Politics & Law

Diageo’s Anti-Competitive Bullying Tactics Revealed

by Jay Brooks on May 9, 2012 · 2 comments

in Breweries,Editorial,News,Politics & Law

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Wow! Just wow. Anyone paying attention knows that the corporate world doesn’t like to play fair if they can get away with it, and they usually can. They bigger they are, the more resources they command, the easier it is to bully, cajole and generally get their way. It gives them an unfair advantage, of course, but that’s the way of the world, from the playground bully to the largest multi-national. Obviously, that behavior is not restricted to the alcohol industry, but since that’s the world I’m most familiar with, that’s where I see it the most. From free t-shirts, tickets to the 49ers and even free kegs, it’s been an underlying current in the beer business for at least the twenty years I’ve been paying attention to it, and undoubtedly far longer. It’s one of those things that everybody knows about but few people talk about openly. But this one is pretty hard to ignore.

This past weekend, while much of the beer world was listening to the World Beer Cup awards being announced, over the pond in Glasgow, Scotland, another award show was taking place. This one was the 2012 British Institute of Innkeeping Scotland Annual Awards, which celebrates “success in the license [pub] trade in Scotland.” BrewDog, whose pubs have been making quite a splash, were up for the “Bar Operator of the Year” award. When it came time for the announcement, the award went to another company. But one of the BII judges was seated at the BrewDog table and cried foul. According to BrewDog’s blog, the surprised judge said “this simply cannot be, the independent judging panel voted for BrewDog as clear winners of the award.” When the alternate winner went up on stage to accept the award, they found that “BrewDog” had already been engraved on the award and refused to accept it.

Yesterday, BrewDog received a call from the BII explaining where and how things went awry:

We are all ashamed and embarrassed about what happened. The awards have to be an independent process and BrewDog were the clear winner.

Diageo (the main sponsor) approached us at the start of the meal and said under no circumstances could the award be given to BrewDog. They said if this happened they would pull their sponsorship from all future BII events and their representatives would not present any of the awards on the evening.

We were as gobsmacked as you by Diageo’s behaviour. We made the wrong decision under extreme pressure. We were blackmailed and bullied by Diageo. We should have stuck to our guns and gave the award to BrewDog.

Wow, right? I give credit to the BII for at least admitting what happened and taking whatever consequences will likely come their way. Diageo, on the other hand, is claiming it was a “rogue agent,” an employee who went too far. The makers of Guinness released this statement today:

Diageo has provided the following statement in response to communications from independent brewer, BrewDog, in relation to the British Institute of Innkeeping Scottish Awards on Sunday 6 May 2012.

A Diageo spokesperson: “There was a serious misjudgement by Diageo staff at the awards dinner on Sunday evening in relation to the Bar Operator of the Year Award, which does not reflect in any way Diageo’s corporate values and behaviour.

We would like to apologise unreservedly to BrewDog and to the British Institute of Innkeeping for this error of judgement and we will be contacting both organisations imminently to express our regret for this unfortunate incident.”

So somebody probably had to fall on their sword and be the patsy for what is more likely business as usual. Pete Brown asked Diageo for a statement, and they responded with the same one that now appears on their website. Pete also added the following:

I’ve got more to say about the increasingly shameless bullying and anticompetitive tactics employed by some (but not all) big brewers, but this one really takes the biscuit. Diageo, having been caught red handed, had no option but to blame it on a rogue element, and we must take them at their word. But does this reveal something deeper about the attitudes of some global brewing corporations?

Since he’s closer to the British (and Scottish) beer business than I am, it will be interesting to hear his take on things in the near future as he promised to expound on this incident and talk about the larger issue of institutionalized influence by the global beer companies. But still, I can’t help but shake my head and just keep repeating, “wow.”

