Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Zen and the Art of Craft Beer

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Here’s an interesting item sent to me by fellow beer writer Lisa Morrison. It appeared on one of the television websites she writes for, in this case WISN Channel 2 out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

BluCreek Brewing from Madison, Wisconsin, is releasing a new IPA in August made with green tea called Zen IPA. The idea is to combine the positive health benefits of green tea with the positive health benefits of beer. It is believed to be the first of its kind, a beer with the taste of green tea flavor.

From BluCreek’s website:

An intense infusion of fresh Chinook, Cascade, and Centennial hops combined with natural green tea imparts this traditional English-style Pale Ale (English IPA) with something a little beyond the ordinary… A little extraordinary!

A beer that transcends beyond anything you have ever experienced before, the smooth and subtle green tea aroma and taste perfectly compliment the refreshing crispness of an English IPA. The result will satisfy those who are looking for something more mystical… magical… wonderful. Created for the IPA lover interested in more than just substantial hops character.

More Good News for Healthy Beer Drinkers

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HealthDay News had a short item today which touted another new study showing the health effects of drinking a pint or two beer each day.

From the article:

According to the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, beer contains high levels of an ingredient that helps deposit calcium and other minerals into bone tissue.

And a recent study found the antioxidants present in dark beer help prevent clogged arteries, which should reduce the risk of heart disease.

Most research showed the optimum benefits can be reaped with up to one drink a day for women and up to two a day for men.

This is another in a literal stream of health benefits now attributable to drinking beer. So why does the negative stereotpe continue to persist that beer is bad for you? Because too many people are making money off that assumption plus the demonization of alcohol is a favorite pastime of many with socially conservative leanings.

“Beer Is Healthier Than Wine!”

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At the annual meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists, one of my professors from UC Davis, Charles Bamforth — the Anheuser-Busch endowed Professor of Brewing Science — said “Beer, if you looked at it holistically, is healthier than wine. But it is not perceived that way.” Citing soluble fiber, vitamin B12, folic acid, niacin and antioxidants such as polyphenols and ferulic acid — not to mention recent findings about positive aspects of hops — there are many ways in which beer is a very healthy beverage. In addition, the active ingredient in alcohol, regardless of what drink, helps counter blockage of the arteries.

Sadly, very few people either realize this and many simply refuse to believe it, more than likely due more to social politics than reality. Of course the mainstream media’s bias against beer doesn’t help, either. In a recent poll, most people incorrecly identified beer as containing sugar, fat and preservatives. Bamforth further remarked that many in the medical establishment are the ones perpetuating myths and circulating misinformation about beer. He told the audience. “I have a friend who is a doctor who says, ‘don’t drink beer because it has fat’. There’s no fat in it at all.” Bamforth also believes the beer industry has not championed the positive health benefits of beer in order to avoid the perception of encouraging drinking, and especially underage drinking.

Bamforth is also the author of the book Beer: Health and Nutrition

Charles M. Bamforth, Professor of Brewing at the University of California at Davis

Beer is Good for Your Prostate

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A new study at Oregon State University appears to show that hops is helpful in both preventing prostate cancer and also enlarging your prostate. According to Emily Ho, a professor and researcher at Oregon State’s Linus Pauling Institute, “xanthohumol, a compound found in hops, inhibits NF-kappaB protein in cells along the surface of the prostate gland.” The bad news — or good, depending how you look at it — is you’ll have to drink seventeen 12-oz. beers to get the amount of xanthohumol that the study showed to be beneficial in fighting prostate problems.

Somebody call Ralph at HopUnion. Perhaps they can create a hop variety that’s packed with more xanthohumol. Actually a German brewer, Weihenstephan, is making a beer with ten times the normal amounts of xanthohumol but it is not known if it will actually transmit the health benefits in liquid form.

Xanthohumol was discovered almost one hundred years ago in hops, but it’s health benefits were not realized until the last decade when researchers began examining flavonoid compounds.

German beers with Xanthohumol.

Beer Lowers Risk of Heart Disease for Men

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A Danish study of 50,000 people released yesterday revealed that “men who drank daily had a 41% reduced risk of coronary heart disease compared with a 7% drop in men who drank once a week.” Oddly, the benefits for women were not as dramatic. For them, “the risk of heart disease fell by a third with a weekly drink but did not fall further in daily drinkers.”

According to a BBC article:

But for women, although drinking on at least one day a week was associated with a 36% reduced risk of heart disease compared to those who drank more rarely, the risk was the same whether women had one drink a week or drank moderately each day.

