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SF Alcohol Tax Passes In Initial Vote

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san-francisco
To no one’s surprise, the proposed ordinance to impose a new tax on alcohol sold in San Francisco passed today in a city supervisors’ meeting. The next step (before last week’s postponed meeting) was that it would be voted on a second time at another board meeting on September 14, so now I presume any second vote will be at a later meeting.

It will then go to mayor Gavin Newsom, who has ten days to either sign or veto it. The mayor is on the record saying he’ll veto it, at which point it will be sent back to the Board of Supervisors who can override Newsom’s veto with eight votes. That would most likely be in early to mid-October.

As an aside, I’ve noticed every news report lately, even NPR, that mentions Newsom’s intention to veto the ordinance also brings up the fact that he used to be in the alcohol business, as if that means he’s incapable of deciding anything impartially. It’s more likely he understands the arguments of the small brewers, vintners, distillers, bar owners, retailers, etc. who oppose it. But it’s sure nice to see that unbiased reporting by our local media, way to not take sides.

During the hearing supervisor Chris Daly called those who disagreed with the proposed ordinance “whiners” … excuse, me “f___ing whiners.” Very classy. You can see the stream in the Marin Institute’s twitter feed of the meeting. NOTE: I initially said it was the Marin Institute who was tweeting that, not realizing it was Daly who said it. I apologize for the mistake.

Ithaca’s Twin Fermenters

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It’s never too late to celebrate great news. Congratulations to Jeff and Heather O’Neil on the birth of their twins, August William and Clara Jean, born July 21. Jeff is the brewmaster at the Ithaca Beer Co. Join me in wishing Jeff and Heather best wishes on the addition of two new fermenters to their brewery family.

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Jeff and Heather with the twins — Clara on the left, August the right — and their 4-year old son Henry Sinon.

Particulars:

Label: August William
Original Gravity: 6 lbs., 7 oz.
IBUs: 20 in.
Style: Boy
Release Date: July 21, 2010; 4:20 p.m.

Label: Clara Jean
Original Gravity: 7 lbs., 6 oz.
IBUs: 19 in.
Style: Girl
Release Date: July 21, 2010, 4:21 p.m.

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Ithaca brewer Jeff O’Neil with his twins.

The Politics Of Deception

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I was going to stay away from commenting on a new bill in California, AB 1060, really I was. Something about it bothered me from the start, the problem it seeks to fix never seemed credible, but it seemed inevitable that it would pass anyway. It was actually introduced in February of 2009 and has been winding its way through the state legislature ever since. It was recently passed and is on its way to the Governator’s office for signature or veto.

What AB 1060 does it make it illegal for stores, primarily grocery stores, to sell alcohol using the new self-serve checkout machines that are popping up all over the place. The argument is that underage kids can get around the roadblocks in the system set up to keep underage people from being able to — gasp — purchase alcohol. The bill also tackles the made-up problems of intoxicating people buying booze and theft, though it’s not the theft of the alcohol that worries the state, but the theft of the tax revenue lost in the theft.

The bill was spun so that it’s all about “Alcohol & Teen Drinking Prevention,” as is made clear by the Yes on AB 1060 website. They write:

AB 1060 only requires that customers walk over a few feet to a checkout line with a cashier who can check ID. It’s not too much to ask to protect our youth and our communities.

It is only a matter of time that our youth will exploit a vulnerable system to purchase alcohol without showing ID. We must take action to stop it now.

As they state, “[i]t’s not too much to ask to protect our youth and our communities.” And no, perhaps it’s not, but it is just one more way in which the roughly 80% of the population who is above 21 is inconvenienced yet again in our out-of-proportion drive to “protect” the young’uns. And that’s why I initially just let it go, because I’d sound like even more of a jackass than I usually do if I got worked up about not being able to more quickly check out of the grocery store every time I wanted to buy beer.

