Archives for the 'Drink' Category
Taverns & the Origins of the First Amendment’s Assembly Clause
I’ve posted a working paper at SSRN in which I make the case that
The proper situs of the Assembly Clause, research reveals, is in its birthplace: colonial America’s taverns. Colonial taverns served not just as establishments for drinking alcohol but as vital centers where colonists of reputations great and small gathered to read printed tracts, speak with one another on important issues of the day, debate the news, organize boycotts, draft treatises and demands, plot the expulsion of their British overlords, and establish a new nation.
In the article Linnekin traces the early history of taverns in colonial America, discusses the role that colonists assembling in taverns played both in fostering the freedom of assembly and in combating growing British attacks on the rights of American colonists, analyzes the brief but informative legislative history of the Assembly Clause, describes how tavern talk places the situs of the freedom of assembly squarely in taverns, and concludes that in taverns and tavern talk are the origins of the Assembly Clause.
Read the abstract and download the article here.
Listen to Me on the CEI Weekly Podcast Discussing Caffeine, Alcohol, and the FDA
I spoke with Ryan Young, a regulatory studies fellow at CEI, yesterday for CEI’s weekly podcast.
Baylen Linnekin, author of the recent CEI On Point “Extreme Refreshment Crackdown: The FDA’s Misguided Campaign Against Alcohol Energy Drinks” and contributor to the food regulation blog Crispy on the Outside, looks at the recent push to ban alcoholic drinks that contain caffeine.
Read more and listen here. And read the related article I wrote for CEI in May, Extreme Refreshment Crackdown, here.
FDA Rumored to be Acting Against Caffeinated Alcohol Beverages
In November 2009 the FDA sent warning letters to about two-dozen alcohol-beverage makers whose drinks–the FDA alleged–contain added caffeine. Now the agency, having taken more than a year to decide what to do with caffeinated alcohol beverages (CABs) like Four Loko and Joose, and having targeted in their letters a whole bunch of drinks that either contain no added caffeine or don’t exist, has apparently reached a decision of sorts, reports the NYT:
The agency declined to say what it would do, but several food safety lawyers who once worked for it said a likely option was to use warning letters to inform manufacturers that the drinks were adulterated and, therefore, not safe.
I first wrote about the issue in May for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Read that here. Reason‘s Jacob Sullum has offered up a ton of great recent coverage, including here, here, here, and here.
I’ll have much more on the matter when the FDA issues its actual language.
All Hopped Up
If, like Baylen, you enjoy hop-heavy beer, I heartily recommend Loose Cannon — and not just because the bottles feature a pirate theme and a Caslon typeface. The IPA, brewed by Clipper City Brewing Company in Baltimore, is “Hop cubed:” over three pounds of the stuff are used per barrel, and it’s hopped three times during its production. Clipper City also makes a seasonal small-batch IPA that’s triple-hopped using five pounds of hops, resulting in a 10.6 percent alcohol content.
I was introduced to the Heavy Seas line earlier this year through my subscription to the wonderful Beer of the Month Club, which I received as a Christmas gift. Each month you get a sampler of twelve beers from two different brewers (that particular month, the Heavy Seas accompanied doppelbock and stout from Christian Moerlein Brewing in Cincinnati) as well as a newsletter. The background of Clipper City, as detailed in the newsletter (v. 17, no. 3), further endeared them to my heart:
Upon attempting to get a license to brew beer at his restaurant, [Hugh Sisson] quickly discovered that legislation prevented brewpubs in Maryland. So he began working with Senator George Della, Jr. to successfully lobby the Maryland General Assembly to pass legislation permitting brewpubs in Maryland. In 1989, Hugh began brewing at Sisson’s, Maryland’s first brewpub.
…
After five years of brewpub brewing, Hugh took his craft brewing to a larger platform by starting a full-scale microbrewery. Three guesses as to who stepped in to say he couldn’t do it… that’s right, the state. It seems “they” (a.k.a. “the man”) took issue with his owning both a brewpub and brewery. The logic behind this legal blockade? Your guess is as good as ours — this is the business model used throughout Europe for hundreds of years. Fortunately, Hugh was undaunted by the legal challenge, did battle with the powers that be, yet again, and pulled out the win less than two years later.
So try Loose Cannon. Your purchase helps pay Sisson’s legal bills.
New Boston Globe Beer Column Highlights Hoppiness
The new Boston Globe monthly craft-beer column, 99 Bottles, debuted last week. Writer Steve Greenlee launched the column by focusing on my favorite (by far) category of beers: the IPA. I was happy to see Greenlee–right off the bat–highlight one of my favorite beers of all time, Green Flash West Coast IPA.
Green Flash West Coast IPA: Now we’re getting serious. Green Flash makes one of the finest IPAs anywhere. This one pours an orange-amber color with scents that can clear the nasal passages. The hops are intense, with sharp grapefruit notes. This is a bitter brew with a powerful, satisfying aftertaste.
Greenlee also notes how IPAs are exploding in popularity.
IPAs this year became the second-best-selling craft beer sold at supermarkets, according to Symphony IRI Group, a market research company in Chicago. Not only that, but the single fastest growing beer on the market right now is Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo Extra IPA.
Last month at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, the IPA category drew a record number of entrants — 140, far more than any other style. The winner was Pizza Port’s Pseudo IPA, and it’s no surprise that a California brewer took the gold medal. “West Coast IPA’’ has virtually become a style unto itself; the phrase serves almost as a warning to consumers that the beer they’re about to drink is intensely bitter and hoppy.
Around here, Harpoon IPA (made in Boston) used to be considered a superhoppy beer. No more. Now the bitterest, hoppiest brews are made on the Left Coast. There are exceptions — Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA (Delaware), Heavy Seas Loose Cannon (Maryland), and Ithaca Flower Power (New York) are fantastic, heavily hopped beers. And Smuttynose Brewing Co., out of Portsmouth, N.H., makes a wonderfully balanced IPA that hews closer to the English tradition but still satisfies hops lovers. But for the most part, if you want hops, you have to head west.
Whole thing here. I look forward to checking in with 99 Bottles each and every month.
First They Came for Our Soda, and I Said Nothing. Then They Came for Our Chocolate Milk.
With health nannies and school systems purging schools of chocolate milk due to its purported unhealthiness, students and parents are fighting mad. Petula Dvorak, the WaPo’s metro columnist (and a casual acquaintance of mine), looks at the backlash against chocolate milk in schools and the resulting backlash against the backlash.
Thousands of children across the nation returned to school without the comfort of a carton of cold, chocolate yum on their cafeteria trays thanks to the same thinking that has also robbed them of Halloween candy, dodge ball, knee scrapes on playground asphalt, peanut butter and a suspect grayish matter our cafeteria ladies insisted was “turkey à la king.”
In foodie circles, that’s being met with all kinds of gush.
That British telly chef Jamie Oliver, who is going around America telling us what slobs we are and teaching us to eat well, recently applauded the D.C. schools’ decision to ax chocolate milk in a video extolling the revamping of our school lunches.
Not that the kids at Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Northeast give a hoot what Jamie Oliver thinks. All the sixth- and seventh-graders I interviewed lamented the loss of their liquid chocolate fix. They won’t drink the white stuff because “it tastes nasty and spoiled,” as Torres Young, 12, put it.
The food revolution is hitting school cafeterias hard. In addition to the District, Fairfax County’s elementary schools is offering only plain milk this fall. And with our children beginning to resemble an army of tiny, lolling Michelin men, that’s a good thing. At least in concept.
But eliminating flavored milk to combat a nation’s childhood obesity epidemic has some surprising opponents: parents.
“As far as I’m concerned, chocolate milk is not an indulgence,” said Molly Field, a Burke mother of three boys who is fuming at the “draconian” move. Her pediatrician gave a thumbs-up to chocolate milk consumption — in moderation.
“It’s not about politics, really. But let me decide if my kids should be drinking chocolate milk. Not the school,” she told me. “Me and some other moms, we’re on Facebook, we’re writing letters, we’re making calls. This is insane.”
Whole thing (including embedded links I was too lazy to reproduce) here. Interestingly Dvorak also notes this study, the results of which liken the health benefits of chocolate milk to a 2010s version of restorative pickle juice, and the resulting clamor by athletes to drink more chocolate milk.
Beer Latest Thing That Shouldn’t Be Fried But Is
Hella Bad Wine Bill Inches Along in Congress
The LAT has sounded the alarm bell over HR 5034, a booze bill currently winding its way through Congress. Big ups to the LAT for this lede:
With little public notice, distributors of alcoholic beverages are pressing for a federal law that would allow states to block interstate sales of wine and beer to their residents — a result that could limit consumer choices, raise prices and hurt hundreds of small vintners and microbrewers.
A bill pending in the House would put the authority to regulate alcohol more squarely in the hands of the states and would require those challenging the regulations to prove the rules violate federal law or the Constitution.
And it would supersede a number of recent court rulings that have struck down limits on interstate sales of alcoholic beverages.
“It’s the cumulative effect of all these lawsuits, and the confusion,” said Paul Pisano, a vice president at the National Beer Wholesalers Assn., which proposed the legislation in the spring and backs a lobbying campaign. “We’re asking to make sure that states aren’t having their hands tied when they’re trying to defend their alcohol laws.”
Critics countered that the distributors’ real motive was to restrict competition.
The House bill would “devastate California’s and other states’ wine industries, stunt economic growth and harm consumers by allowing discriminatory law and regulation to be passed and go unchallenged,” Reps. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) and George Radanovich (R-Mariposa), who head the Congressional Wine Caucus, recently wrote their colleagues.
More from the LAT here. Check out the Congressional Wine Caucus here, and read CEI’s informed take on the bill here, which includes the fact the
legislation… would empower states to ignore the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, as well as a number of other federal laws — including anti-trust laws. States could then impose a host of protectionist regulations that impede interstate commerce to serve special interests within their states. These regulations could impede direct shipping of wine to consumers, create a patchwork of labeling and product formulation mandates, impose discriminatory tax policies, and more.
Perhaps you’re confused by all this legislative kerfuffle. Aren’t direct-wine shipments legal after Granhold v. Heald, you ask? Yes and no. That 2005 case (the holding of which was based chiefly on 21st Amendment grounds) rightly prohibits states from discriminating against out-of-state wineries in favor of in-state wineries, but doesn’t bar states from enacting draconian booze regulations that discriminate against everyone equally. Some states discriminate in exactly this way, while many do not.
For those who love states rights, this is good. For those who prefer individual rights, this is bad. And for Congress, which isn’t big on either the former or the latter, passage of HR 5034 would represent a big middle finger to consumers and a comfy back rub to the powerful alcohol wholesale lobby.
Map and link via the ever-vigil folks at Free the Grapes. More on HR 5034 from them here.
And while I’m on the subject of wine, here’s wishing a speedy recovery (and no more needles) to the excellent but temporarily out-of-commission Wine Commonsewer.
No Fair! Law Cancels Oregon Fair’s Home Brew Tastings
Oregon, a state home to arguably the best beer in the country,** has decided to re-read a dumb old law on the books in such a way that puts the kibosh on home-brewed suds.
The Oregon Liquor Control Commission’s new interpretation of an old law has put homemade beer and wine in the spotlight, effectively banning judged competitions, home-brewing club tasting nights and even the taking of a six-pack of home-brewed beer to a neighbor’s barbecue.
At issue is ORS 471.403, a statute that forbids the production of alcoholic beverages by anyone not licensed by the OLCC. It “does not apply to the making or keeping of naturally fermented wines and fruit juices or beer in the home, for home consumption and not for sale.”
Citing the new interpretation of the phrase “home consumption,” the Oregon State Fair has canceled this year’s beer and wine competitions, and local homebrewers are not happy.
“This will come at a great cost to the state,” predicted Capitol Brewers President Richard Olson.
State fair organizers could not be reached for comment Sunday.
Olson said group members are disappointed but are taking a wait-and-see approach.
“It’s just something that has to be dealt with,” he said. “I know the national group, the American Homebrewers Assocation, is looking at (the new interpretation).”
Many of the local club’s members have brewed beers specifically for the state fair contest and other competitions throughout the state.
The beer competition had been a fixture at the fair for 22 years, the wine contest for 31 years.
“It’s such a tradition,” Olson said. “It’s been going on so many years.”
More on the law from the the Statesman Joural here. Read the sad cancellation note at the state fair’s website here, and the ridiculous law itself here. And note that another provision in the same law (ORS 471.405) mandates that anyone convicted of having illegally possessed, bought, sold, or transported any alcohol beverage in the state
shall forfeit to the [Oregon Liquor Control Commission] the alcoholic beverage so purchased or imported. The commission shall thereupon seize the forfeited beverage and it shall then become the commission’s property.
And the commission members shall, presumably, like a thirsty but not-so-fussy ass, thereupon consume the forfeited beverage.
Fortunately in the face of such idiocy has sprung up the Oregon Home Brewers Association, a group that’s working with friendly legislators to overturn the law in the next session. More from the OHBA here.
**Bridgeport cask-conditioned IPA on tap is the best beer I’ve ever tasted.
Et Tu, Bru?
Once more the Lion diddles the Unicorn as food scientists for Scottish soft-drink-maker Irn-Bru scramble to create an alternative coloring agent that will satisfy the national government (which, you know, is based in London, England):
Mr. Barr and the 135-year-old company his family started have built Irn-Bru (pronounced Iron Brew) into a genuine phenomenon in Scotland, where it duels with Coca-Cola to be the No. 1 soft drink and enjoys a maverick reputation, owing to its powerful taste and controversial advertising.
…
But these days, Mr. Barr’s drink is threatened. The U.K. Food Standards Agency is pushing British food-and-beverage makers to remove artificial coloring agents that may cause hyperactivity in children. Those include Sunset Yellow and red Ponceau 4R, the so-called azo dyes that give Irn-Bru its hyper-orange sheen.
