Do you ever get off the craft beer train and talk about average swill — like beers for baseball, or Asian beers?

This question from someone I work with has bugged me for the last three days. Best word I can find to describe my condition is “flummoxed”. My first thought was, “Sure, and let’s get our wine columnist to write about the “best of Gallo and other ‘great’ jug wines.”

Why is it that the idea of a wine columnist writing about jug wines seems utterly absurd, while a beer columnist writing about crappy beer seem normal and appropriate.

Damn you Budweiser, Coors and Miller and all the rest of you corporate lager-sellers and your funny, sexy commercials. You’ve stolen the soul of beer.

After an initial burst of sarcasm and consternation, I got serious. If the beer we like is so good, then why are American beer drinkers still imbibing cheap lager?

This isn’t a rhetorical question. I’m asking all of you reading this to tell me what you think. Post a comment here or shoot me an email at whatsontap@sbcglobal.net.

For research, I turned to one of my kids, who is grown, teaches film at an Oregon university and has traveled the world and is very sophisticated.

Basic answer: Alcohol delivery vehicle in an unobjectionable format. He admitted to drinking 10 beers this past Saturday night out with his friends: 2 Japanese 22-ouncers (equals nearly 4 beers) plus, 6 or so Coronas. I guess when you’re fairly young, are 6-1 and weigh 240, 10 beers is nothing.

But, I persisted, why not drink something decent?

He thought about it for a minute. “I don’t like dark beer,” he said. “I really like Corona, because -” he thought for a minute - “it doesn’t leave a bad taste. It’s not bitter.”

Whew. What can you expect from someone raised on Slurpies.

I gave that some thought.

I believe we can expect a lot, but until very recently, we’ve left the discovery of good beer to chance. That’s why craft beer and other good beer has somewhere between 4 and 10 perrcent of the total beer market and swill lager has the rest.

I grew up much like him, drinking sodas. I hated beer. Coors tasted like water and Budweiser tasted bitter; it burned my tongue. I went into the Navy right out of high school and did my share of under-age beer drinking, but like our kid, it was just being social. The beer — all bland lagers — was tasteless.

My epiphany came at a German restaurant in Washington, D.C. when I was 19. I got served a glass of Wurzburger, a Bavarian lager. Still remember it: rich, golden, silky malt that flowed across my tongue and just a bit of spicy tingle from what I now know were Hallertau hops. I became a convert. I realized there was beer and there was real beer.

It was pure chance. The waiter might not have served me, I could have decided not to go into downtown Washington that Saturday. We need to stand up and shout about good beer, I think. The way it’s going is way too slow.

What do you think? Opinions anyone…

The 2007 craft beer statistics are out and they’re impressive: sales by “independent” craft brewers rose 12 percent by volume and 16 percent in dollars in 2007, the Brewer’s Association reports.

Great news. It means craft beer continues to grow in popularity, that it’s not a craze or a fad or whatever. The stuff we like to call good beer is here to stay. But there are a couple of caveats.

One. Craft beer share. Just 3.8 percent of all beer sold in America is what the association defines as craft beer. So 94.2 percent of beer sold is what? Lager swill?

Not exactly, the association has it’s own definition of craft beer. They rule out Redhook, Widmer, among others, because they’re partly owned by a big brewer (Anheuser-Busch). They also don’t count Coors Blue Moon, because well, Coors is a mega-brewer.

But if the criteria is taste, rather than who makes it – the picture looks a lot brighter. And the percentage sold of “beer with real taste” jumps a couple of points. Don’t have production figures yet, so it’s just a guess.

The trouble with the association’s figures is they partially hide a real shift in American beer-drinking taste away from lager swill, toward beers with more flavor. It gets more complicated, but when you add quality imports the percentage of Americans drinking full-flavored beer grows a bit more.

It’s tedious to sort out the imports, but important. There’s little difference between Euro-lagers like Heineken and Mexican beers like Corona and your basic America lagers.

