If, like me, you’re of a philosophical bent, you might enjoy this intriguing essay I came across on a Libertarian blog, Positive Liberty. It’s titled The Metaphor of Beer, though I think the metaphor really is about the brewing process rather than the end product. For a civilian, the author has a pretty good grasp on brewing history and how the process works. After detailing these, he then makes the leap that brewing makes a very good metaphor for politics and specifically about how governments work.

But might the rules for a good society be like the rules of making beer? That is, might they be amazingly complex and never knowable in their entirety, but still reducible — at times — to simple rules, and, at other times, to more complex ones?

As I said, it’s an intriguing idea, and one well worth contemplating, especially during an election year.

The following action alert has been issued by the California Small Brewers Association through the Support Your Local Brewery consumer beer activist network, in the hopes of generating grassroots support from beer lovers in California. Please help if you can.

Dear Beer Activist,

The craft brewers of California need your help!

A bill sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, AB 1245 (Torrico) is being heard in committee this Tuesday, June 24th. This bill would significantly expand the limits on what a brewer can give away to a retailer. Currently, a brewer can only give away small items of minimal value to a retailer or consumer. The law in place now helps create an equal playing field for both small and large breweries. This law has helped the craft brewing industry flourish in California.

Anheuser-Busch wants to increase the limit 1,600% so they can use give-ways as an inducement to gain placements at stores, bars and restaurants. Craft brewers – because we are small, independent businesses which brew with passion and typically do not have large marketing budgets – cannot afford to compete with the big brewers on this level. Passing this bill will allow large corporate brewers to “buy” placements at craft beers expense.

You may thinking to yourself, but don’t I want breweries to give me free stuff? That’s a reasonable initial reaction, but think about it this way. Most of the craft breweries that make the beer you love can’t afford to give away anything and that hasn’t stopped you from buying their beer. You prefer their beer because it tastes good. You didn’t need a free keychain or some other bauble to convince you that their beer is good. So it begs the question, what sort of beer company does need to give away free crap, in effect buying market share instead of earning it? It’s probably the sort of beer that you don’t want to drink in the first place. But by allowing this bill to pass, those beer companies will be able to buy more and more customer loyalty, and that will be mean less and less good beer for you and your friends. So while it may seem counter-intuitive to tell your Senator not to allow you to potentially receive more free stuff, it’s that fact which will make your message that much more powerful. Tell your elected representative that you’d rather support and buy beer from small, local craft beer companies that make the beer you love, than be given free crap by companies whose products are in many cases not made locally and do not support California’s economy or small business community.

The action alert continues:

The craft brewers of California will be at a distinct disadvantage if this bill passes, therefore limiting the choice and availability of craft beers in the marketplace.

There are five Senators who have indicated they haven’t made up their minds and could end up voting against our local breweries. They are:
 

• Senator Wiggins (Mendocino, Humboldt parts of Sonoma County)
• Senator Harman (Huntington Beach area)
• Senator Denham (Central valley Modesto area)
• Senator Yee (parts of San Francisco County)
• Senator Wyland (parts of San Diego County)

 
If you are in one of these areas, we need your help. Please read on. If you are not sure who your Senator is, you can easily and quickly find out here.

If you are in the district of one of the five Senators above, please write a letter to fax or email; or call your Senators office no later than Monday, June 23rd.

Let your Senator know that you are opposed to AB 1245 and that this bill is anti-small business and against the best interests of the craft brewers in California.
 

• Senator Wiggins phone 916.651.4002 / fax 916.323.6958 / e-mail
• Senator Harman phone 916.651.4035 / fax 916.445.9263 / email
• Senator Denhamphone 916.651.4012 / fax 916.445.0773 / email
• Senator Yee phone 916.651.4008 / fax 916.327.2186 / email
• Senator Wyland phone 916.651.4038 / fax 916.446.7382 / email

 
Thanks for supporting your local brewery!

The California Small Brewers Association

Send questions to Tom McCormick.

I finally had a chance to visit Dean Biersch’s new brewpub in Sebastopol, the Hopmonk Tavern. My good friend, Pete Slosberg, invited me to join him to hear Tony Magee, the owner of Lagunitas Brewing, perform there last night, and we met some other friends from Lagunitas for a nice dinner and blues music. The Hopmonk is beautiful and, as expected, Biersch remade the space with a wonderful attention to detail. The new beer garden, the biggest departure from its earlier configuration as Powerhouse Brewing, is the most comfortable new feature. The food was terrific, as was the unfiltered pilsner. Their beer list is quite impressive, too.
 

Outside the new Hopmonk Tavern in Sebastopol, California.

My good friend Tony Magee warms up for his set of blues music.

For more photos from the Hopmonk Tavern, visit the photo gallery.
 