The gender bias is believed to be either “hormonal, or related to the type of alcohol consumed or there may be differences in the way men and women’s bodies process alcohol.”

Also from the BBC article:

Lead researcher Professor Morten Gronbaek from the National Institute of Public Health in Denmark said: “It has been shown that frequency of drinking has a larger role than amount but this points towards the fact there is a gender difference.”

“One or two drinks in men, or one drink a day in women, would be sufficient for heart disease – you wouldn’t get any more beneficial effects from drinking more.”

Good News for Modern Beer Drinkers

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I know Stan already posted this, but it was too good not to talk about again. Story so nice we mentioned it twice. The Publican, a magazine for the British pub trade, reported on a recent conference in Brussels that focused on the health benefits of beer. As if great taste wasn’t enough, many individual health benefits have been reported over the last few years with the increased research, especially in the EU, on beer and health. But the conference brought all the disparate research together and presented a new, more complete, picture of health benefits that moderate beer drinking brings to the table. These have been ignored and will doubtless continue to be ignored by the American press because in this country scientific research isn’t enough to overcome prejudice and puritanism. Still, it’s great to know that out in other parts of the civlized world, beer is being recognized as not being the evil the neo-prohibitionists would have us believe it is.

From the Publican article:

Many of the health benefits of moderate beer drinking are unique to beer because of its ingredients such as hops and malted barley. Of all the alcoholic drinks on the market beer is also relatively low in alcoholic strength.

Chairman Professor Jonathan Powell of the Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Research in Cambridge said: “The media and public tend to focus on wine. However, the emerging evidence is the real benefits are related to the alcohol itself and so the positive story also relates to other drinks such as beer.

“Drinks such as beer have other nutrients and properties that can also be beneficial in terms of health. This conference is about redressing the balance.”

The nine health benefits of moderate beer drinking hightlighted at the conference:

  1. Reduces the risk of heart disease
  2. Helps keep blood pressure down and reduce the risk of stroke
  3. Benefits the immune system meaning healthy adults are less prone to get infections
  4. Has anti-inflammatory effects which contributes to heart health
  5. Could play a role in the battle against osteoporosis as it …
  6. Improves bone mineral density which contributes to healthy bones
  7. Helps fight cancer because of compounds in hops called flavinoids
  8. Decreases the risk of dementia due to its beneficial effect on preserving brain function in old age
  9. Can protect against type II diabetes

Beer May Inhibit Osteoporosis

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England’s Daily Mail reported today the findings of a recent study that shows drinking a pint of beer a day “appears to suppress the hormones that promote bone loss.” Further, the “researchers say it may have a better effect on preventing bone loss than calcium.” So the slogan should be changed to “Beer, It Does a Body Good.”

Plus the beer industry has always been looking for a way to increase the number of female beer drinkers. Perhaps this is their opportunity since as I understand it Osteoporisis affects women four times as often as men.

A Beer for Menopausal Women

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While the FDA in the U.S. has been more than a little reluctant to endorse any health claims regarding beer, the EU has been at the vanguard of researching and standarizing such claims. Our governments’ stance on alcohol has been informed more by religious zealotry than any true health concerns. As a result we cannot bring ourselves to acknowledge that the demon alcohol might in fact not be all bad. That perhaps there are some health benefits from moderate drinking, despite study after study that shows just that, is anathema to the puritanical thinking of the neo-prohibitionists who make our country’s drug policy.

Meanwhile, the European Union has quietly created standards for organic beer, gluten-free beer and who knows what else. In most European countries drinking beer and wine in a family setting with meals, as a part of celebrations, and at family events and gatherings is so ubiquitous that they stare at us in wonder and bewilderment when we continually demonize alcohol. So it’s no surprise really that European doctors are studying ways to ease the suffering of women going through menopause by creating a special beer for them.

From the article in the South African iol:

Women struggling with the discomforts of menopause may soon find relief in a cold glass of beer.

Experts in the Czech Republic are working on a beer specifically brewed for women experiencing hot flashes, troubling sleeping and other woes during this phase.

The low-kilojoule, low-alcohol beer being developed by the Prague-based Research Institute of Brewing and Malting contains heightened levels of phytoestrogen, a plant form of the hormone estrogen often lacking in menopausal women, said the institute’s director Karel Kosar.

Phytoestrogen is found in the hops and barley malt used in many types of beer. Kosar said breweries could produce the special beer by increasing the levels of these ingredients.