One funny thing I can’t help but note is how our nation’s youth is portrayed as being at once naive and in great need of being protected and, of course, not be able to responsibly drink alcohol but yet at the same time they say it’s “only a matter of time [before] our youth will exploit a vulnerable system to purchase alcohol without showing ID.” Wow, we must have a pretty savvy and well-organized generation of kids who can take down the best computer minds who created — you have to admit — the pretty amazing self-checkout machine.

Anyway, what’s changed my mind is that MADD, Join Together and the Marin Institute are all supporting the bill and urging Governor Terminator to sign it into law.

Except, as an aside, I have to mention that the Marin Institute is supposedly a “watchdog.” What are they doing weighing in on this? Their “mission” is “to protect the public from the impact of the alcohol industry’s negative practices.” This has absolutely nothing to do with the alcohol industry, this is about grocery stores and youth access to alcohol (supposedly, anyway). Making it harder for everyone to buy alcohol draped in the protective mantle of “it’s for the kids” is the domain of the neo-prohibitionists, something they assure me they’re not.

But when you look deeper, you find that this bill may not really be about the kids at all, and instead may be about money and unions. The support of the neo-prohibitionists was either a calculated ploy on the part of the bill’s sponsors or a very happy accident. State Senator Tom Harmon, from the 35th District (Orange County coastline) has a very different story to tell. Last month, he wrote AB 1060 is a Solution in Search of a Problem, which is below here in its entirety. It made no difference, of course, in the final vote, because a good story, especially one that’s about protecting the kiddies, beats the truth every time.

When something looks too good to be true, a smart person starts wondering what’s behind it. In the case of Assembly Bill 1060, you don’t have to look very far. Presented as a feel-good law to protect kids, this bill is really about protecting union jobs.

AB 1060 purports to solve a number of “problems.” Minors sneaking alcohol through self-service checkouts, drunken shoppers buying more booze, and the state missing out on its share of sales taxes because self-check out technology facilitates stealing. None of these arguments makes much sense.

The bill theorizes that kids could buy alcohol beverages at self-serve check aisles. In fact, there is already a lock-out mechanism at such stands preventing anyone from buying alcohol without a clerk present to sign off on their age. Next?

Protecting inebriated shoppers from themselves is a real howler. Anybody who’s ever used one of those self-serve check-out stands knows it’s difficult enough for a sober person.

Finally, the bill’s author worries that the state will lose sales tax money if more booze is boosted. Is this about money or about protecting customers? If this were a problem, would stores — who have more to lose than the state if their merchandise is stolen — have instituted self check-out in the first place? Obviously not.

AB 1060 would deny a liquor license to any store “using a point-of-sale system with limited or no assistance from an employee of the licensee.” Read that again. It means a store that sells alcohol beverages could not have any self-serve check stands.

The bill’s true target is Fresh and Easy, a new supermarket chain that features all-self-service check stands. Fresh and Easy supermarkets are designed to provide affordable food choices by holding down costs through automation and energy efficiency. They’re finding a niche in low-income, underserved neighborhoods. Their workers are non-union.

AB 1060 mandates greater employee supervision of self-service check stands, increasingly used in major supermarkets. And it would limit supermarkets’ low-cost, self-service technology.

Instead of helping constituents find accessible, affordable food, this bill by Assemblyman Hector De La Torre will raise food prices for all shoppers in order to protect supermarket unions. It has nothing to do with protecting youngsters, drunks or taxpayers.

But none of that matters to the neo-prohibitionists. They care about restricting access to alcohol for everybody.

Trash Talking Prop 26

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This is a great example of what I hate about anti-alcohol organizations and the Marin Institute in particular. Given that they’re trying to impose a new tax on alcohol in San Francisco using a mechanism that came about through case law (the Sinclair decision) where calling what would otherwise be a tax a “fee” allows them to circumvent the normal two-thirds vote needed for a new tax, it’s no surprise that they’re against one of the propositions on the November ballot — namely Prop 26. That’s because Prop 26 seeks to do away with the Sinclair loophole where taxes masquerading as a fee will no longer require a simple majority, but will instead need two-thirds to pass, just like every other tax. That would be a big blow to their efforts to get more taxes imposed in other communities in California. So it’s entirely natural that they’d oppose it. I’d have been surprised to hear any other scenario.

But here’s what I didn’t, but perhaps should have, expected: the low down dirty politics and propaganda by which their opposition has taken shape. In an e-mail blast today, the Marin Institute is blaming “big alcohol” for the proposition and acting as if it’s happening in a vacuum, with no responsibility on their part. It’s shameless spin and as ugly a piece of propaganda as I’ve seen. If I’d had a beer in mouth when I was reading it, I most likely would have spit it out in surprise on more than one occasion.

First of all, they characterize the proposition as one which would “essentially absolve companies that pollute, or otherwise cause harm to the public, from paying for that harm by subjecting fees to the same impossible two-thirds vote that taxes must garner to be enacted.” Horseshit. What the proposition does is subject all taxes to the same standard, in effect closing the loophole that Sinclair opened. Calling them “fees” to get around the 2/3 standard was simply a way to circumvent the state tax law.

A stated by the Yes on 26 advocates:

State and local politicians have been using a loophole in the law to raise taxes by disguising them as “fees” — costing consumers billions of dollars in higher costs for goods like food, gas, and cell phones. Prop. 26 requires politicians to meet the same Constitutional requirement to pass these Hidden Taxes as to pass other taxes — with a two-thirds vote of the Legislature at the state level, and with a vote of the people at the local level.

Next the Marin Institutes note “a review of the Yes on Prop 26 website shows Big Alcohol’s fingerprints all over the measure.” By “all over,” of course, they mean are supporting it and/or have donated money to support it. They go on to add that “August saw an infusion of $800,000 to the Prop 26 campaign by the Small Business Action Committee (SBA). According to an article in Capitol Weekly, the SBA “revealed that it received more than $1 million from alcohol, tobacco and real estate groups. Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris USA, donated $500,000. Anheuser-Busch, which brews Budweiser, gave $200,000 and the Wine Institute chipped in another $50,000.”

Hmm, in August there was infusion of donations to support Prop 26? What might have triggered that? What is the Marin Institute not telling you? July and August is when every company who makes alcohol, distributes alcohol and sells and serves alcohol realized they were under attack by the Marin Institute, who was pushing Avalos and supplying him him with all the resources for the test case to add a new tax to alcohol in San Francisco. That’s when most us even became aware of Prop 26. Before that, I’d wager, hardly anyone in the alcohol industry had paid it much attention. When you’re being attacked, you tend to defend yourself.

But the Marin Institute also makes it sound as if “Big Alcohol” and “Big Oil” are behind Prop 26. They’re not. The proposition was sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Taxpayers’ Association, not exactly radical organizations out to cheat the public the way the Marin Institute spins it. While the Marin Institute focuses on beer and wine companies, there are over 100 organizations who support the proposition, including nearly sixty chambers of commerce and tax organizations. The rest are primarily trade organizations from a wide range of businesses and industries. That alcohol companies seem over-represented is a direct result of the actions of the Marin Institute. So having caused this situation, using it in propaganda against the proposition without acknowledging it seems pretty shiftless to me.

But it’s their conclusion that has me sighing in exhausted frustration. “Instead of spending all that money to get out of paying for the harm its products cause, perhaps Big Alcohol could instead just pay its fair share to offset massive societal costs.” I’m so tired of this mantra of theirs. First of all, the harm isn’t caused by the products — alcohol — but by individual abusers, people who should take responsibility for their actions. And the vast majority of drinkers do not abuse it. Second, every good or service sold in the world has the potential to cost society something, and most in fact do. But the idea that only alcohol has to “pay” the costs that abusers cost society is maddening. Guns, red meat, high fructose corn syrup, oil, cars, fast food, and every freaking other thing gets a pass; economists even have a word for it — externalities. But the insistence that alcohol has to pay for the bad decisions by individual abusers just rankles, especially when that’s characterized as its “fair share.” Either everything — every company, every product, etc. — pays the individual costs to society that can somehow be ascribed to them or no one does. There’s nothing fair about making one pay while everyone else gets a pass.

