Here is the link to the blog I am in the middle of creating for one of my project 3 artifacts. Take a look and let me know what you think! Thanks

For the last unit of this course, the advocacy campaign, I chose to stick with my issue from project 2, home brewing your own beer to save money and the planet. I am invested in this issue because I enjoy helping my boyfriend brew our own beer which provides for a cheaper way to consume beer than buying it at the liquor store and it is also an entertaining and relaxing hobby. I feel that everyone in the United States, if not around the world, should be trying to become more independent when it comes to consuming food and/or drink items, such as produce and beer. Brewing your own beer is much like growing your own garden in the sense that you are not relying on any outside source to provide these items for you, it is a cheaper method of consuming produce or beer and it is better for the environment as you are not relying on these items to be transported to you. I feel that home brewing is a great way to learn more about beer and how it is made and to develop your own sense of individual taste and cater directly to that rather than choosing from pre-made beer from New Belgium or other microbreweries across the country.

With my advocacy campaign, some outcomes that I can see happening is that my audience will go to one of the homebrew shops in town and they will look into investing in a starter kit to begin brewing their own beer, or they will get familarized with the idea and perhaps start saving money to invest in a starter kit. I feel that the best possible outcome that could happen is that my audience will buy a homebrew starter kit from one of the local homebrew shops and they will begin brewing their own beer at home.

I believe the biggest obstacle that I will have to overcome is convincing my audience, beer connoisseurs who live in Fort Collins but who may not already know about home brewing, that home brewing their own beer does not mean they have to give up their favorite beers from Fort Collins, New Belgium, Odell or any other microbrewery, rather home brewing will allow them to create their own favorite beers in supplement to those beers they enjoy from the microbreweries. Overall, it will be important for me to establish that I do not believe we should only homebrew, rather we should treat it as one of many ways to get great beer in Fort Collins at even greater prices than the microbreweries.

Image: http://greenpeacecorps.org/Sustainable_vs_Ind.html

As I looked at the different media for corporate farming and for local farming, I saw that both sides aim to make the consumer feel that they are in control and that they have the power to help change the world. This seems to be a pathos-based appeal as the corporate farmers or local farmers encourage the consumer to think about how their actions are helping, or hurting, the world and it’s population and they give the consumer the power to choose what they want to support. For the corporate farmers, like on the ADM website and especially on the Mondanto website, they tell the consumer in videos that GMO’s and biotechnology are safe and good ways of making food more accessable to a lot more people. In this way, the corporate farmers are telling consumers directly that GMO’s help to fight world hunger and that by supporting and buying GMO food we can help people across the world who cannot afford food and get nutritious meals that they might not otherwise get without the biotechnology. The corporate, big farmers, advocate that not using biotechonology will end up hurting the whole world, and specifically those who cannot afford the food. The local farmers, on the other hand, take this same approach that the power is in the hand of the consumer and that we can help stop the industrialization of food that is abusing animal rights and producing food that is leading to more people getting sick from bacteria like e-coli or getting too fat from products made from corn. On the website with the Food, Inc. movie, they discuss how we have the power to support organic and local foods by buying those items and staying away from the corporate, industrialized items that are using corn and soybean products to take over our grocery stores and our world. Both the corporate and local farmers have taken the pathos appeal, saying that we, as consumers, can help save the world with what products we choose to buy and support. The question is, do we want to go big with biotechnology and industrialization to save people around the world who cannot afford the food? Or, do we want to go small and support the local and organic farmers who are trying to compete with the corporate farmers by treating the animals and the planet right?

It is interesting to note that this was one of the appeals that Obama used with his campaign for President. Still is the emails that his administration sends out, they emphasize how WE, the voters, have brought this change and that is is thanks to US that we have come this far. By allowing the consumer, the voter this kind of power, they are making us feel like we have more control over our situation and that by changing to support GMOs or by supporting local farmers we are really the ones who are making the change and making the world better by feeding the world or by supporting organic farming and animal rights. In all of these appeals, the consumer is the one that is given authority.