Two. This is probably the most important trend. Light beer sales continue to rise and now have about half the total market. At the same time sales of what the mega-brewers call “full calorie” beer, are falling rapidly.

Food for thought, huh? What do you think? Opinions anyone? Personally, I can’t fathom why anyone would drink light beer.

Lew Bryson is a Philadelphia beer writer and author with impeccable credentials. He’s just reviewed three new beers from SABMiller aimed, apparently at craft beer drinkers and aiming, I guess, to compete with Coors Blue Moon. These babies haven’t made it out here to the Left Coast. Check out his Seen Through A Glass blog…

Miller Lite Amber: Aroma is somewhat sharp, grainy. Head forms well, and lasts…READ MORE

Miller Lite Wheat: Cloudy medium yellow; cloudiness is very uniform, most likely protein haze rather than yeast. ..READ MORE

Miller Lite Blonde: Slightly ruddy gold color — actually darker than I would have expected from a “blonde.” Head is the worst of the three: big bubbles, not much retention…READ MORE

Do you believe in a phoenix rising from the ashes? Did you ever hear about Oakland’s Brothers Brewing Co.? Read on.

An Oakland homebrewer Ralston Brown, a graduate of the American Berwers Guild when it was in Davis and his brother-in-law Thomas Parker and his friend, Michael LeBlanc, a former Polaroid exec, signed on and invested their savings in the company launched Brothers Brewing on the usual shoestring in 1998. Their first beer, recipe by Ralston, Brothers Honey-Brewed Amber Ale *** (my rating in 1999), contract brewed by Alec Moss at the late and still-lamented Golden Pacific Brewing in Berkeley, was a moderate hit.

It was the only African-American-owned brewery in America.

Two years down the road, they produced a lager: Brothers Golden Classic Lager, at Golden Pacific and tried to expand to urban places (guess, that’s code for heavily black neighborhoods) across the country.

They discovered that it’s impossible to beat mega-giants like Coors, Miller and Anheuser-Busch at that game; they’ve got urban black America locked up tight, a fact that still pisses me off. Don’t believe me? Check out those new Miller High Life ads. They’re not pitching to Walnut Creek (Out of state? It’s a mostly non-black San Francisco suburb.

Anyway, Brothers Brewing quietly closed their tent and folded. About the same time Golden Pacific also closed, another fact that still hurts. Capitalism’s a cruel uncaring bitch.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that Everett & Jones Barbeque, the large restaurant in Jack London Square, was a major account. Yep. You got it.

“We hated to see them fold,” co-owner John Jernegan says. “We wanted Ralston to come to work for us and brew beer here,” he adds. “But Ralston had other plans.” Besides being an excellent brewer, he never quit his day job.

So Saucey Sistah was born. It’s contract brewed; he won’t say by whom. But I’ve figured that one out and I won’t tell. Jernegan says they offered Alec Moss a job too. He bounced around a bit and is now happily brewing away at Half Moon Bay Brewing on the San Mateo Coast.

One more point about Saucey Sistah. The sexy woman on the label’s John Jernegan’s wife, Dorothy King Jernegan. Her mom, the late Dorothy Everett Sr., founded the Everett & Jones barbeque business on 92nd Avenue in East Oakland in 1973. There are several Everett & Jones Barbeques, two in Oakland, one in Alameda and one in Berkeley, each owned by a family member or members.

The Everett girls – there were eight – called themselves the “Saucey Sistahs”, her husband explains. Great name for some sexy young ladies, great name for a beer here in Oak Town too.

The E&J in Jack London Square’s the only one with a restaurant and the only one that serves beer. “I keep telling everybody to add beer and sell Saucey Sistah,” John Jernegan says. Everett & Jones is at 126 Broadway, between 2nd Street and West Embarcadero. See ya’ there tomorrow night.

Addendum. This place is becoming famous as an after-game hangout for us diehard Raiders fans. There’s even a post-game show. Food’s excellent. The boast endorsements from Whoopi Goldberg, John Madden, Jami Fox and yes – Pete Slosberg, late of Pete’s Wicked Ale.