Nothing about the recent assault on beer by neo-prohibitionists trying to tax Alcopops (FMBs officially) has made any sense or followed any discernible logic. There’s an end the proponents of raising the tax are trying to achieve, which is purportedly to make Alcopops too expensive for minors to buy. Of course, raising the price will do no such thing, but I suspect they already know that. That they’ve been able to dupe California state agencies into going along with their half-baked scheme suggests no one has thought much about the true consequences of what they’re doing. They’re just keeping their eye on the prize, and the consequences be damned. I imagine all the BOE had to be told was “it’s for the children” and they fell lockstep in line with the neo-prohibitionist agenda. Nobody wants to be against the children, and apparently those are the only two choices available to people of limited mental faculties.

Then, of course, there’s the tax angle. California spun itself into financial troubles several years ago, helped along by Enron’s greed, and it hasn’t recovered yet, not even with the Governator in the role of savior. Social services have been slashed, of course, and lots of little things have been raised, like DMV fees and the like. But it’s still not enough. Lots of people have suggested it’s the fault of beer, not wine or spirits mind you, but beer, because it’s not taxed at a high enough rate. I won’t argue where the tax rate for beer should be, but currently our rate is low compared to the rest of the states, but I’ll also mention that we have more breweries than any other state, which adds a considerable amount to our state economy already.

What I will say, is that the idea that beer drinkers should have to pay for our state’s fiscal irresponsibility is so ridiculous that I’m amazed the argument can be made with a straight face. But that’s what many have proposed, in effect, and today the Sacramento Bee weighed in with their own absurd idea, that goes like this: “Psst! Hey, legislators — looking for some fast cash to ease the budget crisis? Think booze.” The faulty logic, downright incorrect statements and tortured reasoning are in virtually every sentence. It’s as if up really were down in the Bee’s worldview.

Prodded by kids not yet old enough to drink legally, the California Board of Equalization just announced a plan to boost the tax on “alcopops,” those soda pop-tasting alcoholic beverages popular with young drinkers. The increase approved, if it survives a court challenge, will dump an extra $41 million into state coffers.

The plan is not to tax just alcopops, but all beer, unless every brewer files the correct mountain of paperwork for each and every beer they produce, in effect proving to the state that it really is beer and not an FMB. You can see for yourself at the BOE website.

Because flavored malt beverages — products such as Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice — contain trace amounts of distilled spirits used as flavoring agents, proponents of the tax hike argued they should be treated like distilled spirits for tax purposes.

FMBs do NOT have any alcoholic spirits in them whatsoever. The “trace amounts of distilled spirits used as flavoring agents” are non-alcoholic chemical compounds taken from the spirits. That’s the whole point of them, they have no distilled spirits in them! They are a beer brewed with barley and corn (or some other combination of grains), and instead of hops the chemical flavoring is added that simulates a taste only marginally similar to the spirit it’s based on. That was done by design specifically so they wouldn’t be taxed as a spirit, but as a beer. But apparently people unfamiliar with how the process works, see the word “distillate” and believe it makes sense to consider them 100% spirits, despite containing, at best, 0.001% non-alcoholic chemicals that came from a distilling process. Even non-alcoholic beer is, by law, 0.5% or less alcohol by volume. So this is just finding a convenient excuse to further an agenda.

But it’s not the alcohol content that makes the product so problematic. It’s alcopops’ appeal to underage drinkers. A beverage that tastes like soda but contains the same alcohol content as beer appeals to children in obviously dangerous ways. The higher tax reflects the very real social risk alcopops pose.

So it’s not the alcohol, eh? It’s simply that it’s sweet and kids with undeveloped palates might like it. Even if that’s true, where did they get such a sweet tooth? Soda is far worse for everybody’s health than beer ever will be, yet we give that to children without any reservations. There are soda machines in school classrooms, for chrissakes. But the real problem with this logic is that just because something might appeal to the people it’s not intended for — minors — it should be punished with higher taxes and be more expensive for adults to buy, too. It’s already illegal for kids to buy, but since we can’t seem to stop them from getting their hands on it, let’s punish adult society generally and the people that make a living from it and already make a positive impact on the economy specifically. That only makes sense if your true aim is not what you state it to be.

The Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watch group, estimates that raising taxes on all alcoholic beverages just 25 cents per drink would raise $3 billion. That’s money the state desperately needs from an industry that has not paid its fair share for a long, long time.

As a colleague of mine put it, “saying the Marin Institute is “an alcohol industry watch group” is like saying the Taliban is a cultural and morality watch group.” The Marin Institute is nothing so grand. They are quite simply a neo-prohibitionist group who wants to return to a time when all alcohol is illegal and they will use any means necessary to achieve that goal. But that aside, saying that taxes should be raised because “the state desperately needs” it is not a valid reason. It may be a result, but what kind of world would we have if every time we needed money, our government looked around for somebody they didn’t like and decided to target them for higher taxes. That’s not a world I’d want to live in. That’s certainly not the high-minded ideals we should be aspiring to.