When you click on this website, you will see that it brings you to a page with a book cover, some text and an “Enter” button. This homepage shows that the first edition of this book, How to Brew, is published online and you can see it after clicking “Enter” on the main page. This will take you to a website that has the same information that the book would. I see this as an advocacy site for two reasons. It is geared towards people who do not know little to nothing about home brewing and therefore it is advocating for those audience members to learn more so they can eventually brew their own beer. For this reason, the first edition of this book is published on this website free so that people who do not know how to homebrew feel they can learn about it without having to invest in a book that they may not end up reading. So, the website with this edition of the book published serves to advocate that if you are interested, you should learn about home brewing so that you can make your own delicious beer at home. This website’s homepage is also advocating to those who already know how to homebrew and are looking for more information. Perhaps those people who are interested in this book read the first edition published online and then they realize that they like the auhtor’s style of writing and they see him as a credbile source. In this case, those experienced home brewers can buy the third edition of his book that is advertised on the homepage to get more information from this author. The website as a whole is advocating for the public to learn about home brewing so they can become more independent and explore their options, but then the author is also advocating to the already-experienced home brewers to buy his newest edition to learn new tricks or strategies for home brewing that they have not seen in the first edition. This website serves both as a place to go for those interested in an introduction to home brewing and those interested in learning more complicated techinques for home brewing.

Not that this is a “food” per say, but in the Fort Collins community, beer is an item of consumption that not only brings the Fort Collins people together but it also raises awareness around the United States of Fort Collins and our way of living. With a variety of close microbreweries (New Belgium and Odell) as well as other various brewpubs in the area (mojeaux’s, CooperSmith’s), people living in Fort Collins and even in Colorado as a whole take pride in the specific beers coming from New Belgium’s wind-powered microbrewery. These beers have contributed to my life not only as a college student but also as a child growing up in the Colorado area. When I was young, I could never go out to the fridge to get a soda without seeing a 12-pack of Fat Tire, my dad’s favorite beer, in the fridge. For this reason, I have always had a personal connection to Fat Tire and New Belgium, simply because it is an item that I can remember very clearly from my childhood dinners with my family. Also when I was growing up, my family and I used to come up to Fort Collins a lot to bike the trail between New Belgium and Odell. I have never taken a tour of the breweries, but I always enjoyed these bike rides and seeing the breweries from the outside. Now that I am in college in Fort Collins, I love seeing New Belgium and Odell everywhere because it reminds me of my dad and how a simple beer can bring back such vivid memories. I also like that everyone in Fort Collins and Colorado can identify themselves with New Belgium and their goal to be sustainable in this environmentally-friendly era. Throughout my first two years at CSU, I have seen that not only has Fat Tire brought me closer to my childhood with memories but it also brings together a whole community of people at events like Brew fest and Tour de Fat. This beer also raises awareness of Fort Collins in other states where New Belgium transports their beer. New Beligum, and by default Fort Collins, is known for being “green” and if you search “brewing sustainably” on google you will not miss the many New Belgium “going green” articles. Overall, not only has New Belgium provided a key to my past but it has also brought together a whole town of people as well as raising awareness across the country.