Remind me again: Why hasn’t Scotland seceded from the Union?
The Barr family has experience coping with threatening U.K. regulations. After World War II, Mr. Barr’s grandfather removed choice vowels from the drink’s name ahead of proposed legislation about products living up to the claims on their labels. Iron Brew, it so happened, had only trace amounts of iron and was not, in fact, brewed.
I’ve never tried it but to me the best part of Irn-Bru is their saucy adverts.
Extreme Refreshment Crackdown
I have a backgrounder up at the CEI website today on the FDA’s crackdown on alcohol energy drinks (AEDs). No idea what that means? Think Red Bull + alcohol in a can, such as the cans of Sparks at right. A snip from the article:
Over the past decade, caffeinated energy drinks like Red Bull and Monster have become increasingly popular, both as stand-alone beverages and as mixers for consumption in combination with alcohol. The appeal of these drinks as cocktail mixers has led drink makers to also market caffeinated pre-mixed beverages containing alcohol. Popular brands include Joose, Four Loko, Hard Wired, and many others. The rise of this alcohol energy drink (AED) market segment, however, has drawn unwanted scrutiny from federal and state regulators because of allegations that the products are designed and marketed to appeal to underage drinkers. A movement is now afoot to ban these pre-mixed drinks altogether, on the grounds that combining alcohol and caffeine may be unsafe. Consequently, if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and some self-styled public-health advocates have their way, alcohol energy drinks may soon see their final days.
Although the alcohol energy drink market is fairly small, the FDA’s crackdown on it could have much broader ramifications. The same legal rationale being used to attack AEDs—the argument that the addition of caffeine to certain foods and beverages has not been proven to be safe—applies equally to dozens of other popular products that have been on the market for years with no ill effects, such as many caffeinated soft drinks, coffee flavored liquors, and various foods with added caffeine. Consequently, the FDA’s war on pre-mixed alcohol energy drinks could cause substantial collateral damage in the nation’s food and beverage market.
The FDA came to demonize pre-mixed drinks containing alcohol and caffeine—and sometimes other natural substances like ginseng and guarana—by latching onto a few tangentially relevant scientific studies in a misguided effort to shut down a small, politically incorrect segment of the alcohol beverage market. Worse, the FDA has ignored both history and its own regulations in a politicized effort to crack down on caffeine and alcohol.
Whole thing here.
Beyond Thunderbucks
Screw the zombie apocalypse; in the future, we will all defend tanker trucks full of black gold from assault by sleepy and soporific freaks:
“If the slick reaches mouth of the Mississippi, the Coast Guard will close all of the traffic into the river,” Hales told Discovery News. “That will cost $1 billion a day in commerce going through there, and that’s a conservative estimate.”
…
About 70 percent of coffee imported into the U.S. comes through up the Mississippi River, Hales said, and the price of a barge of cottonseed – a major component of livestock feed – costs about $1.3 million. Seafood and fishing industries have already been affected, and tourism and boating are likely to follow.
Story here. The WSJ likewise forecasts a dystopian summer for shrimpers in the Gulf:
Amid all these challenges, the number of days fishing in the Gulf was down 64% last year from the 2001-03 average, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance industry group, while the prices garnered for the crustaceans were last year down between 42% and 45% from 2001, according to National Marine Fisheries Service data.
“The shrimping industry, even prior to the oil spill, has been struggling to make ends meet,” said Deborah Long, a spokeswoman for the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “There’s a double whammy going on, in that the price that fishermen got plummeted while the cost of fuel increased.”
Crispy on the first whammy mentioned by Ms. Long here. The article reports that some shrimpers, ahead of the fishing season running from May through December, are hiring on with BP to assist in clean-up efforts.
Anchor’s Suggested Moniker for Soy Milk Probably Won’t Stick
Full disclosure: I am a soy milk fan.
Drink Wilkins Coffee, Or Else
Via the beautiful and charming Microfinanseer.
Drink a Fizz and Live to Tell the Tale
Over at Reason, I’m chatting up World Cup winner and Alexandria, Virginia, bartender Todd Thrasher about the crackdown on creative cocktails, and how to incorporate egg whites into classic drinks. Read all about it here.
Watch the video here:
Or just make your own version at home:
Melanie’s Pisco Pipe Dream
1.5 oz Pisco
.75 oz coconut Water / coconut milk mixture
.75 oz sweetened Meyer lemon juice
.25 oz citrus vinegar
white of one egg
1 tsp powdered sugar
Put all contents in a shaker and dry shake (without ice) for 30 seconds. Add ice, and shake for 1 minute, double strain into a coupe glass and garnish with Meyer lemon-black pepper reduction. Relax and enjoy responsibly.
