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

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

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

More from the article:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah, memories. Persistent little buggers.

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

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

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

Good luck with your next endeavor, Jim.

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

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

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

Also from New Scientist:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Porter on his 7th birthday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you’re planning on going to the Fremont Oktoberfest in Seattle, Washington, which this year is being held September 19-21, buy your tickets online and receive two additional free tasting tokens. Just enter the code “FOKT” in the “Discount Code” window to get your extra tokens.

Let me start out by saying that I am not a big fan of Alcopops. I understand their appeal and the demographic that generally prefers them. I am of the opinion that they probably make it harder for craft brewers to capture the just-over-21 market because of the average younger persons’ preference for sweet flavors. But as malt-based beverages, they are in the family of beer, albeit often considered a distant cousin at best. I’ve been guilty myself of wanting to throw them under the bus sometimes, simply because they’re such a target for neo-prohibitionists. Because of their supposed popularity among younger drinkers, they’ve been an equally popular target for the anti-alcohol factions of society.

But let’s re-think this. It’s clearly not working to simply let malternatives take the fall. In California, recent legislation to tax alcopops as spirits — a quite ridiculously tortured and incorrect way of defining them that was done simply because neo-prohibitionists got to have their way — also may quite possibly do away with (or make prohibitively expensive) barrel aged beer, too. So maybe we should think about this in the same way we do freedom of speech. We may not like what someone has to say, but we understand that we must protect their right to say it or one day we, too, may be unable to express our opinion. That may be what’s happening with malt-based beverages. Even though many of us in the craft beer world may not like them, perhaps we should defend them. Wait, here me out. The truth is, once the neo-prohibitionists have put that segment of the alcohol business out of business, they won’t be satisfied and simply go home and live their lives. They’ll just move on to the next target.

It reminds of that famous quotation/poem by German Pastor Martin Niemöller:

“In Germany, they came first for the Communists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . .
And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

It wasn’t my intention to necessarily compare neo-prohibitionists to the Nazis, but in terms of tactics and propaganda, it’s not really a bad analogy. So I’m starting to think we should speak up for our malternative cousins. Whatever they say and do to go after them, eventually they’ll say and do to craft beer.

That fact that young people who are under 21 might also like sweet drinks is hardly a reason to force them to not offer them for sale to legal adults. Soda is sickeningly sweet — not to mention arguably worse for a person’s health than beer — and we don’t sue them to stop their sale because young people might be harmed by them. There are thousands of such products made for adults but not ideal or illegal for kids that we don’t think should be discontinued just because of their appeal to kids. It’s up to parents to decide what’s best for their own children and up to retail companies and law enforcement to restrict those products that are illegal for minors from being purchased by them. The very idea that something legal for adults should be wiped off the face of the earth because kids might like it too is one that continues to baffle me. Follow that logic to its obvious conclusion, and we’ll create a world suitable only for children. Given that childhood is all about learning to grow up and be an adult, it just makes no sense. When you consider that roughly 29% of the American population is under 21, that means neo-prohibitionists and the CSPI want to ignore 71% of the rest of society, in other words the vast majority.

Back in June, the CSPI notified Miller and Anheuser-Busch of their intent to file suit against them. Uncharacteristically, the normally litigious A-B decided to cave in to their demands and “agreed to take caffeine and other unapproved additives out of its two alcoholic energy drinks, Bud Extra and Tilt.” They also paid $200,000 to eleven states “to reimburse them for the cost of the investigation.” I can only presume they did so primarily to avoid negative publicity, and not due to any belief that they had done anything untoward.

In the St. Louis take on this story, they claim that the CSPI “said the drink contains ‘unapproved’ additives, including caffeine and guarana,” though it’s unclear who needs to approve them. They continue:

CSPI’s lawsuit argues that it is illegal to use caffeine, guarana, ginseng, and taurine in alcoholic beverages. The group argues that the Food and Drug Administration has given only very narrow approval for caffeine and guarana—with no allowance for alcoholic drinks—and no approval for ginseng in any food or beverage. Taurine is only approved for use in chicken feed, not human food, according to the group.

But I’ve seen soda with guarana, taurine, ginseng and, obviously, caffeine. And brewers have been brewing beer with coffee for at least a decade or two, with no issue having been raised by the FDA as far as I know. And as mentioned in the MarketWatch report, “the Federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has approved all product formulations and labels for the Sparks line.” MillerCoors continues:

Further, “we have and we will continue to ensure that the labeling, marketing and product formulations of all our brands meet all applicable federal regulations and that our brands are marketed responsibly to legal drinking-age adults.”

But let’s forget about those reports and go directly to the source. According to the lawsuit itself, which was filed in the District of Columbia, the two causes of action alleged by the CSPI are one; that Miller Coors violated the “D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act: Deception D.C. Code § 28-3901, et seq.” and two; that they also violated “D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act: Breach of Implied Warranty of Merchantability D.C. Code §§ 28:2-312-318.” Even if successful on either of the two counts, that means MillerCoors would only be enjoined from selling Sparks in Washington D.C., at least for now. Undoubtedly this is a test case, with the fate of the fifty states hanging in the balance. The complaint is filled with a laundry list of “facts,” which are actually not facts, but arguments (some of which are pure propaganda), including listing their own success in earlier lawsuits. Two of the so-called “facts” they allege are that “[t]hese drinks appeal strongly to underage drinkers, such as college students, because they taste more like a soft drink than an alcoholic beverage” and also that “[t]here is a physiological effect — and marketing message — that consuming alcohol and caffeine together allows one to drink more alcohol without feeling as intoxicated as would otherwise be the case.” The CSPI characterizes these two as “the most serious.” That means their biggest problem with Sparks is that people who prefer sweet tastes like them and they don’t like the way they’re marketed. But, of course, there are plenty of other sweet alcoholic drinks available. A recent survey by another neo-prohibitionist group found that underage drinkers’ clear preference is not beer (which is where Sparks would fit), but hard liquor with something added to sweeten it. Red Bull and vodka has been a popular mixed drink for many years. And a preference for wine and beer was roughly the same, and far below sweetened spirits, both at around 16%. But as usual, wine and spirits get a free pass, while beer is demonized.

