A few days ago I laid into Coors for their Cold Activation Day. Sometimes the beer geek in me can be a little obsessive about what he considers to be good beer. While I maintain that beer that is drinkable only at near freezing temperatures is bad beer it turns out that the cold activation labels on Coors’s bottles target a temperature that is quite a bit warmer than that. According to my sources the mountains start changing from white to blue at 47 degrees and will reach full color at about 43 degrees. Not too shabby.

I’m considering a beer run later today; maybe I’ll pick up some Coors and see if it really is as refreshing as licking the Rockies.

And here I thought that the US held the monopoly on stupid and confusing alcohol regulations. Now it appears that UK based grocery chain Tesco wants in on the action.

The rule in question is not a law but rather a company policy. It says that Tesco employees can ask for ID for age verification from any member of a party when alcohol is being purchased. The goal is to curb underage drinking by making it tougher for adults to buy alcohol for minors. The result is instances like this where a father can’t buy a six-pack with his 16-year-old daughter in tow.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all about businesses being able to do whatever they want so long as it’s legal and ethical even if it’s stupid. And this rule is most certainly that. In the first place, it’s easy enough to circumvent by those wishing to do so. If an adult wishes to buy alcohol for someone under 18 and knows about this rule he would simply tell his mate to wait outside. But the rule will really inconvenience people like the fellow sited above. Parents apparently must now hire a sitter if they want to run down to Tesco for some beer.

Or perhaps – and maybe this is where the stupidity of this move will dawn on the geniuses at Tesco headquarters – beer lovers will begin going elsewhere for their shopping.

Here in the US we still talk about the time a cigarette company bought a brewery. Sure, we’ve gotten over it but we still talk about it.

But this might top that. The Sun, a UK tabloid owned by that bastion of good taste Rupert Murdoch, has decided that they want to sell beer.

Really?

As Pete Brown points out in his blog the easy assumption is that since The Sun is known for light and tasteless journalism then their beer will be the same. Not that I’m assuming that.

At least if they spill any of their beer Sun readers will have a handy rag to mop it up with.

Here's an interesting article about Pabst Blue Ribbon from Marginal Utility, a blog that concerns itself more with marketing than beer. The basic idea is that latter-day PBR drinkers consume their beer of choice less because they like it or feel any particular brand loyalty to it and more because they want to poke a stick in the eye of mega brewers/marketers like Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Guinness or any of the other beer makers whose market positions seem to be more important than brewing good beer.

It's an intriguing idea. But could being an ironic choice really be a way to build a strong brand? I can't believe that the folks at Pabst have that goal in mind. One point that this argument conveniently ignores is that Pabst has been turning in gold and silver winning brews at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver over the last few years.

And if you find yourself in the Washington D.C. area next week don't forget about Savor!

As part of the recent Brewer's Heritage Festival in St. Louis Missouri a few other beer writers and I were given a pre-tasting of Anheuser-Busch's latest creation. The new beer is set to release in October 2008. Check out my tasting notes for Budweiser American Ale.

• Anheuser Busch's Stone Mill Pale Ale
• Budweiser Lager
• Bud Light
• Anheuser Busch's Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale
• St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival 2007

Exciting, isn't it?

Well, maybe not so much. Cold Activation Day, as far as I can tell, is Coors's attempt to reignite interest in those bottles with labels that turn blue when they reach a particular temperature. The thinking here is that none should touch this beer until it's reached a particular threshold of cold.

Oh, and the design on the labels has been changed although they still work the same way.

If it sounds like I'm poo-pooing this concept a little it's because I am. Super cold beer, which seems to be Coors's goal, is flavorless beer. Naturally, lagers like Coors should be drank cold but not ice cold; no beer should be drank that cold and if that's the only way to enjoy it then it's a bad beer.

The target temperatures for beer consumption vary widely based on style but most lagers are best served at temperatures between 39 - 45 F (4 - 7 C) and 45 - 57 F (8 - 14 C) for ales. That's a pretty wide range, I know. For more details and style suggestions check out this beer temperature serving guide from RateBeer.com. My point here is that these temperatures are well above ice-cold which seems to be the temperature at which many American lager brewers would rather their brews be served.

Now, I honestly don't know the temperature at which Coors's bottles declare themselves to be done.* It could very well be that they target exactly the middle of that lager range I described above. However the branding of Coors and most other megabreweries heartily embraces that ice-cold-is-best way of thinking.

*I found out later.

Anytime a big company like Inbev reports double digit problems like this something's afoot. The company is blaming two things: the rising costs of raw materials and slipping sales in Brazil. Part of the problem in Brazil was an early Carnival this year - Ooo, that pesky calendar!

There are beer brand loyalists and then there are beer brand loyalists.

Bill Bramanti loves Pabst Blue Ribbon so much that he's had a replica of a PBR can made of his coffin. Although he doesn't intend to put it to its final use for some time, he did use it as a center-piece for a party he threw this weekend. Even so, it still served a valuable purpose beyond macabre conversation piece - he filled it with ice and plenty of Pabst.

Want to see the thing? Check out Chicago Man Plans His Beer-Can Burial.

You can’t turn on the news here in the US without being told how bleak the financial future is. The real estate crisis, the credit crunch, the Baer Stearn's bail-out; it’s enough to make you want a beer. But, no, the price is going up there, too, right?

This is why Anheuser-Busch is in such good shape for the coming lean times, at least according to W. Randolph Baker, AB's CFO. AB has almost always maintained or improved their situation when the rest of the market has suffered. This is because the company is diversified and sells less expensive brands of beer like Busch and Natural Lite.

Here’s how the thinking goes. People will always drink beer. But as financial situations worsen they will buy cheap, or sub-premium as the article terms it, beer. Sub-premium, mmm! Makes you want to order one right now, doesn’t it? There’s a certain logic at work there I suppose and given the provable success of it in the past I can’t really dispute it.

For my part I’d rather just buy fewer good beers.