The truth is, I’m no fan of alcopops, but because I don’t like the taste of them. I find them too sweet and simple, and I dislike them in the same way I hate soda. They have no complex flavor profiles, they don’t really pair with food very well, and they more than likely rob craft brewers of sales, possibly even delaying a new consumer becoming a fan of good beer. But I hate these anti-alcohol attacks even more, especially when they so indiscriminately target beer in their machinations.

Where the taxes on any good or product made should be a policy decision based on a variety of factors, none of which should include manufactured hysteria, the agenda of a misinformed and misguided minority, or an opinion based on a lack of truthiness by a second-rate newspaper.

I found out last night that my “Uncorked” interview with Sam Calagione, from the Dogfish Head Brewery, will run in tomorrow’s San Francisco Chronicle and will more than likely be online, too, at SFGate.com. It was originally scheduled to run last month, but got bumped when Robert Mondavi passed away.

There’s just one month remaining before the debut of beerdom’s newest holiday, International Brewers Day. Please consider spreading the word by putting up a banner on your website or blog, and on July 18, post a profile of your favorite brewer. Send me the link and I’ll be compiling a list of the profiles over at the International Brewers Day website, or just leave a comment therewith your profile’s URL.

If you’re a brewery, bar or restaurant, July 18 would be the perfect day to host a “meet the brewer” event at your establishment. Let me know what you’ve got planned, and I’ll add it to the calendar of events.

And on July 18, don’t forget to hug a brewer!
 

There was a documentary film made several decades ago, in 1978, called “Scared Straight,” where several juvenile delinquents from ages 15-19 are taken to a prison to talk with hardened criminals behind bars supposedly to frighten the children into being model citizens and not breaking the law themselves. The prisoners yell and scream at them and afterwards all of the young participants claimed they did not wish to end up behind bars. As a result, the “experiment” was essentially considered a success, winning several awards, and it even spawned two sequels. But the technique had no basis in psychology whatsoever, not even pop psychology. The idea was the brainchild of a filmmaker, Arnold Shapiro, and the point, as Wikipedia puts it, was to “focus on whatever theatrical value could be obtained by filming a group of hulking inmates scaring relatively young teenagers.” Despite having no basis in science, many people, perhaps even a great majority, believed the technique to be effective and having some basis in the psychiatry of rehabilitating convicted criminals.

In the intervening years, several states actually used the technique, creating their own “Scared Straight” programs. But the actual results seen by such programs have been called into question. The strongest denunciation came in 2003, when a meta-study of seven “Scared Straight” programs done at the University of Pennsylvania concluded that such “programs not only failed to deter crime, but actually led to more offending behavior.” The study was published in the Campbell Collaboration Reviews of Intervention and Policy Evaluations and is available online as a pdf.

So why mention a thirty-year old film? Because in the 1995, a program known as “Every 15 Minutes” debuted, which used a similar technique to scare teenagers into experiencing the feelings and emotions of discovering that someone they actually know was killed in a drunk driving accident, with the intent supposedly to scare them into not driving after drinking. According to Wikipedia, it was first created in Canada and Chico, California, was the first place it was used in the U.S. Our own California Highway Patrol endorses and puts on the show, and in fact it’s funded by the California Office of Traffic Safety, meaning my tax dollars (and yours if you’re a fellow Californian) are used. They must have missed the memo about its lack of efficacy. Even the name itself is pure propaganda, a reference to a statistic that every fifteen minutes someone dies in a drunk driving accident. But in 1995, when the program was first performed, NHTSA statistics showed the rate to be one death every 30.4 minutes, and that rate has remained nearly constant ever since. In fact, the official website for the program continues to cite this faulty, more alarmist statistic. But truth or reasonableness is rarely the neo-prohibtionist’s stock in trade. Despite the fact that the basis for the program has been shown to not only be ineffective, but even make things worse, the “Every 15 Minutes” program is alive and well.

On May 26, El Camino High in Oceanside, California (near San Diego) put on the program. According to the report in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “[m]any juniors and seniors were driven to tears — a few to near hysterics — May 26 when a uniformed police officer arrived in several classrooms to notify them that a fellow student had been killed in a drunken-driving accident. The officer read a brief eulogy, placed a rose on the deceased student’s seat, then left the class members to process their thoughts and emotions for the next hour.”

The CHP Officer who presents the program, believes that “it is worth the price.” Officer Eric Newbury elaborates:

“When someone says to me, ‘Oh, my God, you’re traumatizing my children,’ I’m telling them, ‘No, what I’m doing is waking them up. If you don’t do your job as a parent … the only thing I can do is either arrest them and take them to jail or scrape them off the ground and tell you, ‘I’m so sorry.'”

