Ogle's Fresh Take

Despite wishing to avoid the whole Beer Summit thing, I can't help but point to this wonderful article by Maureen Ogle in Sunday's Washington Post (the internets are so fast they now carry future publications). It's the first really novel take on the whole thing. In it, she traces the history of beer and race in America.

Despite the fact that blacks drink about as much beer as whites, to this day the only black-owned brewery in U.S. history was a short-lived enterprise in Wisconsin, launched in 1971 by a former Blatz executive. Otherwise, American brewing, the creation of German immigrants in the 19th century, was and largely remains a white man's world.

Even beer advertising, historically white, white and more white, learned to think black. When Miller Brewing launched Miller Lite in the 1970s, it wanted to convey a manly image (subtext: "lite" beer is not a diet drink). The company created a memorable, and successful, string of TV ads that featured retired professional athletes, many of them black. (Picture NFL star Bubba Smith tearing the top off a can of Lite.)

Whole thing's definitely worth a read. Oh, and here's that ad she references: