I got this joke this morning from Lisa Morrison, the Beer Goddess, so if you think the joke is sexist, take it up with her. I’m not taking the heat for this one. But it is funny.

It was a hot day in Minnesota. Helga hung out the wash to dry, put a roast in the oven and then went downtown to pick up some dry cleaning. “Gootness, it’s hotter Dan hell today,” she mused to herself as she walked down Main Street. She passed a tavern and thought, ‘Vy nodt?’ So she walked in and took a seat at the bar.

The bartender walked up and asked her what she would like to drink.

“Ya know, its zo hot, I tink I’ll have myself a cold beer,” Helga said.

“Anheuser Busch?” the bartender asked.

Helga blushed and replied, “Vell fine, tanks, und how’s yur viener?”

Thanks Lisa, for the morning chuckle.

Yes, I mean that literally. While I would argue that Ray Daniels — author, publisher, real ale festival organizer and Cicerone founder — has plenty of heart, I only recently learned that he underwent open heart surgery. The surgery took place on August 11 and by all accounts was very successful. In typical writer’s fashion, Ray has started a blog about his recent experiences — A Healing Heart — where you can read all about it.

I admit to a few panicked moments earlier today when I realized it hadn’t been updated since August 12, but I made a call and have been assured he’s not only doing great, but is back at work already. I tried to reach Ray, but was only able to leave a message. If you know Ray Daniels, let him now you’re thinking of him and let’s all wish him a speedy recovery.
 

According to a story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, a 28-year old graduate student (in chemistry, no less) was arrested last Friday for using dried poppy pods in his homebrew. Police believe that the student extracted opium from the poppy pods, converting it to morphine before using it the beer. That type of poppy — not the California poppy, California’s state flower — is a Schedule II drug, classified as a narcotic, by the federal government.

According to the student, Chad Renzelman, he bought the poppies on eBay (and wasn’t growing any) and used them last month to brew a beer with a group of friends that he homebrews in weekly in a co-op. Though all of the poppy beer is gone, it reportedly was slightly stronger but had nothing beyond a little “kick to it.” In addition to the Poppy Ale, the co-op has also recently made a chocolate mint stout and a mango blonde ale, so flavored beers are nothing new.

Renzelman also says in the article that “lab investigators from the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, chemists from the state Department of Justice and officials from county Environmental Health were called to survey [his] backyard because police suspected he was dumping hazardous poppy waste there.” Apparently some were even wearing those scary-looking hazmat suits to sift through his compost heap looking for his spent grain.

More from the article:

Police reported finding a pressurized canister of homemade beer laced with morphine in Renzelman’s garage, as well as lab equipment contaminated with opium alkaloids and other hazardous chemicals. Police suspected the poppies were used in the beer production, but that’s still illegal, Capt. Steve Clark said.

If convicted of the crime he was arrested for — suspicion of possessing and manufacturing a controlled substance — Renzelman could be sentenced to seven years in prison.

On one hand, it seems awfully silly that homebrewing with poppies caused such a scene, but I guess that’s the nature of our no tolerance drug policy. Where, by the way, do all the poppy seeds that end up on bread come from? But on the other hand, it seems pretty unlikely that a graduate student in chemistry wouldn’t know he shouldn’t be messing around with opiate poppies.

Trying to catch up from the NBWA Convention earlier this week in San Francisco and shooting a TV show yesterday (more about that later), I’m a little late with this news. Ray Merkler at Bathtub Brewery has announced that the next session’s theme will be “Beer & Memories.” I guess I forgot. He elaborates.

Is there a beer that reminds you of a specific memory?

If you’re thinking, “Huh?” then you might want to craft your response along the lines of “Whenever I drink [insert brew here] it reminds me of that day …” Or perhaps it’s the reverse. Oooooh.

Hmm, that could open a can of worms … or even a can of beer. Join us Friday, October 3, all over the beer blogosphere to see what everybody remembers.

Ah, memories. Persistent little buggers.

I saw today that MillerCoors has shut down the Brew Blog, which Miller launched roughly two years ago.

And it’s fair to say Brew met these objectives. The blog broke industry news and highlighted industry trends, while the magazine covered the big changes that transformed the U.S. beer business. One of the most dramatic changes was, of course, the creation of MillerCoors.

As the strongest No. 2 the beer industry has seen in decades, the new MillerCoors needs to communicate differently than the old Miller did. And so it’s creating a variety of new communications tools to establish a new voice and perspective with its employees, distributors and retailers, and to help it become America’s best beer company. You’ll soon hear more about these initiatives.

Good luck with your next endeavor, Jim.

Tomorrow on NPR’s Science Friday the show they’ll be airing is called “The Evolution of Beer,” but really it’s yeast they’ll be talking about. Here’s the description of the show:

In the world of beer, ales are separated from lagers by their yeast. Lager yeast collects on the bottom of the fermenting vessel and ferments sugars into alcohol at lower temperatures that ale yeast, which operates at higher temperatures at the top of the fermentation vat. In new research published this week in the journal Genome Research, scientists examined the genetic sequences of 17 unique lager yeast strains from breweries in Europe and North America, tracing variations in the genetic code of those yeasts back through time. The researchers found that a key hybridization step, in which genetic information from two different yeasts combined and rearranged to yield a new ‘lager yeast’ organism, may have actually happened twice. The researchers found two different family groupings in the lager yeasts they studied, with one lineage associated primarily with Carlsberg breweries in Denmark and breweries in what is now Czechoslovakia, and the other family grouping connected mainly to breweries in the Netherlands, including Heineken. In this segment, we’ll talk with one of the authors of the study about genetics and beer, and about the genes behind lager beer styles such as Pilsners, Märzen, Dortmunders, and Bocks.

Also, according to a report on the study on New Scientist, “Lagers belong to two main families: the Saaz group such as Carlsberg, brewed in Denmark; and the Frohberg lagers that include Heineken and Oranjeboom from the Netherlands.” To discover this, the team examined seventeen yeast strains from around the word and used from 1883 to 1976.

Also from New Scientist:

It has long been thought that Saccharomyces pastorianus, the yeast used in lager production, formed only once from the hybridisation of S. cerevisiae and S. bayanus. Instead, the team discovered that it happened at least twice in two separate locations in Europe, giving rise to the two different lager families. The hybrid, which makes lager instead of ale, probably evolved in Bavarian beer-brewing cellars during the 16th century.

The team also found that Saaz yeasts have a single copy of each parent yeast’s genome, whereas the Frohberg yeasts have an extra copy from S. cerevisiae. They believe this difference affects the flavour of the lager, as well as how quickly the yeasts can ferment the hops.

Sounds like that should be a pretty interesting show. From looking at their schedule, it looks like the whole Friday will be devoted to genes, with the beer only part of the day’s topics. Check your local NPR radio station for when it will air in your part of the world. In the Bay Area, KQED (88.5) will air it at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow.

Tuesday night I traveled up to Sebastopol to Dean Biersch’s new place, the Hopmonk Tavern, for a beer dinner featuring the beers of Russian River Brewing. Hopmonk looks like they’re going to be stepping it up and having regular beer dinners roughly every two weeks on Tuesday evenings.

The evening began with a new Russian River beer, which Vinnie declared was his new favorite: Happy Hops, which is a well-hopped blonde ale, but more about that beer later. The meal was four courses and the pairings quite good. We started out with a small salad, including tarragon flatbread and a local artisan goat cheese, which worked especially well with Temptation.

Hopmonk Executive Chef Lynn McCarthy and Russian River brewer Vinnie Cilurzo.

Our second course, scallops in a tomato cream sauce, was paired with two different Damnations, the current batch and one from a year ago.

The main course was Rabbit Pappardelle with a cream sauce, paired with Salvation.

After a dessert of Humble Pie (key lime pie in reality), Lynn McCarthy, Dean Biersch, Natalie and Vinnie Cilurzo.

Sorry if I hooked you in with that deceptive title. My son Porter turned seven years old today and this is him just before bedtime tonight.

Porter on his 7th birthday.

Porter below an original print I picked up last year during the Sonoma County Art Trails entitled “The Saint of Beer.”

I don’t know what they’re putting in the water in Wisconsin, but clearly one judge has been hitting the sauce or gone off his meds. In an opinion piece — a rant, really — Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge Harold V. Froehlich virtually foams at the mouth with his outrageous suggestion that second offense drunk drivers should “lose the right to purchase alcoholic beverages FOR LIFE” [his emphasis]. Now before you think I’m in favor of drunk driving, I’m not. But we need a little perspective here. Even murderers are eligible for parole after paying their debt to society. But Judge Froehlich seems to believe that people who drive drunk are apparently worse than murderers and deserve no chance or chances to redeem themselves.

No offense to his lordship, but I hardly think the judge’s perspective is reasonable. He started practicing law in 1962 and has been a judge nearly thirty years, making him undoubtedly around seventy. I’m sure he’s seen a lot in that time to make him feel the way he does. But whatever perspective he brings to this debate is necessarily skewed by seeing the worst examples through the lens of sitting on the bench in judgment. He has other ideas, as well, all equally extreme and irrational.

He begins his screed by saying just how wrong he believes advocates for lowering the drinking age are, based of course on his experience on the bench. Not surprisingly, he claims “some college presidents” are in favor of this, but I’d hardly characterize 130 college and university professors as merely “some,” and that’s just the ones brave enough to sign the Amethyst Initiative. But having worked and written briefs in a law office for over eight years, I understand how carefully words are usually chosen by people in that profession. He meant to use the word “some,” knowing full well how inaccurate it was because it gave a certain slant to his view. After detailing his personal experiences on the bench and going through what’s been tried within the law, he admits that higher fines, longer jail time and treatment aren’t working.

“However, we as a society must find new and effective ways to control and eradicate this problem. We must think outside the box.” True enough, and there are countless possibilities. We could, for example, build a truly usable system of mass transportation so that people did not have to rely on their cars to travel from place to place. What mass transit we have — at least in every case I’m aware of it personally — is inefficient, poorly managed, and does not actually go where people might want to travel. Car companies and oil companies bought up many mass transit systems in the 1950s, and shut them down so people had to rely on cars, making them quite wealthy in the process. We could, of course, reverse that trend though admittedly it would take some time and money to accomplish. But it is a solution, and one that’s “outside the box” for most people. So is lowering the drinking age and introducing alcohol education through both the school and he home.

But as you’d expect from a judge, lawyer and former Congressman, Froehlich instead goes with what he knows: more laws. And not just any old laws, he wants nothing short of another prohibition. Not a national one — that didn’t work — but a limited one. Oh, I’m sure a “limited” one will be much better. But just what is a “limited” prohibition. He essentially means that we impose prohibition on certain individuals.

Upon conviction for a second offense operating while under the influence of alcohol, the offender would lose the right FOR LIFE to enter a tavern or liquor store. The offender would lose the right to purchase alcoholic beverages FOR LIFE.

Wisconsin ID cards or driver’s licenses could be issued in a certain color. The color would indicate to taverns and liquor stores that the person with the ID card or driver’s license has no right to be on the premises or purchase alcoholic beverages. Likewise, all sellers of alcoholic beverages would be prohibited from selling alcoholic beverages to holders of the colored ID card or driver’s license.

Alcoholic beverages should be made less available. We should end all sales of alcoholic beverages in gas stations, convenience stores and grocery stores. Package sales of alcoholic beverages should be prohibited in taverns. All package sales of alcoholic beverages should be restricted to liquor stores only.

Taxes on all alcoholic beverages should be raised substantially to create funds for treatment centers for alcoholics and drunken drivers. Treatment and counseling should be free.

So beyond, just taking away a person’s right to purchase or drink alcohol forever (or even just be in a bar), he’s also trotted out the neo-prohibitionist playbook. Restricting where alcohol can be sold, making it harder for responsible and legal adults — that is the vast majority who drink — is a favorite of those against alcohol. He also wants responsible adults to foot the bill for the irresponsible minority in the form of higher taxes, again punishing the people who’ve committed the crime of choosing to have the occasional beer. I don’t disagree that “[t]reatment and counseling should be free” but if it’s a benefit to society as a whole — which presumably it would be — why should only people who drink alcohol pay for it?

That the judge sees no constitutional issues for restricting the freedom of movement for citizens who would already have paid their fine and/or done their time, I find quite frightening. I imagine he’s frustrated by gentler methods having been ineffective, at least from his perspective. But he’s not even answering his own call for thinking outside of the box to find a solution to the drinking and driving problem. Apart from taking away citizens’ rights, all of his suggestions are so far inside the box that I fully expect he’s a card-carrying member of MADD.

Believe it or not, our curmudgeonly arbiter was named Wisconsin judge of the year in 1998 by the state bar association. His current term of office as a circuit judge expires in 2012. I can only hope he comes up with some better ideas by then. Wisconsin has some wonderful craft breweries which contribute positively to the state, both economically and socially, and they should be celebrated. A society that would embrace prohibition might find that difficult to reconcile.

Surprisingly, I find that I agree wholeheartedly with his conclusion, which is as follows. “It is time for society to find new ways to address this problem; the old ways are not working.” The “old ways” are certainly not working, but returning to the even older ways — prohibition, even a “limited” one — is complete and utter nonsense.