Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Budweiser Negotiating to Buy Budweiser

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No, you read that right. In April it was announced that the Czech Republic, who owns and operates Budejovicky Budvar — from the Bohemian town of Budweis — was considering selling it to the highest bidder to help with the country’s budget woes. Naturally they used the gentler word privatize, but the result is the same. Forbes is reporting that Anheuser-Busch has been in negotiations for some time now.

A-B and Budvar have been bickering over the Budweiser trademark for over a century, though recently A-B agreed to distribute Czechvar (Budvar’s trade name in the U.S.) in the American market. Buying the Czech brewery would make good sense from a business point of view, because the still numerous pending trademark disputes would simply vanish, saving untold millions in legal fees. Plus A-B would be able to market its own Budweiser uniformly throughout the world. Currently there are a number of nations where Budvar has prevailed in litigation and the American Budweiser must be sold in those countries under a different name. Buying the brewery then seems like it would be worth its weight in gold. Of course, the Czech government is apparently not one to let an opportunity pass it by and is exploiting the situation. They’re asking $1.5 billion, even though that’s twelve times its annual sales of just over $125 million. Most valuations use a formula of around 2.5 times annual sales, making a pricetag of $300 million or so a bit more reasonable, at least to prospective buyers.

A-B began selling beer under the name Budweiser (admittedly taking the name from the Bohemian town of Budweis) in 1876 (registering the trademark in 1878), whereas the present brewer, Budejovicky Budvar, didn’t begin brewing until 1895. But as the Czechs are quick to point out, beer was being brewed in the town of Budweis since the 13th century, since 1265 to be exact. And in that time before trademarks and brand names per se, beer brewed in the town was called Budweiser to distinguish it from beer made in other towns, it just wasn’t made by the same company. To a number of people, however, the dispute is about more than just who used the brand name first. To the Czechs it’s understandably a matter of national pride. How do you tell someone they can’t use the name of their own town on their own labels with a company name that also includes the name of the town?
 

 
Well if you’re Anheuser-Busch, you rely on the fact that you’ve spent millions and millions of dollars building a brand name and some upstart company shouldn’t be able to just waltz in and trade on all that hard work. And while I do understand A-B’s position, I’d be more sympathetic to it if this dispute just started recently after they really have created a worldwide brand name over many, many years spending untold dollars to do so. But that’s not exactly what happened. This dispute began early in the 20th century, only ten years or so after the modern Budvar was formed and only 30-odd years after Anheuser began using the Budweiser name. At that time they were certainly a successful company, but nowhere near the international behemoth they are today. Looked at today, it’s much easier to accept A-B’s arguments, but not when the dispute began. The vast majority of the effort and resources that A-B has spent building up the value of the brand name took place after Budvar began complaining that A-B was using their town’s name. I’m not sure that matters from a legal standpoint (though perhaps it should) but it just feels wrong. I know that’s idealistic and isn’t how the world really works, but I’m not convinced that most people want to live in a world where the bully with the most money usually wins. A-B may have even figured out a way to market Budweiser in the Czech Republic, by buying another local brewery, Jihocesky Pivovary, which is currently located in southern Bohemia. But in 1997 they found documents indicating they were the first brewery in Budweis, having been founded in 1795.

But buying Budejovicky Budvar would finally and forever put this dispute to bed. I just don’t know if that’s really the right result. It certainly doesn’t feel like it would end the controversy or really answer the question of who really should be entitled to use the name “Budweiser.”

 

Celebrate 25th Anniversary of California’s Brewpub Law

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This Thursday, September 13, marks the 25th of anniversary of the signing of the California bill — AB 3610 — which removed the “tied house” restriction then present in California which prohibited any person or company from brewing beer and selling it directly to the public. The bill allowed beer to be sold where it was brewed, as long as the brewer also operated a restaurant at the same location. It was only the second brewpub law passed in the country at that time. The bill was written by then-state legislator Tom Bates, who is now the mayor of Berkeley.

California was home to three of the first five brewpubs in America. The second brewpub to open America (and the first in California) was the Mendocino Brewery in Hopland, California, which opened in August 1983. Mendocino Brewing has moved to a new facility in Ukiah and the Hopland location is now a bar, but the company is still going strong. The third brewpub in the U.S. was Buffalo Bill’s in Hayward, California, which opened in September 1984 and still a brewpub. And the fifth was Triple Rock Brewery in Berkeley, California, which opened in March 1986. It’s also the only one still owned by the same people who started it.

Join the California Small Brewers Association Thursday as we drink a toast to the law that changed our beer landscape for the better.

From the press release:

On September 13th at 5:00 pm, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates will join brew pub owners to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the signing of the California law that legalized brewpubs. The bill — AB 3610, authored by then-Assemblyman Tom Bates — was soon replicated around the country, creating the national brewpub industry and introducing millions of people to good beer.

The September 13th event will include a ceremonial “bill signing” by the owners of Bay Area Brew Pubs, an honor to Mayor Tom Bates for writing the legislation, and a special beer brewed just for the occasion by Triple Rock Brewery.

“In the early 1960s, I spent time in Germany as an officer in the U.S. Army. When I got home, I realized you couldn’t get a good beer in the United States,” said Mayor Tom Bates. “When a group of entrepreneurs and beer enthusiasts approached me about changing State Law to provide a market for smaller, craft breweries, I jumped at the opportunity. Every time I travel around the country, I am amazed to see the wonderful legacy of my legislation.”

9.13

Celebration of the 25th Anniversary of Brewpubs!

Triple Rock Brewery, 1920 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, California
510.THE.BREW [ website ]
 

Arcane Beer Laws

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The U.S. is filled with strange laws, and the world of beer is not immune. In fact, in the states I’m familiar with, they are some of the most incomprehensible, nonsensical laws one could imagine. Many were created just after Prohibition, when almost every state rewrote their alcohol laws. And some are more modern, showing quite clearly that we have learned little in the intervening 75 years.

Of course, there are many of these odd laws that I don’t know about and, happily, Carolyn Smagalski has filled in some of the blanks. Carol writes a terrific column on beer at BellaOnline, a website for women. Here is her list of some of the quirkier ones by state:

Silly Beer Laws by U.S. State: A-M
Silly Beer Laws by U.S. State: N-Z

If you know of any others in your state, please let me know. I think I’ll start keeping a list.
 

Today Alcopops, Tomorrow Beer

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Join Together, another one of those pesky neo-prohibitionist groups, is still crowing about the California Board of Equalization‘s wrong-headed decision last week to tax FMB’s (flavored malt beverages, a.k.a alcopops) using the same schedule as spirits. This will mean, beginning in mid-2008, makers of FMBS will be required to pay about 25% more in taxes. Neo-Prohibitionists groups who pushed this issue believe that making alcopops more expensive will somehow reduce underage consumption.

As I’ve said before, it’s quite easy to see why the BOE would vote in favor of higher taxes, especially during a statewide budget crunch, but even at that it was a narrow 3-2 decision. Insiders present at the meeting tell me that the BOE hinted at al present that in ruling they way they did, they were giving all concerned parties a chance to take the issue to the legislature where the BOE made clear they believe it should be decided. I’ve heard an unconfirmed story already that the anti-alcohol Marin Institute has talked to the state speaker, fully expecting his support, only to be shut down in no uncertain terms. It’s no surprise we’ve haven’t heard that side of the story from them.

Knowing that makes it much harder to swallow Join Together characterizing the ruling as “groundbreaking.” Their headline, Alcopops are Liquor, Not Beer, Calif. Tax Board Rules, is misleading at best and an out and out lie at worst. The BOE did no such thing. They only ruled that alcopops should be “taxed” as spirits, not that they “are” spirits. A small point, perhaps, but I think illustrative of how willing these groups are to torture the truth and bend it to their will.

Speaking of lying, here another pernicious one:

Michael Scippa, advocacy director for the Marin Institute, told Join Together that up to 90 percent of the alcohol contained in alcopops is derived from distilled spirits, and that California law states that a beverage with any amount of detectable alcohol from such sources is considered a distilled product, not a beer product.

“Up until now, alcopop manufacturers have gotten away with a cynical manipulation of California’s alcoholic beverage laws, mischaracterizing their products – which derive most of their alcoholic content from distilled spirits – as though they were beer to permit them to be sold cheaply and broadly throughout the state,” said Scott Dickey, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Public Law Group, which provided free legal services to the campaign to change the alcopops classification. “The BOE’s decision is a big step forward in holding alcopop manufacturers accountable for this deception.”

That’s not true, they are malt beverages with flavoring added. Distilled spirits are not added and it is not where their “alcoholic content” is derived from. They are most closely related to beer, which is precisely why they they are called flavored malt beverages and why they have been taxed like beer. Their alcohol content is likewise about the same as the average beer. They are fermented like beer and then chemical flavoring compounds are added, which give FMBs their distinctive sweet, fruity essence. Unlike attorney Scott Dickey’s assertions, which in fact are mischaracterizations, FMBs are exactly what their name suggests, no one has deceived anyone.

When Diageo first presented Smirnoff Ice to me in my capacity as the beer buyer for Beverages & more, they were quite candid about their reasons for launching the new product. Since they were prohibited from advertising their brand in certain media and likewise not permitted to sell their brand in certain stores, at least in California, such as convenience stores, gas stations, etc. By making an alcoholic product that was not spirit-based, they could now do so and it would further allow them to promote, market and advertise the core brand of Smirnoff to a wider audience. I think the fantastic success of Smirnoff Ice, and their countless imitators, surprised Diageo as much as it delighted them. But it was created precisely NOT to be a spirit, and if they had used distilled spirits in its manufacture, that would have defeated its original purpose.

Unlike the assertion of Marin Institute executive director Bruce Lee Livingston, whose grasp on reality seems to be slipping, that “[f]or generations, Big Alcohol has evaded proper taxation on these products,” they have been taxed at the exact rate they should have been for what the product actually is. And as I pointed out previously, Smirnoff Ice was introduced in 2001 and a generation is about thirty years. Clearly math is not his strong suit.

Now I’m no fan of FMBs. I don’t like them. I don’t like the way they often subvert young people’s conversion to craft beer. From a purely business point of view, I understand why the parent companies have used them to build their brand awareness while creating new profits at the same time. But I have been hearing a disturbing number of people inside the brewing industry willing to throw them under the bus, short-shortsightedly failing to recognize that the attack on FMBs is not an end unto itself, but merely the first battle in a much longer war. Don’t believe me? Just wait, do nothing, and see what happens.

I have it on good authority that the next salvo from the Marin Institute will be to ask the legislature/BOE to reclassify all malt beverages over 6% abv as distilled spirits! That means any strong beer like Belgian tripels, dubbels, bocks and doppelbocks, barleywines and even some IPAs will all be considered distilled spirits for taxation. I’m sure they’ll be spinning it as an attack on malt liquor, but some of our most cherished styles of beers will fall under such a definition, making them either more expensive or economically unfeasible for the breweries to continue making them.

Distillation, of course, is a specific process for separating, in the case of liquids, different components with different boiling points. There are a few kinds of distilling, such as freeze distilling, pot distilling and reflux distilling, and each of them does roughly the same thing or yields similar results. Liquids distilled are separate and distinct from either beer or wine, of course, as the process deviates wildly at one point and the resulting spirits are generally much, much stronger than either. Types of distilled products include absinthe, bourbon, brandy, calvados, cognac, gin, ouzo, rum, schnapps, scotch, tequila, vodka, whisky (and whiskey) to name just a few of the more common examples. Other non-alcoholic or lethal products which are distilled are gasoline, kerosene and paraffin.

So trying to call strong beers distilled spirits is not really in keeping with reality. Spirits — and wine for that matter — is generally much more alcoholic than beer, so trying to paint even a 10% strong beer with the same broad brush as whisky is akin to trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. It just doesn’t work. But it really has nothing to do with reality — or concepts of fairness — but instead is the drawing of the next battle line in a war whose goal is another national prohibition. We have to be vigilant of these groups and what they’re trying to accomplish. It’s our very complacency and disorganized apathy that they’re counting on to succeed. You can color me as reactionary as you like, but no harm can come from committing ourselves now to defeating the well-organized campaign for another prohibition. If we succeed, life continues as before. But if we lose, we’ll have no beer to cry into. Don’t let that happen.

 

MADD Hopping Mad Over Movement to Lower Drinking Age

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On the heels of a growing debate and movement to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18, MADD has issued an “Action Alert” to its members and affiliate neo-prohibitionist groups asking them to let their friends, family and legislators know the “facts.” Though in reality what they’re hoping to do is reinvigorate the moral zealots and remind legislators that common sense and following the will of the people are anathema to staying in office. Politicians don’t like to be portrayed as being for underage drinking, but that’s exactly what would happen to anyone with the temerity to express an opinion other than their own.

They must be feeling the heat from people speaking out against the current drinking age, because their rhetoric seems more vicious than usual. And their press releases use the word “fact” an awful lot despite not really offering anything new or anything that is actually a fact. To my way of thinking, if you can reasonably debate something claimed to be a fact, then it’s not really a fact in the first place. Here are the three points on which they hang their latest argument:

  1. Almost 50 high-quality studies have found conclusively that the 21 minimum drinking age decreases alcohol-related fatalities by 16 percent
  2. The brain continues to grow into the early/mid-20s and that drinking before this can damage the brain irreversibly
  3. In most countries with lower drinking ages, intoxication is much more common among young people than in the United States

So let’s look at these so-called “facts.”

1. There’s nothing conclusive about these studies and many experts believe that alcohol-related fatalities were already in decline before the drinking-age was effectively raised in 1984. Then there’s how you define “alcohol-related fatalities,” which in many cases includes passengers who’d been drinking or even victims. So that means that if a sober person accidentally ran over someone who’d been drinking, it was counted as an alcohol-related fatality. That hardly sounds like a high-quality study to me. Most, if not all, of these studies suffer from the same sorts of problems. They’re hardly ironclad facts that everyone agrees upon.

2. This is a beautiful one. Fear is always a great tool of propagandists. Apparently all of the people of the rest of the world have damaged brains, as does everyone of my generation who drank before reaching the age of 21. Except that virtually every other country’s kids beat the pants off of us at math, science and other academic measurements. Imagine how smart the rest of the world would be if only they didn’t allow their kids to drink. I guess they’d all be super-geniuses. If this was really the danger they make it out to be, no country on Earth would allow drinking before the brain fully formed. I’m going to assume this is only a problem if someone drinks to great excess and that would more properly be curbed by making it legal earlier and teaching responsibility and moderation both through parental modeling and learning in the home.

3. This claim is mostly based on a European study that appeared to show higher “intoxication rates” but the study itself, in it’s conclusion, said only that “the pattern of alcohol consumption reveals that frequent drinking is most prevalent among students in the western parts of Europe, such as the British Isles, the Netherlands, Belgium but also in Austria, the Czech Republic and Malta. Very few students in the northern parts of Europe drink that often (my emphasis).” “Frequent drinking” and “intoxication” are two very different things. The definitions are not necessarily comparable and, as such, these are hardly facts.

One interesting side note is that the only example given by MADD (on their new propaganda website Why 21) — which they also call the best example — is to “look at what happened in New Zealand.” They continue:

“In 1999, New Zealand lowered its purchase age from 20 to 18. Not only did drunk driving crashes increase, but youth started to drink earlier, binge drinking escalated, and in the 12 months following the decrease in legal drinking age, there was a 50 percent increase in intoxicated 18- and 19-year-old patients at the Auckland Hospital emergency room. Clearly, Europe has serious issues with youth alcohol use.”

Hmm, how to put this delicately? Apparently being a teetotaler makes you unable to know anything about geography. Last time I checked, New Zealand wasn’t anywhere near Europe, not even in the same hemisphere. Talk about keeping your facts straight, they don’t even know what countries are in Europe. Is it possible many neo-prohibitionists are also flat-earthers and don’t believe in maps? That would certainly fit my perspective of many of them.

Another howler in the Myths & Facts at Why 21 is in their explanation about why being able to vote or die in the military are not sufficient reasons to also be allowed to drink. They note that different “rights have different ages of initiation,” such as the minimum age to get a hunting license, drivers license or even get married. They then state that “these minimum ages are set for a reason” and list the reason for the drinking age as the following:

In the case of alcohol, 21 is the minimum age because a person’s brain does not stop developing until his or her early to mid-20s. Drinking alcohol while the brain is still developing can lead to long-lasting deficits in cognitive abilities, including learning and memory.

Anybody ever heard that as the reason why the drinking age is 21? Me neither. That certainly wasn’t how they sold it in 1984. Back then it was supposedly to reduce drinking and driving. But the WMD story didn’t fly I guess so now it’s regime change in the guise of developing brain scares. Again, if this was anything other than smoke and mirrors, the rest of the world would have sat up and done something about it, too. Can you really believe that only Americans love their children enough to protect them? Who is naive enough to believe Europeans or the rest of the world wouldn’t rush to protect their own kids’ developing brains if a true threat actually existed?

Another thing that doesn’t fly is the ages for hunting licenses, driving, buying tobacco and legal consent for sex and marriage. All of those occur before one becomes a legal adult, which happens at age eighteen. So those rights are regulated to people who are not yet considered adults. It’s done by adults to protect people who it is believed need such protection. The over 18 examples they give are the ages one can be elected to Congress and minimum age requirements imposed to rent a car or hotel room. The minimums for Congress (25), the Senate (30) and President (35) were set down at a time when living to 35 made you an elder statesman. I can see no reasonable sense in which this is comparable to the drinking age. Trying to insure more experienced men and women would represent us in government bears no relationship to at what age you can drink a beer. And the minimums to rent a car or stay in a hotel are industry standards and are about liability and risk management. They have nothing whatsoever to do with rights or the law. It’s not illegal to rent a car if you’re under 25, it’s just that no major car company will take your business. It’s a decision fueled by commercial interests, not a mandatory law imposed by our government.

So as far as I can tell, all of the under-18 regulated behaviors and the over-18 ones MADD uses in their rationalization, be they constitutional or business-oriented, are in no way related to the idea of what it means to be an adult. And that, I think, is the crux of the argument. I don’t think anyone would dispute that to vote or to fight and possibly die defending our nation makes you an adult. If participating in our democracy or fighting for it doesn’t make you an adult, then I don’t know what else possibly would or, indeed, could. At 18 you can also enter into contracts, gamble, hunt, buy cigarettes, drop out of school, have sex and/or get married without your parents consent. Really, the only legal good I can think of that’s denied eighteen-year olds is alcohol. And as the rest of the world does not deny its adults in this way, one can only conclude that fanaticism and moral zealots have gotten their way. That a few souls have decided it’s time to show the MADD Emperor’s nakedness, I can only say “what took you so long.”

 

MSNBC On the Drinking Age

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MSNBC had a very interesting article about the recent surge in support for lowering the drinking age to from twenty-one to eighteen again. Apart from nations that don’t permit alcohol at all — usually for religious reasons — we have the highest age for allowing drinking of any country in the world. For the vast majority of nations, it’s eighteen. To me it’s as simple as if you can vote and die as a soldier defending our country, you should at least be able to drink a beer. I’ve never heard a convincing rebuttal to that. In my opinion, it should be a part of how we define adulthood.
 

California Redefines Distilled Spirits

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California’s Board of Equalization took the surprising move today (by a one vote margin) of redefining distilled spirits using some very odd language. The new definition, which takes effect in July 2008, was re-written in an effort by neo-prohibitionist groups to tax FMB’s (flavored malt beverages, a.k.a. alcopops or malternatives) at a higher rate under the pretense of keeping them out of the hands of children. The idea that by making them more expensive they’ll be less attractive to younger and underage drinkers is, of course, prima facie ridiculous. I can understand the state’s angle because it will produce more revenue for them, but that it will help cure underage drinking is pure fantasy. California State Controller John Chiang went so far as to say “taxing flavored malt beverages as liquor will also help reduce their popularity with young people by simply pricing the product out of their reach.” Tell that to the sixteen-year old punks driving around Marin County in new BMW’s that they won’t be able to afford Smirnoff Ice anymore. What utter hogwash.

Even if I accept such tortured logic, why should everybody — older adults included — be punished with higher prices and why should those companies arbitrarily now have to pay significantly higher taxes? I think McDonald’s happy meals are destructive to the health of our nation’s youth. Should we charge McDonald’s a health tax on every happy meal so they’re so expensive no one will buy them anymore, for the good of our children? I think Coke is rotting the teeth and insides of millions of kids. Should a bottle of Coca-cola cost $5.00 to compensate for the health risks and keep children from buying them? Would it then be fair that the rest of us have to spend $5, too, to buy a coke and a smile? Why should every product we don’t want kids to have be more expensive for the rest of us just so they may not be able to afford it? It just doesn’t make sense. But that’s effectively the logic at work here. Is that really how we want to orient our society?

Here is the new language:

Regulation 2558. Distilled Spirits. Define distilled spirits to include any alcoholic beverage, except wine, which contains 0.5 percent or more alcohol by volume from flavors or ingredients containing alcohol obtained from the distillation of fermented agricultural products. (emphasis added.)

What’s troubling about this decision is that this new definition could — which means probably will — be interpreted to include some beer aged in oak barrels as well as certain other craft beers as distilled spirits. If subject to the much higher spirits tax, it will make them either prohibitively expensive or, more likely, effectively force brewers to stop making them altogether. And that would effectively quash some of the most innovative beers being produced today.

According to people who attended the hearing, it appears likely that this issue may be challenged in the courts and/or be dealt with through the legislature. Neo-prohibitionist groups, of course, are already claiming victory and sending out celebratory press releases, such as the one I received from the Marin Institute, who referred to the votes as “historic” and applauded the “strong leadership” of California’s state controller John Chiang. Apparently they regard a strong leader as someone who does their bidding.

Here’s some more back-patting from the press release:

“This is an enlightened step forward in controlling underage consumption of alcohol,” said Bruce Lee Livingston, MPP, Executive Director of Marin Institute. “For generations, Big Alcohol has evaded proper taxation on these products. Now, the state will benefit and the health and well-being of our youth will be improved.”

I find it curious that they even use the word “enlightened,” since that brings to mind the Enlightenment, a time that couldn’t be more removed from the sort of tactics neo-prohibitionists are using now. To enlighten, means to “to give intellectual or spiritual light to” something, or in older parlance to simply “shed light upon.” Trying to remove alcohol from society in order to impose ones own morals on everyone else is the very opposite of enlightened.

Then there’s his “[f]or generations, Big Alcohol has evaded proper taxation on these products.” (my emphasis.) A generation is generally considered to be about thirty years. FMBs first appeared a little over ten years ago, fifteen at most. And they really didn’t become all that popular until the introduction of Smirnoff Ice, which was in 2001. That was only six years ago, not quite the at least sixty years that Chiang’s “generations” implies.

“Public policy trumped corporate-influenced politics today,” said Michele Simon, Director of Research and Policy at Marin Institute. That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. Another is ‘fear mongering moral crusaders hijacked democracy in an effort to advance their own narrow agenda by pretending to care about the welfare of children and trumped common sense and reason today.’ It’s all how you choose to spin it.

Now personally I’m no fan of FMBs, either, and I also think they subvert young people from discovering the joys of craft beer, but I don’t believe making them more expensive is in any way useful. If the true goal of the neo-prohibitionists really is to keep them out of the hands of children (as they claim), a more effective strategy might be to keep kids from drinking sweet soda and developing a fondness for sweeter drinks in the first place. Then alcopops would not have the same appeal for them as they get older. Plus it would have the added benefit of keeping kids healthier by reducing their intake of sugar, high fructose syrup and other harmful chemicals in today’s soda-pop. But I don’t think this brouhaha really is about the children, but rather is anti-alcohol merely using children as a justification that’s easier to sell than another prohibition.

And that’s why I’m particularly troubled by the vague language of the new definition. Because I believe this is just another first step in a larger and more sinister effort not just to control children’s access to FMBs, but to restrict access to all alcohol. Today it’s FMBs, tomorrow … who knows what. So the enemy of my enemy is my friend in this case. If it was just about the taxes I wouldn’t like it, but at least I’d understand it. The way the neo-prohibitionist groups have been pushing against FMBs makes it obvious that it’s about more than just money. That they’ve persuaded the state of California to take this step and play into their hands is quite disturbing, to say the least.

 

The Milwaukee Beer Party

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In a modern day version of the Boston Tea Party — but without the Indian costumes or a ship — Wisconsin beermakers staged a protest today by dumping out kegs of beer into the Milwaukee River. The Milwaukee Beer Party, which is what I’ll be calling it, was held to bring attention to Wisconsin SB 224, a state Senate bill that would make things more difficult for small local brewers.

From the AP article:

Basically, it divides small brewers into two licensed classes — those who want to serve food as brewpubs, and those who seek to bottle and distribute their product on a larger scale. The latter would face new restrictions on food service.

The brewers, who acknowledge they’re not savvy about the legislative process, say it’s not fair for new beer makers to have to decide their fate that early.

“Every business takes on a life of its own,” said Jim McCabe, proprietor of the Milwaukee Ale House. “For the guy that wants to start a brewery tomorrow, he’s got to make decisions early in his business life that aren’t possible.”

After countdowns in English and German, the kegs were opened with mallets that spewed suds across the deck and into the Milwaukee River.

The whole issue started when the Great Dane Pub opened a third location in the Madison area, but couldn’t sell its own brews because the law only allows two such operations per chain.

The brewers are also upset that the law was introduced on July 3 and is already scheduled for a vote Wednesday in the Senate’s Transportation, Tourism and Insurance Committee.

“This is just a run-of-the-night operation that’s being ram-roaded down our throats,” said Russ Klisch, owner of Lakefront Brewery Inc. in Milwaukee and president of the Wisconsin Brewers Guild. “There are so many questions out there that have been unanswered.”

It appears that lawmakers were unaware if the consequences of the actions and amendments are in the works, according to Terry Tuschen, a spokeperson for the bill’s sponsor, Senator Fred Risser (D-Madison). “Everybody’s working hard to fix what needs to be fixed,” Tuschen said. Still, if you live in Wisconsin, it probably can’t hurt to contact your local state senator’s office and ask them not to support the bill unless those provisions are amended or removed.

 

The Milwaukee Beer Party
From Channel 3 Wisconsin
 

Tennessee Scopes Out the Future

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When I turned 21, oh so many years ago, the state I grew up in — Pennsylvania — still didn’t have pictures on their driver’s licenses. As a result, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board had their own method for insuring that no one under the age of 21 could get served. It was called a PLCB card, though we called our “drinking card.” A few weeks before you reached the magic age when you could drink in public, you went to one of those old photo booths where you got four black and white photos for a few ducats, filled out a form and returned it to any State Store (which in Pennsylvania is the only place where you can legally buy wine and spirits off-premise). Then anytime after your birthday, you returned to pick up your laminated drinking card complete with cheesy photo. I still have mine. Naturally, once they started issuing photo driver’s licenses, the PLCB card was discontinued.

Around that same time, MADD railroaded through the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which effectively took the decision about a minimum drinking age away from the states and created a federal standard by tying it to federal highway subsidies. That was 1984 and since then the drive to make it harder for everyone to get their hands on alcohol in the name of protecting children only grows worse. MADD and the neo-prohibitionists seem never to be satisfied.

So around that same time signs started appearing on retail counters by the cash register that said something like “If You Look 25, You Will Be Carded” or words to that effect. I was around 25 at the time and while it was a little annoying and inconvenient, the novelty of being able to prove my status as an adult hadn’t fully worn off yet. Also, I knew that at 25 many people look young enough to actually be underage, so I could at least understand the rationale for it under the heightened scrutiny the MADD-era had ushered in. But then a curious thing happened. A few years later the sign read “If You Look 30” and then a little later “If You Look 35,” loosely keeping pace with my own aging. It became increasing irritating on those few occasions that I left my wallet at home and looked nothing like a 21-year old. It’s oddly Orwellian to me that I have to have my “papers” on me at all times, constantly having to prove my identity or my status as an adult. At law, we’re presumed innocent but at alcohol we’re presumed underage unless we can prove otherwise.

Now that I’m well into my forties, I’m still routinely carded at some places even though my hair is graying, thinning and I have a goatee that is almost entirely gray and white. I’ve had people tell me that I should be flattered to appear so young but that really has nothing to do with it any longer. Even when I did look younger I felt it was a very weak argument. What’s flattering about constantly having to prove I’m not a child? Most establishments card everybody today not because they can’t tell who’s young and who’s not, but because they’re rightly scared of governmental regulators and what might happen to their bottom line should a minor accidentally slip through their net and get some alcohol. I’ve been old enough to drink more than half of my life now and look almost nothing like the gawky, awkward kid I was 27 years ago. The idea that I still have to prove that I am 21 because MADD and the neo-prohibitionists convinced the state that stopping kids from drinking was more important that my being treated like an adult, and they in turn made the penalty for sellers of alcohol so out of proportion that they have no choice but to overdo enforcement, pisses me off more than I can tell you.

  

As an aside, something I never noticed before is that we are the only nation in the world where you have to be 21 to drink legally. In every single other country, the age is below 21, the vast majority of countries set the age quite sensibly at 18. In two countries it’s 20 (Iceland and Japan) and in South Korea it’s 19. In many European countries the minimum drinking age is 16 (including Belgum, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands). Ten sovereign states, including China and Portugal, have no minimum at all. I knew as a society we were ridiculously conservative and puritanical, but I didn’t realize that the moral bullys had saddled us with the highest age in the entire world at which we confer full adulthood on our citizens. I think I just assumed we were among the most backward nations, not the out and out leader of looneyville when it comes to the minimum age for alcohol (setting aside, of course, those countries that don’t allow alcohol for any of their citizens). Sheesh, how embarrassing.