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MADD Thinks It’s Parents Fault That Kids Drink

by Jay Brooks on April 15, 2012 · 1 comment

in Editorial,Politics & Law

I know I’m beating a dead horse, but I don’t like what MADD has become. Despite the good intentions of its founding, it has veered into neo-prohibitionism and often uses the cudgel of protecting kids in its propaganda. Over the weekend, MADD’s twitter feed sent out this missive:

When teens feel they have their parents’ approval to drink, they do it more. Power of Parents.

I’m not sure where that absurd bit of propaganda originated, because the link in the tweet takes you to their Power of Parents page, which is thick with propaganda for parents. The problem with the “power of parents,” is that according to every study I’ve ever seen, that by the time kids hit their teens, that power is at an all-time low. Teenagers are influenced very little by their parents during those years. It’s their peers that influence them the most, making any “power” rather illusory.

But just the idea that they’d drink more of their parents said it was okay seems so painfully obvious as to be meaningless. My own mother kept our basement refrigerator stocked with beer for me and my friends. She did that in exchange for my promise to not take drugs. It was a good deal, and I kept up my end of the bargain, and she knew where I was, who I was with and that I was safe, albeit enjoying a few beers. Most of my friends’ parents knew about it, too, and felt it was fine with them, too. Did we drink more? Absolutely. Did we all turn out to be reprobates and criminals. Not a one of us I’m still in touch with is anything but a model citizen with a good job, a family, and all the trappings. Of course, if my mother, who was a nurse, did that today, she’d probably be jailed.

And there’s the rub. Why shouldn’t it be parents who decide whether their kids should drink alcohol in the home. Why should the state dictate that? Not everyone matures at the same rate. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not age that determines when someone is “ready” to drink, but their level of maturity, their ability to handle the responsibility. You probably know someone who’s 30 that shouldn’t be allowed the keys to a car sober and an 18-year old that’s wise beyond their years. We choose an arbitrary age because it’s easier and we don’t have to think too much. We live in a paternal society, where the government makes many, many decisions about how we are to live that people used to make for themselves. It hasn’t made society much better, as far as I can tell. It’s just made us lazy and stupid, and many people have lost the ability to think for themselves.

MADD followed up the first tweet with this one.

Did you know that 74% of kids turn to their parents for guidance on drinking

Again, that stretches credulity. It certainly runs counter to my understanding of how teenagers operate, and flies in the face of my own experience, too. And, as usual, the factoid is not cited; there’s no source for it, but that’s pretty typical for MADD and the other neo-prohibitionists. They either make these things up wholesale or pay someone to do a study that gets the result they want so they can pretend they didn’t just make it up. Three out every four kids go to their parents for advice on drinking? Uh, huh. Sure they do.

But okay, let’s say that’s true. The “power of parents” suggested by MADD says that parents shouldn’t drink in front of them, because that would give them the idea it’s okay to drink alcohol. Pushed by neo-prohibitionist lobbying, many states have actually made it illegal for a parent to give their children under 21 a drink. But teaching our kids about alcohol is precisely what parents should be doing so that they don’t go off to college and go crazy, binge drinking and getting into all manner of trouble. Drinking in front of your children responsibly models the proper behavior you want them to emulate. My kids have my approval to drink, they just know they’re not allowed to until they’re old enough. By the time they’ve reached that age, they’ll be ready, because I’ll have taught them about it as best I can, without breaking the asinine laws we live under. That’s what parenting means. It isn’t just telling them “no,” “don’t do it,” or “lying to them about drinking,” as the neo-prohibitionists would have us do. That’s the real power of parents, in a world with alcohol in it, you have to engage your kids with alcohol, too, not just pretend it doesn’t exist until they turn 21 and are magically expected to know what to do next, with no education, experience or role models.

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Beer Birthday: Tom McCormick

by Jay Brooks on April 5, 2012 · 3 comments

in Birthdays,Politics & Law

Today is the 55th birthday of Tom McCormick, Executive Director of the California Craft Brewers Association (CCBA). Tom’s also owned and ran a distributorship and the Pro Brewer website, but has found his true calling promoting and defending small brewers in California. Tom is the most unflappable person I’ve ever met, and hands down one of my favorite people in the industry. Join me in wishing Tom a very happy birthday.