In this case, though, it seems it’s not just the alcohol, but that it’s sweet and alcohol. Apparently that’s just too much. Of course, we should ask where that preference for all things sweet came from. Our genetic collective sweet tooth has been exploited by almost every single food company out there. Troll the average grocery store and pick up things at random. What you’ll discover is that practically everything has sugar in it. Stuff you would never, ever think might have sugar as an ingredient, does. For example, Morton’s Salt has sugar in it, for chrissakes. Sometimes they don’t call it sugar, but instead use chemical names ending in -ose, like sucrose (table sugar), maltose (malt sugar), fructose (fruit sugar), lactose (milk sugar), glucose (a.k.a. dextrose, grape sugar), and many, many more. And since food labels list ingredients in order of their concentration, many food companies list sugar several times in their individual forms, having several chemical names for sugar on one label, to hide the actual amount of sugar in their products. And sugar is arguably far worse for people’s health than alcohol. But you see little kids down to toddlers mainlining the stuff in soda, which probably started with all the juice they push on babies which is likewise loaded with sugar. Soda has such a high concentration of sugar that after drinking one, your body actually craves more liquid to dilute all that sugar you just drank in a hopeless effort to quench your thirst. Is it any wonder that we crave sweet tastes?

But neo-prohibitionists continue to blame the alcohol companies for this condition that was not of their making. You might argue that they shouldn’t exploit it, but when everybody else — and I do mean just about everybody — is pandering to kids and adults alike why shouldn’t they? I may not like these drinks, but I can’t reasonably say they shouldn’t be “allowed” to sell them, as the CSPI thinks they can, just because kids might like their sweeter taste. Even if they were outlawed, there would still be sweet wine and cocktails for kids looking to get drunk and satisfy their sweet tooth. Can the CSPI honestly believe that if there was no more Sparks around, kids would give up their desire for alcohol? I mean that rhetorically, of course. I know they’re not that stupid, so that suggests a larger agenda. This lawsuit is part of the CSPI’s Litigation Project, which is certainly an ominous sounding name for a “project.” What’s especially troubling is I can’t disagree with everything they’ve done so far. But the CSPI press release also boasts that their “agreement with Anheuser-Busch was the first alcohol-related accomplishment for CSPI’s litigation project.” If that doesn’t suggest additional lawsuits, I don’t know what else would.

I suggest that we support and help, if possible, MillerCoors with this latest attack on alcohol. No matter what we may think of malternatives or beers with caffeine and other additives, if we don’t speak up now, who will be here to speak for us when the neo-prohibitionists come for craft beer? I, for one, don’t want to slide down that slippery slope to another prohibition.

Tomorrow, September 9 at 10:30 a.m., a press conference will be held at Rubicon Brewing in Sacramento, California to rally support for a veto of AB 1245, dubbed “The Trash & Trinkets Bill.” The bill, supported by only one beer company — Anheuser-Busch — sailed through both the state house and senate, showing just what lobbying money can buy in the state of California. What will A-B get for it’s money? “AB 1245 would significantly increase the amount of marketing dollars Anheuser-Busch wants to spend courting new drinkers. Promoting an increase of 1200% in direct marketing swag the largest beer manufacturer in the U.S. wants to further exploit its marketing clout to the detriment of smaller brewers.”

“The real loser in the AB marketing game will be the consumer who will likely see reduced choices at their local market,” said Tom McCormick, executive director of the California Small Brewers Association. The fact that every single beer company — large and small, domestic and import — with the singular exception of A-B opposes this bill, it’s bewildering to me that our elected officials turn so blind an eye to the will of not only the people, but the majority of the business community, too, in passing this bill. With a total impact of over 24 and a half billion dollars, California represents 13% of the beer industry in America. We have more breweries than any other state and, until last year (when Colorado overtook us), brewed the most beer, too. Apparently our state government is more interested in the soon-to-be world’s largest multinational beer company being happy than they are in protecting the interests of the local beer economy as a whole. I know money is the grease that moves politics, but this is just such a blatant example of greed over what’s good for the state that it boggles the mind. Don’t we want our state elected officials to care more about the best interests of our state?

Come out and show your support tomorrow for vetoing the bill. It’s our last chance to keep the playing field where it is, not as level as we’d like but certainly more so than if Governor Schwarzenegger signs AB 1245 into law. On hand at Rubicon will be owner Glynn Phillips, Susan Little (owner of St. Stan Brewery in Modesto) and Tom McCormick (executive director of the California Small Brewers Association). Rubicon is located at 2004 Capitol Avenue in Sacramento, California.

Even the Sacramento Bee is opposed to the bill. This is from an editorial in the paper on Saturday:

Assembly Bill 1245: Anheuser Busch galloped into the Legislature this year like a team of Clydesdales. The company’s lobbying mission? To get a law passed that would allow beer brewers to distribute more free trinkets, such as Bud Light key chains. Smaller brewers and groups crusading against alchohol abuse oppose SB 1245 by Assemblyman Albert Torrico, D-Fremont. It sailed easily through both houses but deserves a red veto stamp on the governor’s desk.