San Francisco Votes on Alcohol Tax

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no-beer-tax
For the second time, San Francisco supervisor John Avalos has gone back on his word. As the sponsor of the the new proposed tax on all alcohol sold in San Francisco ordinance, he first told the Small Business Commission that he would delay a hearing on the tax in mid-July. But because of Proposition 26 on the ballet having the potential to do away with the type of tax masquerading as a fee that he’s proposing, he changed his mind and went forward with the hearing anyway. Later, in late August, it looked like it was all but inevitable that he would send it back into committee for more review due to overwhelming opposition by the business community. Well that didn’t last long either, and he changed his mind again and later today, at 2:00 p.m., the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on the new tax. It’s likely that it will get the required six votes to pass and at that point will be voted on a second time at another board meeting on September 14.

It will then go to mayor Gavin Newsom, who has ten days to either sign or veto it. The mayor is on the record saying he’ll veto it, at which point it will be sent back to the Board of Supervisors who can override Newsom’s veto with eight votes. That would most likely be in early October. Why Avalos keeps saying one thing and doing another is pure politics, of course. The strategy now is that “he wants to push for a veto override.” The likeliest reason is that someone — perhaps the Marin institute? — has whispered in his ear that they can flip two supervisors and get him the two additional votes he needs to override the anticipated mayoral veto. The Marin Institute has begun marshaling their base to contact the politicians against the alcohol tax in a web alert. Obviously, that works both ways and I’d suggest that if you’re against the new tax, you should contact them and ask them to continue to oppose it.

If you’re in the city today and want to oppose this tax, please consider attending the meeting and voicing your opposition. I’ll have more on this later on today, but wanted to get this out as soon as possible.

UPDATE: Today’s vote has been canceled due to some sort of mix-up with the clerks office. It has now been rescheduled for next Tuesday, September 14.

Beer From Early 1800s Found In Baltic Shipwreck

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shipwreck
CNN is reporting that the World’s ‘Oldest Beer’ Found in Shipwreck in the Baltic Sea off the coast of the Åland Islands. The Ålands are an autonomous group of nearly 6,000 islands near Finland. The cargo ship is believed to have been sailing from Denmark, most likely Copenhagen, sometime between 1800 and 1830 possibly bound for St. Petersburg, Russia. There’s also speculation that t may have been sent “by France’s King Louis XVI to the Russian Imperial Court.”

Initially, divers found bottles of Champagne, but later found additional bottles, some of which burst from the pressure upon reaching the surface, revealing that there was beer inside them. From the CNN report:

“At the moment, we believe that these are by far the world’s oldest bottles of beer,” Rainer Juslin, permanent secretary of the island’s ministry of education, science and culture, told CNN on Friday via telephone from Mariehamn, the capital of the Aland Islands.

“It seems that we have not only salvaged the oldest champagne in the world, but also the oldest still drinkable beer. The culture in the beer is still living.”

It will certainly be interesting to see what further analysis of the beer reveals.

Heavy Drinkers Outlive Abstainers

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binge-barney
Many different studies have shown that people who drink alcohol in moderation liver longer than binge drinkers and abstainers. Anti-alcohol groups, and especially AA, have petulantly insisted the reason that abstainers show up in the data as having shorter lifespans than moderate drinkers is because they are all former heavy drinkers who stopped drinking after the damage was done. A new study finally puts that self-serving lie to rest.

Late-Life Alcohol Consumption and 20-Year Mortality was recently published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. The study examined “the association between alcohol consumption and all-cause mortality over 20 years among 1,824 older adults, controlling for a wide range of potential confounding factors associated with abstention.” The results, according to the abstract were the following;

Controlling only for age and gender, compared to moderate drinkers, abstainers had a more than 2 times increased mortality risk, heavy drinkers had 70% increased risk, and light drinkers had 23% increased risk. A model controlling for former problem drinking status, existing health problems, and key sociodemographic and social-behavioral factors, as well as for age and gender, substantially reduced the mortality effect for abstainers compared to moderate drinkers. However, even after adjusting for all covariates, abstainers and heavy drinkers continued to show increased mortality risks of 51 and 45%, respectively, compared to moderate drinkers.

