The Chemist's War

Great article up on Slate, The Chemist's War: The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.

During Prohibition people were using industrial grade alcohol to make mixed drinks. Problem was, in order to be 'tax free' industrial alcohol by law had to be (and continues to be) "denatured". Which, as we know, is a polite euphemism for 'Poisoned."

But those plucky mobsters in their big hats paid chemists a fortune to 're-nature' tens of thousands of gallons of stolen industrial hooch. So the government steadily increased the toxicity of the chemicals used to denature the spirits. Which meant the mob chemist-treated bootleg alcohol was of increasingly varying quality and safety.

Estimates are that nearly 10,000 people died during Prohibition from drinking government poisoned alcohol.

What's most interesting is the sort of "they brought it on themselves" mentality that Congress took, even while people were dying in the hundreds every holiday season.

Happy Repeal Day!

Happy Repeal Day!

Prohibition ended seventy-six years ago today with the ratification of the 21st Amendment. Well, national prohibition anyway. It merely returned control to the states and of course local prohibition remains in places even today.

It's not officially a holiday, but it should be. I, for one, will be celebrating by raising a pint of something dark and oakey at Brouwer's Big Wood festival tonight.

Beer Wars Live Review

So we got about seven of the homebrew crew out for Beer Wars Live out at AMC Sunset Place in South Miami last night. All in all a pretty good time, stopped off at the Titanic before the show for dinner and, appropriately enough, mugs of Arrogant Bastard and Dogfish 90 Minute.

The entire Beer Blogosphere, such as it is, will no doubt be buzzing about this so I'll keep my thoughts short.

The Good.

It was reasonably well produced and, come on, for a movie about beer and corporate competition it was pretty darn entertaining. There were some good moments of humor interspersed throughout, usually by creative use of old advertising and industry videos. It was also fun to see various beer personalities get riled up. Greg Koch and Sam Caglione are further cemented in my Hall of Beer Heroes. The 25 or so people in the theatre seemed to be having a good time. (Yeah it sold out in Boston, but hey, 25 people who care about beer in South Miami is an incredible showing!) Also the live simulcast was great, purely because it was a bit spotty and unpolished. It made the whole thing seem more personal somehow, even though there were 400 theatres involved.

The Bad.

Ok. Anat grated on me a little bit, nothing serious but at times she's a bit like a shrill Michael Moore. That didn't bother me too much, though I'm sure many reviews will be less kind. And sometimes I felt the history behind all this was treated a bit too lightly, I'd like to have seen a bit more about the forming of the Three-Tier system after Prohibition.

But my biggest problem BY A MILE is with her premise: that we need to ditch, or at least seriously rethink, the Three-Tier system. No one doubts that there are some serious problems with the current wholesaler tier. Yes, the large breweries (and distilleries/wineries as well! This isn't just a beer problem!) have gained more control over distribution than they were ever intended to. Yes, the small number of powerful distributors often limit choice and create barriers to entry. Yes, they sometimes break the law by offering all kinds of illegal perks, such as bulk discounts, free merchandise, advertising freebies, and sometimes outright bribes. But the distributors are creatures of statute. The monopolies distributors enjoy are granted by the states under the 21st Amendment. And there are perfectly good reasons that the system was structured this way. Distributors are the choke point between retail and production, which makes monitoring all three easier for the state. Because there are relatively few distributors, and they are often geographically limited, there is little incentive to compete, meaning that there is little incentive to make alcohol dangerously cheap and plentiful. Because their licenses are expensive, and profitable, distributors are incentivized to stick to the rules. Usually they get a single warning, then their license is revoked. In practice, even a warning would make investors nervous enough to pull out, spelling danger (possibly doom) to the company.

State legislatures and LCBs could change/actually enforce the restrictions placed on the middle tier, if there was enough political will to overcome the mountain of money in the way. Hopefully this movie will help educate and inspire craft beer fans to start pressuring their legislatures to do just that.

I guess my biggest problem is that while she suggests some alternatives, she doesn't really address the reasons why we have a Three-Tier system and the problems and consequences of tinkering with it. For example, she suggests allowing self-distribution for small brewers. Ok fine, but it's not so simple. Just take a look at the current mess regarding wine shipping and self-distribution. Appart from the cost to the breweries of licensing and bonding, compliance with the complicated regulations concering distribution would take some serious effort. And it would create that much more work for TTB agents and state liquor control officers to monitor that many more distributorships.