First of all, just by running this program, Newbury has already presumed that every parent has not done their job in raising their children. By taking a scattershot approach and subjecting all the children at a particular school to this ordeal, he’s already declared every parent unfit. With the “Scared Straight” kids, they chose young people who already had long rap sheets. They were kids who were actually at risk for becoming career criminals. So at least they were the very people for whom this program was targeted. But the “Every 15 Minutes” program is essentially done indiscriminately to every student at a school, whether the parent had been effective in raising a particular child or not. So I find it that more than a little insulting and not really in the purview of his job. I know he probably means well, but I don’t believe it is the job of the police force to determine my effectiveness as a parent, especially unbidden.

But Newbury’s not done yet:

‘I want them to be an emotional wreck. I don’t want them to have to live through this for real.”

But guess what? If the very idea of this program is for them to be an “emotional wreck” for their own good, they go to great pains to make it believable and seem real. That’s the whole point. So every kid who believes it — and that appears to be most — is actually living “through this for real.” It’s nothing less than the tort claim of “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” The fact that it’s purportedly for a good cause, I find no excuse whatsoever, especially when it’s shown that the technique doesn’t even work long term anyway. So really he’s scaring kids for no reason at all.

See Wikipedia’s entry:

Studies that have tracked students before and after the Every 15 Minutes program have shown that the program may have a favorable short-term effect on students’ stated attitudes but no effect on actual behavior. This has led to charges that the Every 15 Minutes program is similar to the controversial DARE anti-drug program in that it produces the appearance of addressing the problem but does not produce the desired change in behavior.

If they inflicted this on my kids, I’d be apoplectic. And apparently I’m not the only one. In a follow up story in the North County Times, not everyone thought it was as “worth it” as the CHP. In the earlier report, it was said some student’s reaction were “near hysterics,” but the later piece goes further, saying “some became hysterical,” a small difference, perhaps, but an important distinction. The hoax [their characterization] was allowed to go on for a few hours! Afterwards, many of the kids were angry and felt things went too far. I don’t blame them.

From the North County Times‘ article:

At assemblies where speakers talked about the dangers of drunken driving, some students held posters that read: “Death is real. Don’t play with our emotions.”

Michelle de Gracia, 16, was in physics class when an officer announced that her missing classmate David, a popular basketball player, died instantly after being rear-ended by a drunken driver.

She felt nauseated but was too frozen to cry.

“They got the shock they wanted,” she said.

Some of her classmates were hysterical, prompting the teacher to tell them immediately the death was staged.

“People started yelling at the teacher,” she said. “It was pretty hectic.”

It is simply irresponsible to treat human beings in this manner, no matter how well-meaning the intent. No wonder young people don’t trust authority. So many institutions lie to kids (and adults) every single day to promote an agenda or maintain a status quo that it’s a wonder they believe anything at all. What makes this so horrible, in my opinion, is twofold. First, that my tax dollars are being spent on such quackery, and second, that something shown to be so ineffective (and possibly counter-productive) is so firmly believed to work. That neo-prohibitionists feel no compunction whatsoever about putting our kids through such an ordeal “for their own good” may be the scariest thing to come out of all this. I don’t know how to deal with people who would so non-nonchalantly abuse and emotionally harm children, the very people they claim to be trying to protect. It makes me wonder what else they’re capable of and what else they’ll do “for our own good.”

 
P.S. — thanks to Rick and Tomme for sending me the two articles.
 

The Brewing Network celebrated their third anniversary last night at Downtown Joe’s, a brewpub in Napa, California. I stopped by in the evening to show my support and say hello to a few friends. I hadn’t been to DOwntown Joe’s in many a moon, so it was nice to see the place again. I had a lovely pint of Perdition, the guest tap from Russian River, and also had a chance to try the house Pale Ale, Bitter and Hefeweizen, all of which were pretty decent.

The bar at Downtown Joe’s.

The Brewing Network crew, broadcasting their anniversary show.

Me with fellow blogger, Thomas Vincent, of Geistbear Brewing Blog, who was in the Bay Area on a beer tour before he moves to North Carolina in a few weeks.

The Homebrew Chef, Sean Paxton, with his daughter Olivia, who started walking last week.

After the regular broadcast, the BN folks changed costumes and serenaded the crowd with live music.

Bloomberg News is reporting that yesterday Grupo Modelo vowed to remain a “proudly” Mexican company. Specifically, they said: “Modelo’s goal is to continue proudly being a Mexican company and that produces the highest-quality beers in Mexico for markets around the world.” Not that that necessarily signals the end of it, but it does suggest that they’re not as eager to be acquired by Anheuser-Busch as earlier reports might have made it appear.