A gynaecologist working with the institute reported good results from clinically tests with the beer on 20 women. The volunteers who drank three decilitres nightly for two months reported fewer menopausal symptoms.

I certainly hope they perfect it before my wife needs it. But that gives them twenty to twenty-five years which should be plenty of time.

World’s First Beer Bath Spa

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The Chodovar Brewery is located in the small town of Chdova Plana in the Czech Republic’s west Bohemia area. This region is known for its health spas with natural mineral waters, especially the Czech Republic’s biggest spa, Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad). The Chodovar Brewery already operated a pub and a hotel when they decided they could offer a whole new package vacation by incorporating a nearby mineral spring and creating a wholly original spa treatment in the ancient cellars of the brewery, which has been operating since 1573. Guests pay around $140 for weekend packages with several health treatments available including beer wraps, beer massages, beer cosmetics and the pièce de résistance, the beer bath. A nurse greets clients behind a bar and dispenses the free beer that comes with your spa treatment.

The brewery spa website describes the beer bath as:

An original curative spa therapy connecting a soothing hot bath, the spring of healing mineral water IL-SANO, the unique dark Bathing Beer and rejuvenating effects of beer yeast with a mixture of hops and dehydrated curative herbs.

There is a bathside bar so you can enjoy a glass of beer while you’re relaxing in your beer. The full description at their website is very detailed.

Of course, if you don’t have an entire weekend, a single beer bath session, including the free beer, will set you back about twenty dollars. Too bad it’s not closer. But if I ever get to west Bohemia, this is definitely on my to do list.

(AP Photo/CTK, Petr Eret)

Jana Tymlova, left, enjoys a soak in the Real Beer Baths launched by the family brewery Chodovar in Chodova Plana, Czech Republic, Thursday, March 23, 2006.

The bath consists of water and mineral water IL-SANO, but the major bath ingredient is dark beer which is produced in a traditional way based on the copyright original method and made by the main brewer of the family brewery only.

Underage Drinking: The Albatross of the Industry

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I got a press release today that got me thinking from the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA), a trade group that sometimes represents the same interests as the brewers and sometimes not. The NBWA, of course, represents the interests of the middle man, the beer distributor. A great distributor can do wonderful things for better beer if they care about what they’re selling. There are many instances where this has happened and many regions of the country with a vibrant beer culture owe much to the work of the beer distributors.

On the other hand, there are equally many, if not more, who care only about making a buck or selling only their major brand. Several years ago Anheuser-Busch — why is it always these guys? — instituted a program they called “share of mind” to get their beer distributors to sell only A-B beer and little or nothing else. This was good for them but terrible news for the hundreds of small breweries who also depend on distributors for the distribution of the beer. In many states, the distributor model is institutionalized in ways which leave the brewer no choice but a third-party beer distributor to sell their beers. Most of these laws were set up after prohibition and in many cases the laws themselves were written by big brewery lawyers. So it’s no surprise that most of the alcohol laws in this country favor them: they were after all designed that way. The idea was that it would do away with the violence and fighting that marked the prohibition period and also it would somehow benefit the consumer. How giving territorial monopolies to a business would benefit consumers is a bit of logic that has always been lost to me but that was the rationale, believe it or not. Here in California, for example, one of the ways it was supposed to level the playing field was by forcing the same pricing on all retailers so that larger retailers could not benefit from buying in bulk. Many devious ways have been created to get around these, of course, many of them even almost legal, but I’ll leave that for the moment. Suffice it to say that not all beer distributors are good for the beer community.

Today’s press release concerns a letter from the NBWA to the Surgeon General in response to a request from him regarding the issue of preventing underage drinking. Now the first, and to me most obvious, problem with that is that I don’t understand how underage drinking is a health problem? It’s not like smoking and getting lung cancer. There aren’t teens dying of liver failure, are there? (I know hazing has had its share of drinking related fatalaties but blaming the beer in those cases is like blaming the knife in a stabbing death). My point is that the age of consent for drinking is a policy decision. It was an arbitrary decision to determine at what age a person could legally drink. And the fact that a person can enter the military and die for his or her country but not have a beer is a travesty of the first order. We should at a minimum be willing to give all the rights and privileges of adulthood to anyone willing to lay down his life for us. That we don’t says something profound about our society’s priorities, which in my opinion are screwed up beyond redemption. I remember my three years of military service. We had a soda machine in our day room that dispensed canned beer. But the second we walked off the base, we were treated as children once more, and it was more than a little infuriating.

