Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Judge Ponders: “What Is Beer?”

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This may be funny only to me since it happened in my hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania (BTW, it’s pronounced “redding”) — or near enough, I grew up in a small suburb adjacent to Reading.

Back in January, a 17-year old testified that an adult bought him a case of Miller Genuine Draft but Berks County Court Judge Jeffrey K. Sprecher (obviously no relation to the Sprecher Brewery in Wisconsin) dismissed the charges because “the prosecution had failed to provide the state Liquor Control Board’s list of beers to prove the beverage was beer.” Makes sense to me, I consider Miller Genuine Draft to be not really beer, but a highly-engineered industrial food product. The judge also stated that it was “equally plausible that the defendant purchased a nonalcoholic beverage with a flavor similar to beer.” Clearly, he’s never tasted a non-alcoholic beer.

An appeals court has now overturned that ruling, stating that the minor’s “testimony was more than enough to establish that the beverage he was drinking was a malt or brewed beverage.” Wow, they actually believed a minor would know whether or not he was drinking beer or not. Now that’s funny.

mgd

Is it or isn’t it?

The Beers of OBF

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While seeing friends in Portland is probably the best reason I love OBF, the beers there rank a close second. Seventy-two beers (73 including the Collaborator that the Oregon Brew Crew does) are poured at the festival and each brewery is allowed only one beer. Here are some interesting facts about the festival from the press kit I received:

  • 72 beers
  • 25 beer styles
  • 13 states represented
  • IPAs are the most popular style (12 IPAs, 7 Imperial IPAs)

Another unique feature of the OBF is that there is no judging. But that doesn’t mean some beers don’t stand out more than others. For example, at least among brewers and the people I talked to, there was no doubt about the buzz beer of the festival.

Buzz Beer: Ned Flanders (Rock Bottom — Portland)

Portland’s Rock Bottom brewer, Van Havig, wanted to create something very different went he set out over a year ago to make this year’s buzz beer of the festival. Ned Flanders Ale is, like its namesake, quite sour and has been aged in five different kinds of wooden barrels including oak wine barrels, a barrel with marionberries, one with Brettanomyces, one with lactobacillic and a Jack Daniels barrel. After aging for one year, the various barrels were then blended back together to create one amazingly complex Belgian-inspired sour ale. I don’t think it was very popular with the general attendees, but for those of us in the minority that love sour beers it was a rare treat, with some of the most extreme, complex flavors I’ve tasted in a beer outside Belgium. At least one prominent blog I read called it the worst beer of the festival and thought the sour flavors meant the beer was defective. They must not have read the program notes or been very familiar with this type of beer, but I wish they wouldn’t have been so quick to judge something they clearly didn’t understand. Sour beers, especially the ones that embrace Brettanomyces and lactobacillic elements, are undoubtedly an acquired taste. The word play should have offered a clue, since it’s a Flanders Red Ale and the Flanders area of Belgium is where this type of beer originated. Some prominent examples of the style include Rodenbach Red, Duchesse De Bourgogne and New Belgium’s La Folie. The number of attendees to the festival with blogs who simply dismissed this beer without doing any follow up or research into it is quite surprising. But it was an excellent beer and I suspect with further aging will even continue to improve. I ran into Van at the BridgePort brunch Saturday morning, and he told me that it’s not even on draft at his brewpub because he hasn’t figured out how to deal with cleaning the draft lines of Brettanomyces. So the festival was really the only way you could taste this fantastic beer.
 

Other Stand-Out Beers:

Every year I tend to ignore the California and other beers that I’ve already tried and concentrate on the unique beers made just for the festival and the other ones that I haven’t had an opportunity to taste. So my list of favorites is necessarily skewed and doesn’t include beers I’ve tried and liked before. My notes were a bit scattered and hard to read, but here goes.

Bell’s Hell Hath No Fury Ale

Larry Bell’s Hell Hath No Fury Ale is a dark Belgian strong ale at 8% abv. Deep mahogany in color with a rich yeasty nose with hints of raisins and herbs. With complex flavors of fruit and spices, and chewy chocolate notes, this is delightfully rich beer. It changes with every sip and there’s a lot going on in this beer. The finish is clean and a little sweet.