And here it is again in a handy chart I made:

mortality-risk

See, drinking is good for you. It is part of a healthy lifestyle. Drinking moderately is the best choice you can make to lead a healthier life. It’s better for you than drinking only occasionally, drinking heavily or not at all.

Here’s how Time Magazine put it.

But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who had never been drinkers, second-highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.

They conclude:

These are remarkable statistics. Even though heavy drinking is associated with higher risk for cirrhosis and several types of cancer (particularly cancers in the mouth and esophagus), heavy drinkers are less likely to die than people who have never drunk. One important reason is that alcohol lubricates so many social interactions, and social interactions are vital for maintaining mental and physical health. As I pointed out last year, nondrinkers show greater signs of depression than those who allow themselves to join the party.

That said, the new study provides the strongest evidence yet that moderate drinking is not only fun but good for you. So make mine a double.

Of course, the researchers bend over backwards to make sure no one thinks they might be advocating for drinking. Heaven forbid. That’s been pretty much SOP for academic papers that have findings at odds with the anti-alcohol community for as long as I can remember. If they discovered tomorrow that chocolate cured cancer, do you think there would be warnings about the dangers of obesity attached to it? My point is everything has consequences but it seems that alcohol continues to carry a stigma that most others do not.

Still, this is great news.

Brewers Association Power Hour Reveals New Craft Numbers

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If you’re a member of the Brewers Association, a trade organization for small breweries, you have the opportunity to listen in on the bi-monthly Power Hour, an on-line, interactive teleconference series. This morning’s topic was “Craft Brewing & Mid-Year Category Sales Review.” I didn’t listen in to this one, but happily Ray Daniels, he of the Cicerone program, was kind enough to tweet a number of the statistics quoted in the talk by Dan Wandel, with the Symphony IRI Group, and better still, Todd Alstrom, posted Ray’s tweets on Beer Advocate where they can live forever instead of being lost in the ether. Below is just a few of the more interesting tidbits.

  • First half of 2010 sales data — Craft volume up 11.9%!
  • Symphony IRI Group show craft beer being 8.7% of the total beer market in H1 2010
  • Sales of craft beer 22 oz bottles up 28% in 2010 vs. 2009 in supermarkets.
  • 3 of top 10 new brands are IPAs
  • 8 of the top 15 new craft brands this year are IPAs.
  • What recession? First half craft sales showing best growth of any year since 2007.
  • Top 10 major brewer brands DOWN more than 5 million cases so far this year.
  • 511 craft beer UPCs (products) being sold in California.
  • More households in the US now purchasing craft beer versus a year ago—better than any other segment.
  • Dan Wandel from SIG says craft beer the “shining star” of US beer market, on track for 6th (I think he said) year of >10% growth.

You can see the rest of Ray Daniels’ tweets here. Thanks again to Todd for saving me the trouble of having to go back and grab Ray’s tweets individually.

Deep-Fried Beer!?!

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I’ve often used the proverb “frying makes every thing taste better,” and people who’ve eaten with me know I take that seriously. I live for French fries and potato chips, and my favorite sandwich is the Monte Cristo, essentially a deep-friend sandwich. I’ll fry pretty much anything, and indeed have tried frying many an unusual foodstuff. There’s certainly a rich tradition of using beer in batters and other sauces that food is cooked in, but I confess I’ve never considered frying the liquid itself, for what I thought were obvious reasons. But then I don’t have Mark Zable’s experience and wherewithal. His father Norman has had a Belgian Waffle concession stand at the Texas State Fair for 47 years, and several years ago his son Mark began tinkering with a number of new food ideas, such as Chocolate Covered Strawberry Waffle Balls and Sweet Jalapeno Corn Dog Shrimp.