Tom, with Nancy Johnson and Dave Buehler at Wynkoop for GABF last year.

With Stan Hieronymus Great Divide’s annual media reception.

Tom with Amy Dalton, from All About Beer magazine at the World Beer Cup dinner in San Diego.

Tom and Nancy Johnson at a BA dinner.

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My Home County Healthiest In State Despite Higher Than Average Binge Drinking

by Jay Brooks on April 3, 2012 · 1 comment

in Editorial,Just For Fun,Politics & Law

My family and I live just north of San Francisco, in Marin County. We moved here a number of years ago to be closer to my wife’s family, who live in Sonoma County. When she was working in San Francisco, Marin was in the middle of work and family, so it made sense. There’s a lot of good things to recommend here, though it is a very expensive place to live, and in fact a few years ago I saw that it was the third-most expensive county for real estate in the United States.

Our local newspaper, the Marin Independent Journal (or I.J.) — which in the interest of full disclosure is part of the Bay Area Newsgroup, the group I write my newspaper column for — had an interesting headline today about the health of Marin’s residents. In Marin County ranked healthiest county in state for third year in a row, despite residents’ love of alcohol, the author reports on a new study recently released by the neo-prohibitionist Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, along with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. This is the third year of the survey, which ranks the health of America’s counties. For the third straight year Marin County was declared the most healthy California county. For an equal number of years, Marin also has the dubious distinction of a higher than average level of binge drinking.

The percentage of Marin residents who told the pollsters they had engaged in binge drinking within the past 30 days — 24 percent — exceeded the state average of 17 percent and the national benchmark of 8 percent. The survey defines binge drinking as consuming more than four alcoholic beverages on a single occasion, if you’re a women, and five drinks if you’re a man.

But maybe that’s the case because there’s little or no correlation between the two, or at least not the correlation that the neo-prohibitionists who funded the study would prefer. They assume, for primarily political and philosophical reasons, that binge drinking is unhealthy. But what if it’s not? What if it has more to do with the way it’s now defined, which again has more to do with politics than reality. The way “binge drinking” is defined has greatly narrowed over the past few decades which is at least one reason why anti-alcohol groups keep insisting that binge-drinking is such a growing societal problem. But at the same time, several recent studies and meta-studies have revealed that people who drink moderately tend to live longer than those who abstain, an inconvenient fact that is rarely mentioned by neo-prohibitionist groups because it doesn’t fit with their agenda. But even worse, from their point of view, some of these same studies have concluded that even people who binge drink tend to be healthier and live longer than the total abstainers. So perhaps binge drinking and health are more closely associated than we think, just not in the way that neo-prohibitionists would prefer. The least healthy county for which there’s data, Del Norte, has a lower rate of binge drinking (10%) than the healthiest.

But as even the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation makes clear in the own press release about the survey, “healthier counties are no more likely than unhealthy counties to have lower rates of excessive drinking.”

Here’s the top counties in states, followed by the county’s “excessive drinking” percentage, followed by their state’s average, with the “national benchmark” being 8%:

Alabama (Shelby): 13%/12%
Alaska (Southeast Fairbanks): 13%/19%
Arizona (Santa Cruz): 18%/19%
Arkansas (Benton): 12%/12%
California (Marin): 24%/17%
Colorado (Pitkin): 30%/18%
Connecticut (Tolland): 17%/18%
Delaware (New Castle): 21%/19%
Florida (St. Johns): 21%/16%
Georgia (Fayette): 18%/14%
Hawaii (Honolulu): 18%/19%
Idaho (Blaine): 23%/15%
Illinois (Kendall): 23%/19%
Indiana (Hamilton): 17%/16%
Iowa (Winneshiek): 19%/20%
Kansas (Riley): 22%/15%
Kentucky (Oldham): 16%/11%
Louisiana (St. Tammany): 19%/15%
Maine (Sagadahoc): 17%/17%
Maryland (Howard): 14%/15%
Massachusetts (Dukes): 29%/19%
Michigan (Leelanau): 20%/18%
Minnesota (Steele): 18%/19%
Mississippi (DeSoto): 10%/11%
Missouri (St. Charles): 24%/17%
Montana (Gallatin): 22%/19%
Nebraska (Cedar): 23%/19%
Nevada (Douglas): 20%/19%
New Hampshire (Merrimack): 16%/18%
New Jersey (Hunterdon): 18%/16%
New Mexico (Los Alamos): 11%/13%
New York (Putnam): 21%/17%
North Carolina (Wake): 15%/13%
North Dakota (Griggs): 19%/22%
Ohio (Delaware): 20%/17%
Oklahoma (Cleveland): 16%/14%
Oregon (Benton): 15%/16%
Pennsylvania (Union): 16%/18%
Rhode Island (Bristol): 17%/19%
South Carolina (Beaufort): 20%/14%
South Dakota (Brookings): 20%/19%
Tennessee (Williamson): 15%/9%
Texas (Collin): 13%/16%
Utah (Morgan): 9%/9%
Vermont (Chittenden): 20%/19%
Virginia (Fairfax): 20%/16%
Washington (San Juan): 21%/17%
West Virginia (Pendelton): 12%/10%
Wisconsin (St. Croix): 31%/24%
Wyoming (Teton): 22%/17%

In every single case, for the healthiest county in every one of the 50 states, their “excessive drinking” percentage is above the national benchmark, and in many cases well above it. 38 of the 50 states’ healthiest counties are at least twice the national benchmark and six are within a point, or more, of tripling it. Every state’s binge drinking average is well above the national average, which seems strange. And in 35 of the states, the healthiest county also has a binge drinking percentage that’s the same or higher than the state average, too. But the obvious takeaway is what you’d expect given total mortality studies, which is that there’s an inverse correlation between binge drinking and health. The counties with the healthiest residents also have higher numbers of binge drinkers. That much is obvious and is supported by the data, despite the story being spun being very different, even the opposite of what conclusions can be drawn from the numbers. Not that they’re making it easy to see. I had to look at each state and then each county’s records to make a chart of this somewhat damning data.

Of course, part of this is how meaningless our definition of binge drinking has become. Including people who drink five or more drinks in a single setting once a month or even once a year distorts the real issues of problem drinkers. It inflates the numbers, which is good if your agenda is to make false accusations about how bad alcohol is for society but terrible if you really want to adress those problems.

Here in California, the five healthiest counties are:

Marin
Santa Clara
San Benito
Placer
San Mateo

Every single one of the ten healthiest counties in California have an excessive drinking rate above national benchmark, too.

Larry Meredith, director of the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services, is quoted in the IJ’s article, saying. “Our strategy must continue — to eliminate health disparities, and conditions that undermine a long and happy life.” Except that he keeps insisting that binge drinking, as defined by the study, “continues to be an issue,” despite the fact that the same study’s numbers seem to indicate the opposite. In the healthiest counties across the nation, binge drinking, as they define it, is higher in every instance.

Real binge drinkers, the more undefinable people who simply keep drinking and rarely ever stop, are not really captured by this type of survey, because they’re lumped together with responsible people who on occasion drink a little more than usual, whether in celebration of something or to drown their sorrows. As long as we keep drawing more and more people into the category of “binge drinkers,” we dilute the real problem. When that mistake is obvious even by a study conducted by an anti-alcohol organization, and then those results all but ignored, it exposes the propaganda and dishonesty of their agenda.

It’s almost funny to see Marin County’s own anti-alcohol organization, Alcohol Justice (who until last year were the Marin Institue) try to distance themselves from this. Their public affairs director, Michael Scippa, says AJ “shouldn’t be faulted for not being more effective in reducing Marin County’s alcohol consumption.” He lists a number of excuses, such as “availability and Marin being a mostly affluent community” and that “[they're] constantly battling an industry that has enormous resources.” But what is he apologizing for? That Marin County has the state’s healthiest people living in it, despite ignoring his group’s propaganda? Maybe it’s not the people, but the propaganda that’s wrong? Because people all over the country are ignoring his advice and are all the healthier for it.