Big Time Powderfinger Rye

I have a thing for rye beers. I’ve always liked the character that a little rye adds to beer. To me, it’s what it does to the mouthfeel that I like. In Big Time’s case, an English-style pale ale was given just a hint of spiciness that was not from the hops. It was quite refreshing and although the floral hopping was evident, it was very much in balance.

Flying Fish 10th Anniversary Farmhouse Summer Ale

Saisons are another style that I gravitate toward because the tend to all be so different. No two Saisons are alike, because it’s the individual spice and yeast ingredients that can be used are all over the map. There were two of this style at the festival, the other being the delightful Jack Russell Farmhouse Ale. The Flying Fish example was also very refreshing with restrained spicing with hints of herbs and fruity esters. It wasn’t the best I’d ever had, but it wasn’t bad, either.

Full Sail Vesuvius

John Harris has created another excellet beer with Vesuvius. This one, at 8.5% abv, is a strong Belgian-style golden ale. It boasts a signature yeasty Belgian nose with fruity notes and a bright golden color. Big strong flavors erupt in your mouth — sorry — with rich, complex notes. The finish is tarty dry and lingers pleasantly.

Laurelwood Organic Green Mammoth

Mammoth is certainly the right name for this big Imperial IPA, which weighs in at 8.5% abv. The IBUs are listed at an impressive 100, but once you get above a certain amount it’s very hard to predict the actual number so in reality it’s anybody’s guess. It is a huge hop monster though mostly in balance. I presume this is one of Chad’s beers, since Christian has been gone now for a couple of months. If so, I’d say he’s off to a good start. If it is organic, it certainly doesn’t have that telltale something that is often evident in many organic beers which make it easy to identify that they are in fact organic. And that’s a good thing, too.

Standing Stone Double IPA

A great Imperial IPA, and quite well-balanced. The finish is extremely long and very bitter, though pleasantly so — at least if you love hops.

Walking Man Knuckle Dragger

This strong pale ale — at 6.5% abv — is a nice variation on pale ales. A pale ale on steroids? The Barry Bonds of pale ales? So far I’ve liked everything I’ve had from this small brewery, even the beer they were pouring on Hole 1 at the Brew Am was delightful. Big exagerated flavors but always in balance made this a fun beer to experience. This would be excellent with the right food rather than as a quaffing beer on a hot day.

Widmer Hooligan Pale Ale

This beer I mention primarily because it’s a gluten-free beer, and I’ve been researching these beers for an upcoming story I’m doing. My interest in these beers comes originally from my son, Porter, who is autistic. In reading about Autism Spectrum Disorder, I’ve discovered that a common symptom among the constellation of autistic indicators is stomach problems and often times a gluten-free diet helps immensely. Like much about autism, scientists and doctors aren’t exactly sure why this happens but I’m glad so far Porter doesn’t show signs of having this problem. But there are also millions of Celiac sufferers worldwide, and the number is growing. People with celiac, likewise, must also abstain from gluten, a part of most grains like barley and wheat. When Widmer Brothers discovered an employee had celiac, they set about to make a gluten-free beer, a Hooligan is the result. It’s probably the best-tasting gluten-free beer I’ve had, but to be fair I’ve only sampled two or three others. The flavor is very sweet, undoubtedly from he sorghum and tapioca that was substituted for barley. They also used the new Summit hop and the grapefruit tang from that hop is definitely present. You can tell this beer has been made with slightly different ingredients but all in all if it was this or nothing, I think I could make do.
 

Other Beers Worth Mentioning:

This is a list of a few of the beers that I didn’t focus on because I’ve had them before, but which I thought were excellent.
 

  • Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
  • Deschutes Inversion IPA
  • Elysian Bifrost Winter Ale
  • Great Divide Titan IPA
  • Green Flash West Coast IPA
  • Iron Springs Epiphany Ale
  • Jack Russell Farmhouse Ale
  • Lagunitas Sirius
  • Magnolia Proving Ground IPA
  • North Coast Old Rasputin
  • Pelican Pub Kiwanda Cream Ale
  • Pike IPA
  • Russian River Pliny the Elder
  • Silver City Whoop Ass Double IPA
  • Skagit River Scullers
  • 21st Amendment Watermelon Wheat

 

21st Amendment’s Watermelon Wheat was again the most popular beer of the festival. Despite having sent more kegs than any other brewery, the beer ran out at Noon on Sunday. But not everyone liked it, apparently. On the flight home to Oakland, Shaun O’Sullivan was in a seat in the row behind me. When we landed we were talking about the festival and he was telling me about the beer running out at Noon, when another passenger in my row (who had apparently been to the festival) asked Shaun which beer was his. When he told her it was the Watermelon Wheat, she replied matter of factly. “Oh, I didn’t like that one. I liked an IPA from some Stone brewery.” (I think she meant Standing Stone’s Double IPA.) It was all I could do not to laugh. The lack of tact was truly amazing. It was the equivalent of telling a mother to her face that her kid was ugly and she didn’t even seem to realize how insensitive and rude she was. Shaun took it all in stride, but it bugged me. C’est la vie.

New Glarus Brewing Woes

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Last January, when New Glarus Brewery was contemplating building a new brewery, the Village of New Glarus promised brewery owner Deb Carey that “they would chip in $2 million to pay for the utilities … things like water and a sewage treatment facility,” according to a story by local television station WMTV Channel 15 in Madison, Wisconsin. Business has been terrific for the small brewery in recent years, in part because they make some of the best beers in the world. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad beer Dan and Deb have brewed. As a result they’re at capacity and planning to build a new brewing facility on the south side of New Glarus over looking the village. The pricetag for the brewery is $19 million and they needed the village’s help to make it work.

But now the Village appears to be reneging on its earlier promise as the $2 million is suddenly subject to a further decision. The brewery’s fate hangs on a “closed meeting Thursday night at the New Glarus village hall, when village president Tom Myers says the council will discuss the plans for the brewery, and whether the two million dollars are worth keeping it.”

Myers claims to want the brewery to stay, because the brewery increases tourism and the bigger brewery will add 60 new jobs, too. But he’s also now claiming that if the $2 million is given to the brewery, then it will have to be taken from somewhere else in the village’s meager budget. So “Carey says they are looking at other options, including moving the brewery out of New Glarus.” And that would be a shame.

UPDATE 8.4: The Capital Times is reporting that an agreement has been reached between the Village and New Glarus Brewing, so the brewery will be staying in town.

California SB 1548: Free Beer for Everyone!

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Though it’s not been much reported, a bill before the California state senate, SB 1548 — and sponsored by Anheuser-Busch — will expand the laws regarding the tasting of alcohol to include beer. Specifically, a wholesaler, brewer or importer will be permitted to give up to 8 oz. of beer to sample in an on-premise retail setting and at no charge. No more than six tasting events per location per year can be held.

The original bill would have allowed a sample of 12 oz. in the original package unlimited times, meaning companies could have gone into bars and bought patrons a bottle or can of their beer as a promotional tool to increase business. Obviously, this would greatly benefit the larger companies with greater resources who could afford to “buy the world a drink.”

The California Small Brewers Association (CSBA) was successful in negotiating an amendment to the bill so that the amount was less than a full bottle or can and — perhaps most importantly — was not in the original packaging and could only be done six times per year in any one location. This makes it harder for companies to simply buy up the market by plying customers with a bottle of their product, but it still doesn’t really remove the impetus for abuse or the uneven way in which this would benefit the large company and further make doing business on a level playing field impossible for the small craft brewer.

The CSBA, who opposed the bill in its original form, is now taking a neutral position on the bill. If they had opposed it outright, they would not have been able to change it at all. In it’s amended form, it has now passed unanimously the first hurdle, the Assembly Government Organizational Committee, and is now on its way the Senate GO committee. After that it goes to the the House floor to be voted on, which should take place before the end of this month when their current session ends. If it passes there, then it’s over to the Governator for signature.

I certainly understand the CBSA’s removal of opposition to this bill, especially since the politics and issues make it such a complicated one. But I think there’s no doubt that their members will still be harmed when it is passed into law. The difficulty in opposing this law is that wine and spirits companies currently operate under essentially similar rules, and so do many other states. Rumor has it that A-B is, in fact, quite unhappy about opposition to this bill. Because in their mind, adding beer to the existing law for wine and spirits will simply — as they argue — “even the playing field.” There certainly are big wineries and small wineries and big spirits companies and small ones, too, so it would appear that inequities would exist there yet I know of no particular burden placed on the smaller producers with presumably smaller resources. Of course, that may be because I don’t follow those industries very closely. But my sense is that there is so much more profit built into wine and especially spirits that the difference between small and large producers — at least with respect to sampling resources — is not dramatic. Beer, on the other hand, is such a volume driven business with small per unit profits that the available resources difference between the big breweries and almost all the craft brewers is quite vast indeed. So at first blush, it may appear that this law will create a level playing field across all alcoholic beverages but I think the reality is that it will do just the opposite. I believe it will only deepen the divide between big and small breweries.

The bill’s language refers to the authorized tastings as “courses of instruction for consumers” which on its face would be a good thing except that I haven’t seen a high level of wine “instruction” in the tasting rooms of wineries across Napa and Sonoma to give me much cause for confidence that this is aimed at creating beer schools.

The idea of a large brewery sponsoring in effect a “free beer night” at bar after bar is a truly frightening one. Radical neo-prohibitionists would have a field day with that one but that could actually help in defeating this bill, along with possible opposition by law enforcement groups. And let’s not forget this is an election year.

It will probably do no good, but I think this bill should be opposed. Personally, I’d like to see a competing bill that would allow educational sampling along lines that make sense and don’t give a huge advantage to the big breweries. Why not 2 oz. samples? That’s enough for most educational purposes, especially if you’re tasting multiple beers. Most beer festivals and judging events don’t require much more than that to get enough of a sample to give you an idea of the beer.

The current bill allows for sampling “up to 8 oz.,” meaning you could give customers four samples of 2 oz. each. That’s probably what craft brewers would be likely to do, but I can’t see the big breweries taking that approach. And make it an 8 oz. sample and I can easily predict we’ll start seeing the big companies making 8 oz. logo tasting glasses for the bars who cooperate (and who wouldn’t?) to serve. Undoubtedly if the bars “buy” the glasses then they’ll be used instead of pint glasses for promotional “pint nights” where when you buy a beer, you keep the glass. If the brewery buys the customer the beer through this new law, and they also get a free tasting glass then you’ve got a system ripe for abuse.

It feels weird arguing that the status quo is adequate but in this case the current laws do provide something of a level playing field with regard to tasting. No one currently has any particular advantage, small, medium or large. This law will, of course, undo that and it’s hard to argue that it won’t give an advantage to the businesses with the most money. There has been a separation of the brewers and distributors from the retailer and this has mostly served the industry well to date. It has kept at least a semblance of distance between the two. If the curtain is occasionally parted by unsavory practices, at least it was there in the first place. Bringing it down now will only serve to move us closer to the end of the second act, by which I mean the rise of craft beer. Because anyone paying real attention to what’s been going on has to conclude that A-B — and perhaps all the big players — are doing their level best to eradicate craft beer and especially the regional breweries, as they did before several decades ago.

If you live in California, please consider contacting your elected officials and asking them to oppose SB 1548. It may sound alarmist, but the very future of craft beer may depend on it. Because if this passes, it will be the first of many legislative changes that will take us down a slippery slope back to the time when good beer was almost impossible to find. And I for one, don’t want to see that world ever again.

Here’s the current language of the bill:

25503.55. (a) A beer manufacturer, a licensed beer and wine importer general or a licensed beer and wine wholesaler may instruct consumers or conduct courses of instruction for consumers, on the subject of beer, including but not limited to, the history, nature, values, and characteristics of beer, and the methods of presenting and serving beer. A beer manufacturer, a beer importer general licensee or a licensed beer and wine wholesaler may conduct such instructions at the premises of a retail on-sale licensee authorized to sell beer.
(b) The instruction of consumers regarding beer may include the furnishing of tastes of beer to an individual of legal drinking age. Beer tastes at any individual course of instruction shall not exceed 8 ounces of beer per person per day. The tasting portion of a course of instruction shall not exceed one hour at any individual licensed retail premises. Tastes of beer may not be served to a consumer in their original container but must be served in an individual glass or cup.
(c) All tastes of beer served to a consumer as authorized in subdivision (b) shall be served only as part of the course of instruction and shall be served to the consumer by an employee of the on-sale retail licensee.
(d) A beer manufacturer, licensed beer and wine importer general or a licensed beer and wine wholesaler may not hold more than 6 courses of instruction per calendar year at any individual on-sale retail licensed premises if the course of instructions includes consumer tastes of beer.
(e) A representative of a beer manufacturer, licensed beer and wine importer general and/or a licensed beer and wine wholesaler must be present and authorize any tastes of beer conducted at an on-sale retail licensed premises pursuant to this section. The representative shall be responsible for paying the retailer for the tastes of beer served at any course of instruction. Such payment shall not exceed the retail price of the beer. For purposes of this section, a licensed beer and wine wholesaler cannot be the representative of a beer manufacturer or a licensed beer and wine importer general.
(f) No on-sale retail licensee shall require one or more courses of instruction pursuant to this section as a requirement to carry a brand or brands of any beer manufacturer or beer and wine wholesaler.
(g) No premium, gift, free goods, or other thing of value may be given away in connection with an authorized course of instruction which includes beer tastes except as authorized by this division. Failure to comply with the provisions of this section shall be presumed to be a violation of section 25500.
(h) A retail licensee may advertise the instructional tasting event using interior signs visible inside the establishment.
(i) A beer manufacturer, a licensed beer and wine importer general and a beer and wine wholesaler shall maintain an individual record of each course of instruction involving tastes of beer for three years. Records shall include the date of the tasting, the name and address of the retail licensee, and the brand, quantity and payments made for beer furnished by the beer manufacturer, the licensed beer and wine importer general or a licensed beer and wine wholesaler.

GBBF Winners Announced

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The winners of this year’s Great British Beer Festival were announced yesterday. Here’s the list:

CHAMPION BEERS:

GOLD: Crouch Vale Brewers Gold
SILVER: Harveys Sussex Best Bitter
BRONZE: Triple fff Moondance
 

CATEGORY WINNERS:

Milds:

  1. Mighty Oak’s Oscar Wilde Mild (Essex)
  2. Elgood’s Black Dog (Cambridgeshire)
  3. Grainstore Rutland Panther (Rutland)

Bitters:

  1. Elgood’s Cambridge Bitter (Cambridgeshire)
  2. Acorn Barnsley Bitter (South Yorkshire)
  3. TIE
    • Sharp’s Doombar Bitter (Cornwall)
    • Woodforde’s Wherry (Norfolk)

Best Bitters:

  1. Harveys Sussex Best Bitter (East Sussex)
  2. Triple fff Moon Dance (Hampshire)
  3. TIE
    • Kelburn, Red Smiddy (East Renfrewshire)
    • Surrey Hills Shere Drop (Surrey)

Strong Bitters:

  1. York Brewery, Centurions Ghost Ale (Yorkshire)
  2. Thornbridge Jaipur IPA (Derbyshire)
  3. Weetwood Oasthouse Gold (Cheshire)

Speciality Beers:

  1. Cairngorm Trade Winds (Highlands)
  2. Wolf Straw Dog (Norfolk)
  3. William Brothers Fraoch Heather Ale (Alloa)

Golden Ales:

  1. Crouch Vale Brewers Gold (Essex)
  2. Hop Back Summer Lightning (Wiltshire)
  3. Holden’s Golden Glow (West Midlands)

 

BOTTLED BEER:

  1. White Shield: White Shield Brewery (Staffordshire)
  2. Hen’s Tooth: Greene King (Suffolk)
  3. Titanic Stout: Titanic (Staffordshire)

The scene at this year’s Great British Beer Festival.

Crouch Vale Brewers Gold Best Beer in Britain

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For the second year in a row, Crouch Vale Brewers Gold has won Champion Beer of Britain. Crouch Vale’s website describes the beer as “pale, refreshing and hoppy beer with gorgeous aromas of tropical fruits.”

From the CAMRA press release:

The beer is described in the 2006 edition of CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide as: “Honey-toned golden ale, with grapefruit sharpness offset by suggestions of melon and pineapple.”

The Essex brewed beer was chosen as the overall winner from over fifty finalists in eight categories including beers from tiny micros to major regional brewers.

Roger Protz, one of the finalist judges and Editor of the Good Beer Guide said: “It’s a tremendous victory for a brewery committed to its cask beer and richly deserved for this marvelous hoppy and fruity beer.”

Colin Bocking, Managing Director of Crouch Vale brewery said, “I am speechless. It was enough of a surprise to have won Champion Beer of Britain in 2005, but to have been voted Britain’s best beer for a second year in a row is truly unbelievable.

“Thanks to all the people who have supported the brewery over the years, especially those that have enjoyed this remarkable beer. This great news could not have come at a better time for us as we are in the middle of expanding the brewery.”

The Silver award went to Harveys brewery in Sussex for their Sussex Best Bitter. The Bronze was awarded to Triple fff brewery in Hampshire for Moondance.