Finally, in ignoring the problems that created the Three-Tier system she ignores the inevitability that removing the system will only cause those problems to resurface. If the tied house and antitrust problems that arose before prohibition were bad then, when there were a thousand regional breweries, none with clear market dominance, imagine what it would be like if AB In-Bev and SABMiller could start buying into retail and distribution chains now. That little sliver of grocery store shelf space devoted to craft beer would be gone forever.

I gather that some of the Fresh Beer crew (our local distributors of Shipyard, Avery, Stone, Dogfish, Rogue, etc. i.e. The Font of All that is Good and Holy) were out at South Beach Cinemas for this. I'd like to get their opinion on it, I'll see if I can.

Northwest Absinthe / Washington Alcohol Law

Since we are in all probability moving back to Washington in a few months I've been paying more attention to Washington's own alcohol laws and general goings on.

First: there's a new microdistillery in Woodinville, (conveniently located near my in-laws!), called Pacific Distillery LLC. They are in the process of producing their first commercial batches, gaining label approval and approaching the WA Liquor Control Board for distribution. The man behind the works is Marc Bernhard, an herb farmer turned distiller. He's starting off with a flagship gin ("Voyager Dry Gin") and...get ready Washington, an Absinthe! Called 'Absinthe Pacifique', Pacific Distillery uses medical grade ethanol which they infuse with high quality herbs to make their absinthe. This is big news because until recently Washington has made it very difficult to open a distillery, I believe Pacific is the second opened since Prohibition ended! (The first being Spokane's Dry Fly Distilling, who have only been around about two years themselves and who have a cool distiller's class they teach out of their distillery)

Their blog is here and there's an article on them in the Seattle Weekly here. Marc mentioned that he uses actual Artemisia Absinthium (Grand Wormwood) as well as Artemisia Pontica (Roman Wormwood) so I'm wondering whether he had trouble with the TTB or FDA on that one. I know many of the recent commercially available absinthes have had altered recipes to cut down on the Artemisia Absinthium (and therefore the thujone content).

Second: I bet that part of the reason that Pacific was able to open was Washington's new Craft Distiller's License. The licenses began June of last year, after SHB 2959 was passed, which amended RCW 66.24.140, and adds a new section RCW 66.24. The new license applies to distilleries producing less than 20,000 gallons a year, and at least 50% of whose ingredients come from within Washington state. The license costs only $100, while the normal distiller's license is $2000. This should raise eyebrows to those familiar with dormant commerce clause issues in alcohol law, as the state seems to be doing a similar sort of thing the Supreme Court shot down in Bacchus Imports, LTD. v. Dias, 468 U. S. 263 (1984), while at the same time giving the sorts of breaks to in-state producers that led to Granholm v. Heald, 544 U.S. 460 (2005). I haven't the time to write too deeply about it now, but I will in the near future.

Happy Repeal of Prohibition Day!

Seventy-five years ago today, December 5th, 1933, the 21st Amendment was ratified and the national experiment in Prohibition officially came to an end. Interestingly Utah was the final state needed to ratify the amendment, though Mississippi would be the last to do so, in 1966.

This didn't end prohibition for everyone of course. National prohibition was over, but around 2/3 of the states elected to exercise their "local option" to allow voters to choose to remain dry, and for a time around of 1/3 of the population of the U.S. chose to do so, either on a state, county or local level. Even today dozens of dry counties remain, including, famously, Moore County, Tennessee, home of the Jack Daniel's Distillery.

Here in Florida there are five dry counties, Lafayette, Liberty, Madison, Suwannee and Washington County. What's most interesting about the dry county phenomenon is the interaction between state and local governments. In many states it's actually illegal for a city or county to go dry, meaning control of alcohol policy is firmly within the state's hands. For example, Oregon's Liquor Control Act, is "designed to operate uniformly throughout the state," and replaces and supersedes "any and all municipal charter enactments or local ordinances inconsistent with it." Others are simply given the option, for example New York allows local municipalities to exercise the option via a public referendum. In others control is handled almost entirely on a local basis. North Carolina may have the most complicated system, setting up dozens of independent local boards to create and administer alcohol policy within their small jurisdictions.

Well, here's to the diamond aniversary of the 21st Amendment! Now back to studying for my Intellectual Property final...