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Anatomy Of A Propaganda Piece

by Jay Brooks on March 21, 2012 · 1 comment

in Beers,Editorial,Politics & Law

With Alcohol Justice promoting it, I just knew there had to be more to the CNN story Movies May Increase Binge Drinking in Teens. The article is based on a study published in the journal Pediatrics with the more benign title Alcohol Consumption in Movies and Adolescent Binge Drinking in 6 European Countries. But either way, Hollywood is, of course, the bogeyman. The study “surveyed 16,500 students ages 10 to 19 from Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Scotland.”

The students were asked how often they drank five alcoholic beverages during one sitting [interesting a European study has adopted the ridiculous U.S. definition of "binge drinking"], and about the types of movies they watched. Participants were given a list of 50 movies to choose from, which included many top box-office hits from the U.S. The number of drinking scenes was tallied for each movie.

I don’t have the resources to pay to see the whole study, so I don’t know what films are on the list, but the first thing I have to wonder is how many of those films are age-appropriate for 10-year olds? Many Hollywood blockbusters would be at least “PG-13″ (so no 10-12 year olds allowed) or “R” (no 10-17 year olds allowed). Are there many movies with “drinking scenes” that are “G” or that every parent would find appropriate for their 10 through 19 year old child? There’s also no breakdown of how many kids were 10, 15, 19, etc., but I have to believe there’s a vast difference between the effect of watching a film on a ten-year old and a young adult, age 18 or 19. The researchers apparently also considered other so-called “risk factors,” and somehow accounted for each “teen’s levels of rebelliousness or sensation-seeking, peer drinking levels, family drinking patterns, affluence and gender.” That’s a lot of data on 16,500 kids, and almost none of it could be considered the “hard facts” type.

The overall results were that “27% of the sample had consumed >5 drinks on at least 1 occasion in their life.” So roughly 1 out of 4 of the “kids” had consumed 5 drinks at least once, and possibly ONLY once, in their life. And of those 16,500, some of the “kids” were legally allowed to drink 5 beers if they wanted to. In Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, the minimum age for drinking is 16. In Poland and Scotland it’s 18 (though once source I have says it’s 16 in Poland). In Iceland it’s 20. So for at least half the countries where the kids were surveyed, they were permitted to drink at least beer 4 out of the 10 ages of “kids” in the study.

For five-sixths of the countries, at least some of the ages of children surveyed were likewise legally allowed to drink alcohol. Like the age breakdowns, there’s no information available (at least to me) about how many of those surveyed were from which country. Given all the supposed control factors they accounted for, the legal age at which people in the surveyed countries are permitted to drink alcohol seems nakedly absent and, at least to my way of thinking, a rather important omission.

And one last comment about their methodology, such as it was. To determine each film’s — I don’t know, “quotient,” “unworthiness” or whatever — “the number of drinking scenes was tallied for each movie” by the researchers. But is the sheer number of times there’s a scene of people drinking in any way relevant? Is there no context to each scene? Are there not positive and negative ways to portray drinking alcohol? I already know the answer to that one, as obviously the researchers are convinced that ANY depiction of people drinking alcohol they consider wrong, but of course a second’s thought will reveal that to be patently nonsense. Just counting how often people are seen drinking alcohol in a film really tells you nothing about how influential it will be, or indeed, if it registers anything at all. Shown being consumed responsibly, it could just as easily be a positive influence.

Personally, I’m much more concerned about my kids seeing casual violence in films than drinking. But there, as well as in America, research continues to claim that there’s a direct “link between drinking in movies and adolescent alcohol consumption habits.” This latest study’s conclusion likewise claims that the “link between alcohol use in movies and adolescent binge drinking was robust and seems relatively unaffected by cultural contexts.”