But I’m at a loss to think of what actual health problems are associated with drinking alcohol at twenty-one versus eighteen years of age. All the usual problems discussed concerning underage drinking are about rebellion, breaking laws and the like. They’re not health issues. So the fact that the Surgeon General is asking the NBWA for advice on underage drinking strikes me as very odd. If the NRA received a similar letter asking their advice about the problem of school shootings, the 2nd Amendment lobby would be up in arms — no pun intended — in protest. But in our puritanical society, fun always takes it on the chin. Anything people are enjoying must be curbed, and usually that’s done through some manufactured concern for the children. There are actually plenty of good arguments why the drinking age should be lowered, but I won’t go into them here. If you want to read more about that debate, here are some good links. [ NYRA / Alcohol Solutions / ASFAR / Both Sides ]

But okay, let’s set aside the ridiculousness of the request and take a look at the NBWA’s response. Here’s the bulk of their letter to the Surgeon General:

On behalf of the 1,800 members of the National Beer Wholesalers Association, I am heartened by the Surgeon General’s request for comments on the very serious issue of underage alcohol consumption.

Beer distributors, as family-owned local businesses, work diligently in their communities to promote moderate consumption and prevent underage drinking. Through, among other things, sponsoring public service announcements, working with law enforcement and school officials, distributing materials to help parents talk to their kids about alcohol consumption and providing retailers with training, signage and age-verification materials, beer distributors devote significant resources to the fight against underage drinking.

While these are worthwhile efforts that have helped to reduce and control the problem of underage drinking, the states’ ability to effectively restrict the sale and distribution of alcohol is the key to keeping beverage alcohol out of the hands of our youth.

Effective state regulation is under increasing attack as various economic interests attempt to deregulate alcohol and otherwise weaken the states’ abilities to strictly control alcohol sales. As a result, some states have been forced to open their borders to Internet sales of all alcohol beverages. Such anonymous access presents a major challenge to the states’ fight against underage drinking, as consumers receive deliveries from out-of-state sellers who can not be effectively regulated by the state.

Indeed, in a study released last year, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 10 percent of all minors have actually obtained alcohol over the Internet. In addition, numerous states have conducted “stings” to determine if kids are able to acquire alcohol online without being required to show photo identification or provide a signature. Time and again those stings unveiled the frightening ease with which a child of any age can easily obtain alcohol – most often, the brown, nondescript packages were simply left at the front door.

The 21st Amendment gives states the explicit authority to regulate alcohol within their borders. This amendment was designed to ensure states have the flexibility to regulate socially sensitive products accordingly to local norms and standards in order to promote responsible and moderate consumption and discourage abuse.

Special interests’ attempts to circumvent state requirements of regulated transactions occurring in licensed retail outlets are eroding a critical system of alcohol beverage control and putting state regulations at risk.

Beer distributors understand that the products they provide, while enjoyed by 90 million American adults, can cause devastating consequences if abused – especially by those under the legal drinking age. We are concerned that economic interests are slowly chipping away at state alcohol controls and the states’ ability to effectively regulate. This could result in long-term damage to the fight against underage drinking and abuse.

For these reasons, we respectfully request that unregulated alcohol sales and attempts to weaken state alcohol control be a central focus of the Surgeon General’s Call to Action regarding underage drinking issues. The states’ authority to regulate alcohol beverages must be reinforced.

In their response, they begin by going through the litany of various things they currently do to stop underage drinking. These typically involve signs, PSAa and talking to schools and educators. Yawn. If any of those really worked, this would have gone away by now. Anyway, most of what they give to retailers and schools were created by the breweries, not by them. I’m pretty sure the beer distributors have to take those steps either by law or for PR purposes. I don’t believe they’d do them if they weren’t required to in some way.

To be fair to them, I don’t even see why it’s their job at all. They sell beer to retailers who in turn sell it to the public. Wouldn’t it make more sense for the burden to be shifted to the retailer, who is actually the one selling it to minors? I know many retailers are also bound to follow strict selling guidelines to insure only adults buy certain products but it’s still usually the big breweries who produce the ad campaigns for them. That it’s the beer industry that preaches responsible drinking when it clearly runs contrary to the pursuit of profit has always seemed strange to me. But it’s largely because of the neo-prohibitionists who want to criminalize anything enjoyable that might be abused. Breweries can’t be seen as encouraging their customers to have more and more of their products because that would somehow mean encouraging abuse and would in turn give too much ammunition to an ever-vigilant minority who doesn’t want me to be able to have a beer after a long, hard day. These people bear watching, they’re dangerous. I see the whole responsible drinking public service campaigns as being the albatross of the industry, holding it down so it’s unable to fly. We should be able to celebrate wonderful beer and the joys of drinking openly without having to worry that if someone goes too far it can ruin things for everybody.