But now the state of Tennessee is poised to make it mandatory that every single person in the state must “show the proper I.D.” (a phrase that fairly begs to be said in a thick, German accent) with no exception. One foot in the grave? Too bad, prove you’re an adult. Grey-haired Grandpa out with his grandbabies in tow? Too bad, you just might be wearing old man makeup. U.S. Senator, a position you can’t hold unless you’re at least 30 years old? Too bad, no exceptions. It’s called the “The Tennessee Responsible Vendor Act” and it goes into effect on July 1. As is typical with these neo-prohibitionist programs, it claims to be designed to combat underage drinking. That is, of course, a completely deceptive lie insofar as it will do nothing of the kind. Making a 90-year old person so obviously over 21 that only a person with an I.Q. below 50 (such as someone with a moderate mental disability or a neo-prohibitionist) will not stop one underage person from obtaining alcohol. What it will do is make it more difficult and annoying for everyone, instead of just the people “lucky” enough to look younger.

In their press release of “Success Stories,” the neo-prohibitionist group Underage Drinking Enforcement Training Center celebrates their victory in getting this law passed and characterizes the law as “an innovative and strong step in the fight against underage drinking. The mandatory ID provision of this law is the first of its’ kind in the country and establishes Tennessee as a national leader on the initiative to stop underage drinking.” Yet they fail, as does every single other account of this law, to say exactly how or why requiring “anyone purchasing beer for off-premise consumption to present identification” will in any way reduce underage drinking. I think there’s a good reason no one is discussing why this law will reduce underage drinking. It’s because it doesn’t stand up to any logic or scrutiny, so it’s best to just use meaningless platitudes.

The continual raising of the age at which you have to prove that you’re an adult does absolutely nothing to alter the daily millions of individual exchanges between customer and retailer, apart from the ones involving legal adults who are far removed from the threshold age. Kids will always find a way to get alcohol. It’s their very resourcefulness that insures they’ll be successful adults, too. They can still get a fake I.D., of course, and getting an adult to buy beer for a minor isn’t going to stop. Then there’s stealing from parents, neighbors and the like. Kids in my day always found a way, and today’s generations are no different. Making me show my I.D. does nothing to keep the 19-year old behind me in line from using his fake I.D. It’s like all the increased security at airports. It gives only the illusion of actually doing anything to stop terrorism and makes life difficult for everybody in the process.

That Tennessee will be the first state to enact a law making it mandatory that every person wishing to legally purchase alcohol must definitively prove their status as an adult every single time they want to do so is as dubious a distinction as being the first state to … let’s see, how about sue a teacher for teaching evolution. It’s really difficult to not make comparisons to the Scopes trial, because it points out such backward thinking, in my opinion. I have some good friends from Tennessee, so I know it’s not everybody there.

But everything I’ve written about so far isn’t even the worst part. So strap in as I reveal the next part of this law. I don’t want to be responsible for any injuries when you fall out of your chair. Ready? Here goes. The Tennessee Responsible Vendor Act does NOT apply to wine or spirits, just Beer! Yup, that’s not a typo. Grandpa can buy a fifth of Jack Daniels or a bottle of Old Thunderbird without being carded. But throw a six-pack of barley pop up on the counter and it’s a whole new ballgame. The law covers just off-premises consumption, meaning retailers. Restaurants and bars (known as on-premises) are also exempt, so essentially the law targets just people buying beer to drink at home or otherwise in some private or public setting (like a picnic in a park).

According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, some retailers have already begun carding everybody, such as Roadrunner Markets, and they seem publicly on board.

John Kelly, chief operating officer for Roadrunner Markets, implemented the policy last year. Carding everyone makes it less likely that a clerk mistakenly sell beer to someone who is underage, he said, and regular customers quickly got used to having to show an ID. Most now arrive at the counter with their identification in hand.

“The universal carding law means that all retailers are on the same page,” said Kelly. “There will be consistent training of clerks. Customers can expect to have their ID checked at any store in Tennessee that sells beer.”

Of course, they really have no choice so kowtowing makes the most sense, since they want to remain in the good graces of state agencies that have the power to regulate them. That’s the same reason these laws get passed in the first place. No politician who wants to be reelected would dare oppose new laws that claim their purpose is to curb underage drinking.

The idea that beer is singled out like this is infuriating, to say the least, and shows in stark relief the bias against beer that exists in our society. And as the comment above about “regular customers quickly [getting] used to having to show an ID” shows, most people will just passively comply regardless of their personal feelings, not that they have much choice. How do you make your objections known in any meaningful way?

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to oppose these laws simply because they’re sold using protecting children as the carrot, bait no one can afford not to take. Truth and logic count for nothing against the emotions of keeping kids safe. That’s why neo-prohibitionists use this tactic, because they know it’s effective and is difficult to counter. That it’s dishonest doesn’t seem to matter one wit, a fact I find particularly onerous given that so many neo-prohibitionists are also very religious. I guess the goal of another prohibition has its own morality in which the ends justify the means, the slipperiest slope of all.

The ray of hope is that the law expires after one year so that lawmakers have an opportunity to “review its impact.” Perhaps it will enough of a fiasco that it will not be renewed and likewise will not inspire other states to follow Tennessee’s lead.