Colin Bocking from Crouch Vale Brewery accepting this year’s Champion Beer of Britain Award.

Drinking Beer is Good for the Planet

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With a title like “Why Drinking Beer is Good for the Planet,” my interest was certainly piqued. The online edition of New Scientist doesn’t have the full article online — that requires a subscription — but there is enough information there to make sense of the story, at least.

What they’re calling “beer bran,” by which I presume they mean the spent grain, has been found to be effective in cleaning water that has been polluted.

From the New Scientist article preview:

Researchers at Kobe Pharmaceutical University in Japan have demonstrated that the [beer] bran adsorbs hazardous organic compounds including benzene and trichloroethylene (TCE) from chemical and industrial wastewater. The US National Academy of Sciences reported last week that there is growing evidence that TCE, used in adhesives and paint, can cause cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency is carrying out a new risk assessment of the chemical.

Companies commonly use filters made from activated carbon to remove pollutants from water. The dry, porous material has a large surface area, allowing it to trap large quantities of impurities. However, it is expensive and energy-consuming to produce, as it is made by heating coal to around 900 °C.

Many breweries currently dispose of their spent grain by giving it to local farmers to use as a cattle feed. But being able to reverse the effects of pollution would be yet another excellent use for this by-product of the brewing process.

Springfield Suds & Sustenance

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There was an interesting article on food and beer in today’s Springfield Journal-Register. It centers around mostly mainstrean fare, but includes a few recipes and local anecdotes about using beer in cooking. Anything that appropriately furthers the idea that beer and food work together perfectly is a good thing in my mind.

Protecting Minors by Separating Families

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Neo-Prohibitionists often get help from the authorities, who themselves are increasingly likely to be neo-prohibitionists. Because they’ve learned that one of the most effective ways to control others and further their agenda is to seek office in the various state alcohol control agencies. Despite taking an oath to serve the public good, they more often alter policy to do just the opposite. Witness Oregon’s “minor posting rules,” which led to seeing the following sight at this past weekend’s Oregon Brewers Festival (OBF).

That’s right, that’s not a joke, you’re seeing it correctly. It is not a trick or optical illusion. Here’s a close up of the sticker:

Parents also had to wear a similar sticker making a similar pledge to remove their minor child by 7:00 p.m. So what’s the reason for these draconian measures? According to Ken Palke, Media Relations Liaison for the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC), it has to do with Oregon’s minor posting rules, where “minors are not allowed into an environment where drinking is the predominant activity. The OLCC feels that after 7, the Portland event is geared much more toward drinking, without much eating.

Here’s the OLCC regulation stating the minor posting rule’s purpose:

845-006-0340 Minor Postings
(1) Purpose. The Commission is charged with regulating the sale of alcohol in a manner which protects the safety and welfare of the citizens, and ensures that alcohol is used legally. As a policy making body, the Commission has a responsibility to send a clear message to the community and its youth that drinking alcohol is an adult activity, and that drinking environments are for adults. At the same time, the Commission recognizes the need to maximize opportunities for minors to eat at licensed premises while minimizing their exposure to drinking environments.

According to the OLCC’s “licensing people, the OLCC did not require that stickers of any kind be put onto minors during the beer festival.” But as Art Larrance, Director of the OBF, points out, the OLCC tacitly approved it by signing off on the procedure the festival used in the voluminous application process the OBF is required to go through in order to put on the festival. “The OLCC did not want any minors at the festival,” Larrance told me, and the procedure we came up with was to placate their concerns and comply with the minor posting rules. They also suggested prohibiting minors ages 14-20 entirely and the arguments Larrance made fell on deaf ears. According to him, he tried to explain how such rules would split family participation and keep many people from being able to attend and the OLCC “just sat there and didn’t say anything.”

Such behavior, I think, is consistent with the intractable and inflexible position that the neo-prohibitionist movements have taken in their efforts to remove alcohol from society. The OLCC’s notion that “drinking alcohol is an adult activity” and the so-called clear message they’re sending is that children should not be present during adult activities. Taken to its extreme, or its logical conclusion depending on your point of view, this will ultimately split society into two: one society which is adults only and one which is kid-friendly with no adult activities whatsoever, lest our youth be corrupted. And there it is again, the ubiquitous “it’s for the children” argument that invariably is used by neo-prohibitionist groups to push their agenda.