But then the letter turns interesting. The NBWA goes after interstate internet sales of alcohol as the real bogeyman. This is just hilarious. Forget for a second that telling the Surgeon General this is like telling your dentist about the pain in your foot, and look at their agenda. Internet sales are bad because they give kids access to alcohol. It couldn’t possibly be that what they call being “under increasing attack as various economic interests attempt to deregulate alcohol and otherwise weaken the states’ abilities to strictly control alcohol sales” is actually an economic threat to them? Of course it is. They’re pissed off about losing their own monopolies so they decided to make it an issue of underage drinking. This is so reprehensible that I’m almost speechless. Almost. I’ve had disagreements with the NBWA before and I’m sure I will again. Their ultimate interests are different than mine and that’s okay. But this one is just too out there and somebody has to call “bullshit” on them.

Opening up the states to internet shipping of alcohol made it possible for people to get beer from places where it wasn’t practical for it to be sold through regular channels. In many cases, the local beer distributors (NBWA members no doubt) refused to carry products they deemed would not be popular enough to justify the warehouse space for them. This is great news for consumers and for small breweries with niche market demand. It cut out the middle man — the beer distributors — and made it possible for brewers and the people who wanted their beer to get together one on one. You can see why that’s bad for the middle man. He’s left pretty much nowhere with a refrigerated warehouse full of Bud Dry nobody wants to drink. So let’s play the “it’s about the kids” card, but I’m not buying it and neither should you.

They claim that an NSA study showed “10 percent of all minors have actually obtained alcohol over the Internet.” So let’s look at those numbers. According to the 2000 Census data, there were 281,421,906 people in the total population and 196,899,193 who were 21 years of age or older (which is 70%). That leaves a minor population of 84,522,713. Ten percent of that is 8,452,271 minors who have bought alcohol over the internet. Does that figure seem reasonable to anyone? Then let’s also review what’s involved in “obtaining” alcohol over the internet. You’d need internet access, a credit card and a mailing address that matched the credit card (although I suppose you could claim it was a gift and were shipping it elsewhere). So you figure you’ve got to cut out all kids under a certain age, say nine and under, which is just under 4 million kids. Does every household have internet access. Not yet. Then there’s stealing (borrowing) a credit card or perhaps you may actually have your own if you’re college age or have rich parents. Then there’s where to have it shipped, not to mention the amount to be added to cover shipping (and even light beer is heavy when it comes to shipping). You’d have to choose a house where parents wouldn’t be home during delivery times and shipping alcohol requires an adult to sign for it, too, so you’ve got to figure a way around that problem, as well. So yes, a resourceful, motivated teenager could get it done, but it wouldn’t be all that easy and I find it very hard to believe eight and a half million kids pulled it off. Especially when the time-honored tradition of asking an older brother or uncle to buy beer for you is still the bet bet going, and is so much faster and cheaper and less risky that the idea of using the internet in this way becomes laughable.

In the end, using states’ rights to fight even an imagined health problem — it’s not a health problem but that is still implicit from its source — is prima facie ridiculous. In fact, the entire chain of logic in this whole debate seems surreal to me. First, the Surgeon General of the United States, the top “doc” in the country, asks for advice about what is not even a health problem but a societal one to an organization with no ties to health or, in fact, the problem. After all, beer distributors are middle men: they don’t make the beer and they don’t sell it to the public. Then these middle men respond by saying the way to protect our kids from the evils of underage drinking is to return states’ rights to them and allow them to keep their monopolies and not allow you and me to buy Rodenbach Grand Cru from New York State (since I can’t get it in California — there’s no distributor here) because there’s a small chance the kid who lives down the block might try to order beer over the internet for his next party. I confess I’m really quite tired of giving up my rights as an adult so that children will be protected. Not only does it not ever work, but we should not be willing to create a society that’s fit only for kids on the off chance that a child will have access to something we’ve decided he shouldn’t see, or hear or taste. There’s already a mechanism in place to combat those problems and it’s worked pretty well for millennia — it’s called parenting. I’m an adult. I want to live in an adult world. I don’t want anybody telling me or my child what’s good and what’s bad for him. That’s my job. And now what I really want is a bottle of Rodenbach Grand Cru. Please, for the love everything good, somebody send me a bottle before it’s too late.