But in the last paragraphs — well after most people probably stopped reading — was what I’d been thinking as I read this, that “even though the European study shows a strong association between what is seen on the movie screen and binge drinking, it cannot show cause and effect.” Like Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder, not everything is as it seems.

And despite the tone of the story up until that point having been confidently certain, as expressed in the headline’s more movies, more binging (or better mo movies, mo binging), it may not be as certain as they would have you believe. Here’s the smoking gun.

It may be that binge drinking teens seek out movies that have alcohol scenes, or it could be that seeing scenes of alcohol use in movies makes them more likely to binge drink. More research is needed to confirm these findings.

I continue to be troubled by the wide range of ages surveyed, because in my experience those are the ages when people change more in a shorter period of time than at any other time in their entire life. The conclusion suggests that to combat this scourge, parents should “go to the movies with [their kids] and discuss what you’re seeing. What you say matters more than what one TV show or one movie says.” In other words, be a parent. So is this a problem of parenting or the movies? Should movies be stripped of adult content because kids might watch them? That does seem to be a common strategy by neo-prohibitionist groups, especially with regard to advertising.

In the end, this seems like yet another study riddled with more questions than answers. But, as is typical, those questions — if the media raises them at all — are buried at the end of the article, well after the average person has given up reading and has moved on to something else. What we’re left with is a “survey” (and we all now how teenagers always tell the truth about what they’re doing) of kids in six varied nations (with different minimum drinking ages) who are of widely different ages (from a childlike ten to a young adult 19) who appear to binge drink more (or at least once) if they see Hollywood blockbuster movies (or it may be teens who drink prefer those movies). Tell me again how exactly that’s news?

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Creativity & Beer

by Jay Brooks on March 21, 2012 · 3 comments

in Beers,Editorial,Politics & Law,Related Pleasures

One of the unspoken benefits of beer is that it’s a very useful relaxation tool. After a hard, stressful day of work, a tasty beer is just the thing to calm one’s nerves. It would be nearly impossible to quantify, but I have to wonder how much better off many people are because of the relaxation afforded them through the simple act of drinking a beer. How many didn’t do something that they might later regret had they remained tense, stressed and on edge. It’s worth considering, especially as the neo-prohibitionists increasingly insist that beer has no health benefits. But the mental health benefits that most of us get from a calming glass of beer can’t be ignored.

But there’s apparently one more mental health benefit to a beer, as reported recently in the Wall Street Journal (and thanks to Jeff B. for sending me the link). The essay, by Jonah Lehrer, is How To Be Creative, and the teaser subtitle give a nutshell account of what’s to come. “The image of the ‘creative type’ is a myth. Jonah Lehrer on why anyone can innovate—and why a hot shower, a cold beer or a trip to your colleague’s desk might be the key to your next big idea.” The fascinating story is about where creativity and innovation come from, something science has only very recently even tried to explain. The essay discusses several theories and gives examples of different ways that creativity is sparked and influenced. One of those, of course, is through drinking a glass of beer.

Interestingly, Mr. Beeman and his colleagues have found that certain factors make people much more likely to have an insight, better able to detect the answers generated by the aSTG [superior anterior temporal gyrus]. For instance, exposing subjects to a short, humorous video—the scientists use a clip of Robin Williams doing stand-up—boosts the average success rate by about 20%.

Alcohol also works. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago compared performance on insight puzzles between sober and intoxicated students. The scientists gave the subjects a battery of word problems known as remote associates, in which people have to find one additional word that goes with a triad of words. Here’s a sample problem:

Pine Crab Sauce

In this case, the answer is “apple.” (The compound words are pineapple, crab apple and apple sauce.) Drunk students solved nearly 30% more of these word problems than their sober peers.

What explains the creative benefits of relaxation and booze? The answer involves the surprising advantage of not paying attention. Although we live in an age that worships focus — we are always forcing ourselves to concentrate, chugging caffeine — this approach can inhibit the imagination. We might be focused, but we’re probably focused on the wrong answer.