If parents wish to bring their children with them to a beer festival, what business is that of the state? Restricting parental authority in this method sends not the message they intend, but that parents cannot be trusted with their own children’s welfare and upbringing. How dare the OLCC presume to tell anyone how to raise their children. That is not their responsibility as they claim, but is the duty and responsibility of each parent. All they’ve done is wrested control from parents and used it to further the goal of prohibition. They’ve certainly perverted the idea of protecting society from itself.

It seems quite obvious to me that if you want to raise children who will become responsible adults, capable of reasonably enjoying what the OLCC calls “adult activities,” they need to witness the example of their parents and other adults doing just that. Keeping minors from ever seeing adults drinking will only serve to make it more of a taboo — thus making abuse more attractive as prohibited activities are always more desirable — and give kids no lessons to learn on “how” drinking responsibly is accomplished. Underage drinking — and especially abuse — is, of course, much less common in nations where alcohol is seamlessly part of the society and in which children are included in all aspects of the adult world. England’s pub culture has, for example, created family gathering spots for entire neighborhoods without managing to corrupt its youth. In fact, almost everywhere alcohol is not restricted but embraced as a part of everyday life, society seems healthier as a result. The frat party alcohol abuses are peculiarly restricted to the U.S., where drinking is such a ridiculous taboo that kids who lack any positive examples of alcohol act irresponsibly in the vacuum of information created by neo-prohibitionist proselytizing.

Ironically, the OLCC’s director, Teresa L. Kaiser, resigned in May of this year after being arrested “on suspicion of driving under the influence and reckless driving.” Following a two-car crash on the west end of Portland’s Sellwood Bridge, “police said a breath test showed her blood-alcohol level was 0.16, twice the legal limit for adults.” She probably never attended a beer festival with her parents to learn how to enjoy alcohol responsibly. But at least she’s gotten that infant alcoholism epidemic under control.

This problem sadly is not, of course, unique to Oregon. Neo-prohibitionists in communites all across America are trying to remove alcohol from public events such as county fairs, outdoor concerts and festivals of all kinds. When such puritanical ideas — like Oregon’s keeping minors away from almost any event involving alcohol — work their way into our laws, it’s the very children such laws claim to protect along with society as a whole that are being harmed. And we should do everything in our power to oppose them. I, for one, will continue to take my kids, Porter and Alice, to as many beer festivals as possible.

Fal Allen’s Archipelago Brewery Opens

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Last year, my friend Fal Allen left for Singapore to open an American-style craft brewery for Asia Pacific Breweries. Archipelago Brewery originally opened in 1931 but by 1941 was sold to Malayan Breweries (which today is Asia Pacific Breweries). Closed since then, it finally reopened July 24 with three craft beers created and brewed by Fal: Traveller’s Wheat, Straits Pale Ale and Trader’s Ale, which is made with “a touch of Gula Melaka (palm sugar) and ginger.”

From the press release:

Combining the best of Western beer brewing techniques and exotic Asian spices, Archipelago draught beers will be created in small, unpasteurised batches to obtain the freshest beers that complement the region’s weather and food – perfectly.

“We wanted to create a craft brew that is distinctly Asian with a strong heritage. With the use of special Asian spices in our beers, the distinctive taste of Archipelago will undoubtedly appeal to beer connoisseurs in Singapore”, said Ms Andrea Teo, General Manager of Archipelago Brewery Company. “With the refined drinker in mind, the signature tastes of the Archipelago Beer range promises both pleasure and adventure with every drinking experience. By introducing specialty craft beer to the market, we also hope to educate the public about the finer points of beer appreciation and beer-food pairing.”

Brewed and crafted in Singapore to ensure maximum freshness and optimal product quality, the new Archipelago Brewery Company is devoted to the art of brewing and the enjoyment of flavour with a unique blend of East and West. Launching the brand are three main variants, Traveller’s Wheat, Straits Pale and Trader’s Ale. All three combine the credibility of Western brewing techniques with Asian ingredients such as lemon grass, tamarind and Gula Melaka, to create what is arguably the first Asian conceptualised craft beer with Asian characteristics.

I can’t wait to get over there and try them for myself. But Fal will be in Denver for GABF in late September. Perhaps he’ll bring some of his new beers with him for us to sample.

Fal at the brewery opening.

Work, work, work.