http://www.chefseattle.com/articles/eco-conscious-green-beer.html

In the essay “Ethos as Location: New Sites for Understanding Discursive Authority,” Nedra Reynolds discusses how ethos “encompasses the individual agent as well as the location or position from which that person speaks or writes” and she claims that ethos “examine[s] how writers establish authority and enact responsibility from positions not traditionally considered authoritative” (326). Using this information, the image above can be analyzed in regards to how ethos is established. This advertisement for a home-brew kit produced by Coopers establishes ethos with the man with a huge smile on his face holding a glass of beer. This man is presumably the brewer of the beer he is holding, and therefore we can assume that the “individual agent” is familiar with how to home-brew. We can also assume that this man enjoys what he does and favors it as a hobby because it offers benefits over other hobbies, like stamp collecting. This information is inferred in the slogan “sure beats stamp collecting,” which is making the claim that brewing beer as a hobby is better than collecting stamps because you get a cold glass of a great, refreshing beverage. In another way, this image establishes ethos, or “authority…from [a position of home brewing] not traditionally considered authoritative” with the coloring of the black and white man, making him look more “old-fashioned” and perhaps wise, contrasted with the coloring of the bright orange, glowing and attractive looking beer. This, to me, makes the claim that even an old-fashioned, traditional, down to earth person can take part in this “new” hobby and can recycle their old stamp-collecting hobby. Ultimately, this image leaves it up to the community to agree that this new hobby of home brewing (with the man looking extremely happy with the results) is more favorable than stamp collecting. Overall, ethos is established within the image, coloring and assumptions we have of the man in the photo, the bright coloring of the product of his new hobby and the writer’s assumption that the community will agree that this new hobby is more attractive than stamp collecting would be. This image does establish ethos within the “experienced” brewer, but ultimately it relies on the larger community to agree with their position of authority (claiming that stamp collecting is not exciting like brewing beer).

When I was first trying to choose a topic to focus on for this project, I almost decided to scratch home brewing off of my research list because I was not able to find too many credible articles on this topic. After some further investigation, however, I found that there are a lot of home brewing publications, books and blog sites/web sites that explore this topic in detail. I have still had to sort through all of these sources in order to find reliable information, but I am amazed at how much information is available on home brewing. One of my original questions when I started this project was how popular home brewing is in the United States. After beginning my research, I can see that this practice of brewing beer at home seems to be becoming more popular as brew shops sprout up around the country and as more and more home brewing publications and blogs come into being. By searching google, I have found research regarding the process of home brewing itself and what materials you need in order to follow their step by step directions to brew beer. I have also found information about growing hops at home, information ranging from how to plant hops to the growing season and harvest time, as well as recycling the left over hop vines. I am interested specifically in what ways home brewing is local and sustainable, and one issue I feel that is important to cover is how home brewing is different from buying local microbrews at the liquor store. I found articles on sustainable beer in general on Academic Search Premier and I also found other information on microbreweries, for example one article discusses how microbreweries have emerged as tools of the local culture that surrounds them. This information on beer in general and on microbreweries becoming more eco-friendly shows how more people are becoming concerned with local and sustainable efforts in brewing, a sign that home brewing may start to become more and more popular as a way of drinking beer very locally and sustainably. Here are a couple articles that I have found so far. The first 2 are from a google search and they include home brewing information whereas the last 3 are from Academic Search Premier and they discuss microbreweries as being local and how there are more and more emerging “green” practices in microbreweries.

*note- I did this with just links first, then went back and did citations. For this reason, the citations are not in alphabetical order. I know that on the final draft they should be.

• “ORGANIC BREWING TIPS.” Seven Bridges Cooperative: Certified Organic Brewing Ingredients. Seven Bridges Cooperative, 2009. Web. 6 Jul 2010. <http://www.breworganic.com/tips/tips.htm>.

This website as a whole focuses on home brewing organically in order to support “chemical and GMO free sustainable agriculture,” to “[support] organic farmers world wife and [contribute] to a growing demand for organic products,” to get “excellent beer that is free from chemical residues and GMOs,” and lastly to “help contribute to a better world.” This website does not focus as much on home brewing as it does on why to home brew organically. It seems that they assume that their audience already knows about home brewing and is now interested in brewing organically. I will use this website to show that not only can you home brew to get local beer, but you can brew organically to be more sustainable.

• Russell, Scott. “Grow Your Own Hops.” Brew Your Own Magazine. BATTENKILL COMMUNICATIONS, 03 1996. Web. 6 Jul 2010. <http://byo.com/component/resource/article/727-grow-your-own-hops>.