But it’s his latest creation that made me sit up and take notice: Fried Beer, which they’ve trademarked and the process they use is also being patented.

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To me they look a bit like ravioli with beer inside. Three years in the making, the Dallas Morning News has the story:

For three years, Zable has been on a mission to concoct Fried Beer. He remembers staring at a bar menu in a restaurant. Calamari. Nachos. Fried cheese.

Bor-ing.

“Someone needs to figure out a way to fry beer,” he thought.

Zable started experimenting. But the beer-and-dough concoction kept exploding once it hit the fryer. He kept getting burned.

So he consulted with a food scientist — still, no luck.

Then, earlier this year, he finally found the recipe for success. Now Zable keeps the process shrouded in secrecy and has applied for a Fried Beer patent and trademark.

Mark Zable figured out how to fry beer by sealing it in dough. He had to persist because early efforts blew up.

I’m certainly willing to give it a try. Apparently when you bite into it, the beer squirts out into your mouth to mix its flavor with the dough. How bad could that be? It will debut at the Texas Fair and is also one of eight finalists in the Sixth Annual Big Tex Choice Awards.

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Mark Zable with his fried beer. [photo by Vernon Bryant, Dallas Morning News.]

And here’s Zable talking about what he went through to come up with it:

They’ve also set up a website, where they further describe Fried Beer:

People said it could not be done; impossible is what we were told! When you put beer into a fryer, it will cause a violent reaction with the oil…

We took that challenge and did everything we could to prove naysayers wrong! As a result of three years of research and development, we are now excited to present Fried Beer™ to the world! In such a revolutionary way, we are able to put beer inside dough that is shaped like a ravioli and deep fry it. The process is so unique, we have a patent pending on the manufacturing process!

By using our patent pending process, we are able to place beer inside a salty pretzel like dough, and deep fry it. When you take a bite, beer pours out of the inside pocket of dough. We even had to get the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to rule on our new product. The verdict… You have to be over the age of 21 to purchase Fried Beer™.

CBS also did a video report on Zable’s Fried Beer:The only other food I’ve seen that’s even similar is a Korean dish also called “Deep-Fried Beer” at the Korean Food website ZenKimchi’s Korean Food Journal. ZenKimchi even includes the recipe, though it seems more like a deep-fried batter that includes beer as an ingredient, so I’m not quite sure if it’s misnamed or it is similar at all. Though I may have to give the recipe a try one of these days.

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Korean Deep-Fried Beer

Yuengling Phasing Out Returnables

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I wrote about this last week, where the focus was on the Straub Brewery, in The Extinction Of Returnable Beer Bottles, but they did mention the decision by Yuengling to discontinue offering returnable bottles. Today my old hometown newspaper growing up, the Reading Eagle, picked up the story but centered instead on Yuengling. In Returnable Bottles Leave Beer Drinkers Cold, Dick Yuengling explains the reasons for discontinuing returnables.

Yuengling said returnable bottles still make great sense ecologically. He said that at one point 60 percent of his business was in returnable bottles.

“Now, if you showed a 16-ounce returnable bottle to a 22-year-old, he wouldn’t know what the heck it was,” Yuengling joked. “I like the idea. I installed a bottle washer at our new (Pottsville) location. I was going to try to revive the returnables but the customer just doesn’t want them anymore.”

According to the Beer Institute, in 1981 about 12% of beer sold was in returnable bottles. Today it’s just under 0.3% … and dropping fast. As I opined last week, even though I understand the rationale for this, I still can’t help but lament it. It just feels like a lost opportunity in our current obsession with being green. I did a lengthy feature article for All About Beer magazine a few years ago about brewery’s green practices, and I was astounded by how much most breweries, both big and small, were doing.

It seems like going back to returnables, while undoubtedly difficult and expensive, would be a great way to keep local beer local and show the craft beer industry’s leadership in recycling and being ecological. It may be nearly impossible to ramp up by any national company, but the smaller the brewery, the more manageable it could be, giving an advantage to local brewers. Oh, well, I know it’s not going to happen, but I can still dream.