And this is why relaxation helps: It isn’t until we’re soothed in the shower or distracted by the stand-up comic that we’re able to turn the spotlight of attention inward, eavesdropping on all those random associations unfolding in the far reaches of the brain’s right hemisphere. When we need an insight, those associations are often the source of the answer.

So if you’re having trouble with your latest creative project, stuck somewhere with no solution in sight? Relax, don’t worry, have a beer. That may prove to be just the thing to free your mind and in the process unlock the creativity necessary to solve your problem. Liquid gold indeed.

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Oh, The Horror: Children Recognize Beer Brands

March 19, 2012

Another classic propaganda study was just released in Britain, using the all-too-common meme of “think of the children” as the wedge to attack alcohol advertising. Ever since Prohibition ended miserably here in the U.S., anti-alcohol groups turned their attention to other methods of crippling alcohol, and attacking advertising has been a favorite strategy. It’s quite [...]

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State Beer Excise Tax Rates As Of 2011

March 15, 2012

The Tax Foundation, a Washington think tank dedicated to al things taxable, had last week for their weekly Monday Maps on the Tax Foundation’s blog an infographic on State Beer Excise Tax Rates as of September 1, 2011. Alaska has the highest tax rate and Wyoming the lowest. And, of course, the chart doesn’t include [...]

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BrewDog Vs. CAMRA Humor

March 8, 2012

Regardless of which side you’re on in the mock feud between BrewDog and CAMRA (The Campaign For Real Ale), this is pretty funny. James Watt of BrewDog just tweeted this hilarious poster portraying the two sides. I don’t know who created it, but it’s priceless.

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Rare Beer Hysteria Gone Awry

March 6, 2012

I assume many people already saw this, and the brouhaha seems to have died down, if not gone away. But the issue remains, lingering like a wound that won’t heal. The specific incident in question began a few days ago when a restaurant in Sacramento, Kupros Bistro, got a keg of Russian River’s highly sought [...]

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It’s Official: February Declared California Beer Month

February 23, 2012

It’s been rumored for weeks, maybe longer, but I got the word a few days ago that the California Senate would vote this morning between 9 and 10 o’clock on SCR 66, introduced by Senate majority leader Ellen Corbett, a resolution to declare February California Beer Month. Rick Sellers, who writes at Pacific Brew News [...]

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Schlafly, Texas Ranger

February 10, 2012

If this hilarious video for the annual The Repeal of Prohibition Beer Festival doesn’t make you want to attend, I don’t know what else would. The festival will be held at Schlafly Bottleworks in St. Louis, Missouri on Saturday, April 14th, 2012 from noon until 5:00 p.m.

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Beer Birthday: John Hickenlooper

February 7, 2012

Today is the 60th birthday of Governor of Colorado — and former Denver mayor — John Hickenlooper. John was also the co-founder of Wynkoop Brewery in Denver’s LoDo District, and in fact is credited with helping to revitalize the whole area. After being a popular and by accounts very effective mayor for several years, he [...]

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State Alcohol Administrators Slam Alcohol Justice

January 27, 2012

You probably knew that each state has some form of an ABC, an alcohol control organization that after Prohibition was created to administer their state’s laws regarding alcohol. Not surprisingly, they also have an organization where the professionals in these state organizations can get together and share information, how they do things, and generally learn [...]

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Paper or Plastic & Beer

January 18, 2012

Here’s an odd little story from Virginia, sent in by an alert reader (thanks Jeff). In many places, there’s a growing debate about plastic bags, paper bags or no bags at the grocery store. In Virginia, there currently is no law regarding them, but that hasn’t stopped stores all along the southeastern coast of Virginia [...]

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Wisconsin Homebrewing Under Fire

January 12, 2012

If you’re a homebrewer in Wisconsin, be careful not to leave the house with your beer. When they call it home brew, they really mean it. Apparently there’s a growing strict interpretation of the state’s laws regarding homebrewing — similar to what went down in Oregon recently — that could prevent homebrewers from taking their [...]

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