The article titled “Grow Your Own Hops” was written by Scott Russell and was published in the March 1996 issue of Brew Your Own magazine. It provides the reader with ways to select varieties of hops, how to find “hop rhizomes, the bud-producing runners from which the plants grow,” how to plant the hops, when the growing season is and what to do at harvest time. I will use this article to show that if a person wants to be even more sustainable they can grow their own ingredients to brew and that way they wouldn’t need to waste gas driving to the brew store.

• Schnell, Steven, and Joseph Reese. “Microbreweries as Tools of Local Identity.” Journal of Cultural Geography. 21.1 (2003): 45-69. Print.

The article “Microbreweries as Tools of Local Identity,” written by Steven Schnell and Joseph Reese, appeared in the Fall/Winter2003 Journal of Cultural Geography. This article focuses on how microbreweries appeal to the local community by reflecting important monuments, values or historical facts on the label of their brews. Like the article I chose to write on for the last blog post, the authors discuss how the microbrew business started to take off and the macro breweries saw this as an investment opportunity and created microbreweries, or invested in already existing microbreweries, with the same local and close to home approach. Schnell and Reese argue that though the macro breweries have jumped on the band wagon of the microbrewery business, it is not affecting the growing popularity of the microbrewery segment. Overall, this article will help me to address opposing viewpoints or alternative points of view of my argument. With this information, I can explain how microbreweries feel local and close to home because that is how they advertise to sell their beer. I can also make the claim that even though microbreweries are local, they are not as sustainable as home brewing. This article will help me to make the first part of the claim, but I will need additional support for the sustainability of home brewing compared to that of microbreweries.

• Motavalli, Jim. “Green Beer.” Environmental Magazine Jan/Feb 2002: 42. Print.

“Green Beer,” published in the Jan/Feb 2002 issue of The Environmental Magazine and written by Jim Motavalli, focuses on organic beer and how there has been an incredible increase in brewing organic beer and brewing beer sustainably. This article mentions Wolaver’s organic brews as well as New Belgium’s sustainable ways. This article shows that some microbreweries have concerned themselves with being both local and sustainable, like New Belgium, while others only concern themselves with their local label and are not as environmentally friendly as the companies mentioned. I have seen articles on New Belgium and their sustainable brewing practices, but I have not seen many other companies mentioned. This says to me that New Belgium may be inventive in their eco-friendly ways but that other microbreweries have some catching up to do. I will need to do more research, but this makes me think that home brewing is more sustainable than mass producing a microbrew.

• Krogstad, Astrid. “How Green is That… Beer?.” Environmental Magazine Mar/Apr 2009: 10. Print.

This article, “How Green is That… Beer?” mentions how there are microbreweries from “New York to Ohio” that are taking part in the eco-friendly brewing practices. Like I said before, from this I conclude that brewing sustainably in microbreweries is a movement that is beginning to be more popular, but that there is still work in many breweries across the state before all microbreweries will be, if they could ever be, “sustainable.” This article and the last will help me make a concession that there are microbreweries embracing the environmentally friendly ways, but that it will take a long time before this is commonplace in microbreweries. From this I will argue that by home brewing you can take part in the sustainable brewing practices today rather than waiting around for the mass production of beer to change its ways for the environment.

Each of these sources is valuable to me in its own way. Sources one and two have helped me see how home brewing organically works and also how it is possible to grow your own hops, information that will allow me to argue that home brewing is sustainable and local because you can brew it in your home and even grow your own ingredients. Along with this, I can make the claim that not only are you drinking as locally as virtually possible, but you can also grow your ingredients organically in order to fight GMOs. I will still need to find more research on growing hops organically to see if it would be feasible for the everyday person. The last 3 sources have helped me to see the context in which I am making this position statement. Since the 1990’s, microbreweries have been becoming increasingly popular. Now that consumers are more concerned with where their food comes from or how it is made, breweries are taking into consideration how they can appeal to not only the local aspect but also to sustainability. With the help of the last 3 sources, I will be able to concede that some breweries have been successful in becoming more sustainable but that overall, if you are looking to be sustainable, you should venture to start home brewing. If I had to choose one source that is most useful to me at this point, it would be the first source which offers a lot of basic information about home brewing in the frequently asked questions section of their website. They also give tips on how to brew organically and rationale for why this lifestyle is important. Overall, the organic brewing website was most helpful in introducing me to the topic, but all the sources put together will be equally helpful for me to make a successful argument.