 

Real Hop-sicles

By

A friend and colleague sent me this story from his local area around Washington, D.C. (thanks Gregg). Rustico Restaurant & Bar, a great beer restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia, began serving “beer-sicles” last week. They make frozen beer pops shaped like the Popsicles you remember for $4 or a larger cone size for $6. They’re made from 99% beer using all-natural ingredients, executive chef Frank Morales claims, and he created the new pops with the help of the restaurant’s Beer Director, Greg Engert. Don’t you just love the idea that a restaurant has a beer director?

Executive Chef Frank Morales with his new beer-sicles.
photo © Associated Press

 So far, four flavors have been offered. Fudgesicle (made with Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout), Raspbeer-y (made with the very sweet St. Louis Framboise), Plum (made with Chapeau Mirabelle) and Banana (made with Chapeau Banana). Since their debut last week, they’re a big hit with customers, and men especially, Morales noted. Apparently they worked on the right combination of ingredients for weeks before being satisfied, so I guess that 1% ingredient is quite an important one. So what otherwise seems like a simple idea — freeze beer in a Popsicle mold — may actually hinge on a particular secret ingredient. Of course, I’m open to experimentation.

Unfortunately, according to the AP story, the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control believes that “the beer-sicles might violate state regulations” which state that “the law requires beer to be served in its original container, or served immediately to a customer once it is poured from its original container.” Apparently the Virginia ABC is investigating, but their initial reaction appears to be that it violates state alcohol law.

This is apparently because the purpose of that law is so the ABC can keep tabs on where the alcohol goes along it’s journey from manufaturer to consumer. According to Philip Disharoon, the special agent in charge of the Alexandria division, he’s worried that he “would have no way of knowing where the beer product came from.” The idea that they may have to stop making these just because the Virginia ABC can’t track the path of the beer from bottle to mold to freezer to customer, all in a single location, strikes me as bureaucratic nonsense. I imagine that may have been more of a concern during bootlegging days, but I have a hard time believing it’s much of an issue any longer.

Virginia’s alcohol laws do include an exemption for beer used for “culinary purposes” (3VAC5-70-40), which would appear to make it legal for Rustico to continue selling beersicles. Since it appears that they’re already using beer in many of the dishes served at the restaurant, perhaps they’re already covered. The regulation does give the ABC broad authority to “refuse to issue or [t] suspend or revoke such a permit for any reason” which seems rather unfair, to say the least. But that’s the nature of many alcohol laws, in which fairness is rarely a priority. Also, alcohol used for cooking must be kept completely separate from beer that’s for sale to patrons, which also seems quite ridiculous.

But the more you examine each state’s own arcane alcohol regulations, you realize that over time they’ve become bloated bureaucratic gibberish that few people can understand, even among the state employees charged with interpreting them. I know firsthand that in some states ABC employees will give different interpretations to the same regulation, leaving brewery and restaurant/bar owners completely baffled as to what the law actually says or how to comply with it. And even relying on one state employee’s interpretation can land you in hot water if another’s interpretation is different. That certainly seems fair, doesn’t it? At the very least, you’d think they could either get their stories straight or at least respect their colleagues interpretation that someone relied on in good faith. But sadly that’s not the way government works, especially when it comes to the hot button issue of alcohol.

But the idea of beer-flavored Popsicles seems a natural. Perhaps the folks that own the trademark on the name Popsicle, which is Unilever (although in 1993 they changed their name to the more appetizing Good Humor-Breyers® Ice Cream Company) could make beer-flavored Popsicles for adults that we can all buy at the grocery store. Can you just imagine the hue and cry from neo-prohibitionists when beer pops show up in the frozen food section? It would almost be worth it just to see them come unglued. Plus, I just love the idea of a green, 100 ibu, real honest-to-goodness Hopsickle.

UPDATE 7.22: Two new news sources also include video of the beersicles so you can see what they look like and see a bit more about how they’re made. The first is from WLBZ in Bangor, Maine and the second is from CBS 3 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

UPDATE 7.22 – #2: Courtesy of Reason magazine, Senior Editor Radley Balko went to Rustico this afternoon hoping to try a beer-flavored Popsicle but was told “they’re no longer serving them. At least until the state alcohol control tyrants give them the okay.” Apparently they’re trying to figure out how to cook the beer and/or add more ingredients so it will fall under “culinary purposes” as I detailed above. Sounds to me like the Virginia ABC has lost touch with reality. If freezing beer in a mold, with a stick, and serving it as a dessert doesn’t qualify as a culinary use, then I have to conclude it’s not about the law anymore, but about control. That’s the word everybody forgets in “ABC,” but it stands for “Alcoholic Beverage Control.” State agencies take that part of their job perhaps most seriously of all in their zeal to do their job. These agencies really should work with alcohol manufacturers and retailers because for the most part all they want to do is comply with the law. But many times, because of the nature of bureaucracy, an adversarial relationship is created over time and the agencies spend more of their resources on enforcement and punishment, forgetting that they’re charged with keeping alcohol in society in a safe manner, not controlling it to the point of killing it.