co-owner and brewmaster of Vermont’s The Alchemist Brewery, famous for its Heady Topper Double IPA (which supposedly launched the hazy IPA craze when it debuted over a decade ago), as well as its also-hazy little brother Focal Banger IPA, counter-intuitively espouses can-gulping. In fact, “Drink from the can!” is emblazoned on those aluminum containers themselves.

Why? As Kimmich explains, which is also printed on the cans: “Quite simply, to ensure a delightful hop experience. The act of pouring it into a glass smells nice, but it releases the essential hop aromas that we have worked so hard to retain.”

What? The release of “essential hop aromas” is what the whole beer-pouring, head-forming, and smelling experience is all about. I tried taking a first sip from the newly opened cans of Heady and Focal. Yes, the intense hop-burst is formidable, but like a condensed flavor that hasn’t had a chance to open up and reveal its true self yet. But because the can has been opened, oxygen has introduced itself and the second sip from the can is much more subdued in that intensity.

Maybe Kimmich prefers that we crack the can’s opening just a bit to insert a straw to quickly suck out that “delightful hop experience” before it becomes perverted by oxygen. At least that has a historical precedent: Ancient Sumerians, and others, drank beer through straws directly from the vessels in which it was fermented.

In a 2017 interview with Kimmich about his theory of can-drinking, the website HopCulture.com wrote: “This, the masses mused, was surely just an ingenious marketing stunt, launched as a way to keep The Alchemist Brewery’s primary vehicle of mystique — its oddly named, bizarrely logoed can — in the drinkers’ hands where everyone else could see it.” I’m more inclined to agree with the aforementioned masses.

To that point, in a conversation with a brewer in LA County last year about the increasing inventiveness of beer can art, and the equally proliferating popularity of that artwork with consumers, I was told that some brewery patrons buy beers in four-pack cans simply because they really like the artwork, without concern about what style the beer inside is. And that they like the can art so much, they drink the beer right from the can.

Wait a minute, isn’t that what Instagram is for?

As the SoCal weather gets warmer, as more and more beer drinkers become vaccinated, and as breweries and brewpubs might start allowing a limited amount of customers inside, it is my sincere hope that I do not observe anyone sipping from a can at any brewery I visit — indoors or outdoors. Or on Zoom either.

And finally, if any readers want to tell me to can it, and explain why, your rebuttals are welcome.

In Wishful Drinking, Tomm Carroll opines and editorializes on trends, issues and general perceptions of the local craft beer movement and industry, as well as beer history. Feel free to let him know what you think (and drink); send comments, criticisms, kudos and even questions to beerscribe@earthlink.net.