Gordon Young’s article, titled “Attack of the Macrobreweries,” explores the issue of how macrobreweries, big brewing companies like Coors and Bud, are trying to take over the business of the microbreweries, smaller brewing companies. This appears to have been written many years ago as Young quotes a statistic from 1992 and there is a copyright date of 1996. This article may be outdated, however this issue of big verses small brewing companies competing for business is still viable today. Though this article does not directly address my topic of interest, whether brewing your own beer or buying beer from microbreweries would be considered a better way to drink beer “locally”, it does show big breweries might have a negative effect on the “local,” “small” and “close to home” status of microbreweries, as many people understand them.

 At the beginning of this article, Young establishes a basis for his ethos as a beer-drinker when he discusses his trip to the Redhook brewery in Seattle. He explains his disappointment when discovering that “Anheuser-Busch had bought a 25 percent equity stake in Redhook,” a smaller brewing company that “represented [to Young] everything that was noble about the microbrew explosion.” On a positive note, Young mentions how the whole “country gets to sample a stellar beer brewed with pride and care” because of the investment by Anheuser-Busch, however he argues that microbreweries won’t be the same after interacting with macrobreweries. Macrobreweries aren’t simply investing in the microbrewery business but they are putting out their own “specialty beers,” or as Young calls it “faux microbrews,” for example, “Adolph Coors [was] the first major brewery to go red with its introduction of George Killian’s Irish Red.” Young explains that the macrobrewers are sure to “leave their corporate fingerprints off their new products” in order to preserve the image of a microbrew and the local, hand-crafted feel. This is where Young makes the claim that “the image of a hearty band of brewers producing beer in quaint local settings” does not apply to many of the microbrews and that more and more of the microbrews will sell out to macrobrews. He gives examples of microbreweries that are based in one place but where the beer is brewed somewhere else, like “Pete’s Wicked Ale may be based in Palo Alto, but it’s brewed in Dubuque, Iowa,”  begging the question, how “local” or “close to home” and “fresh” are the microbrews we drink?

Overall, Young uses strictly logos and ethos in his article with no emotional appeal. He establishes that he is a beer drinker and that he knows about different macro and micro breweries and what big breweries are buying into which microbreweries. He also has interviewed several people, among whom are Benj Steinman, “editor of Beer Marketer’s Insight,” Jim Koch, “the “golden-throated pitchman” for the Boston Beer Co., makers of Sam Adams,” Gerry Turgeon, “general partner of the Santa Cruz Brewing Co,” and Bill Owens who is “famous among beer afficionados for beers like The Big Jump.” This number of interviewees shows that Young took time to research his topic and reach out for other information. Throughout the article he uses a confident tone and speaks in terms of the industry’s vocabulary, showing he is educated and well-informed on the topic and therefore he is probably a credible source. Young also uses logos to show that the microbrewery industry is growing. He mentions that “ten years ago, there were 28 small breweries in the country” whereas “Today there are nearly 500″ and also that the “market share of microbreweries, including brewpubs, jumped from about .07 percent in 1992 to more than 1.5 percent of the $40 billion beer market last year,” showing that this is an industry that the macrobreweries were probably interested in gaining control over. This article spoke to me because it predicted or foresaw how the beer industry is today with more and more big breweries trying to portray an image of microbrews in their beers.  This was written many years ago, but it has inspired me to research how much the microbrewery industry has changed since then and how much control the macrobreweries have over the smaller brewing companies. This article has led me to take the stance that brewing your own beer would be a much better way of drinking beer “locally” compared to microbreweries.