The 21 LDA: has it really saved lives?

Choose Responsibility has really started to ramp up the discussion of the 21 Legal Drinking Age, and their website has started to feature the clear looks at the effects of 21 LDA they promised at the start of their mission.

For example: has the 21 LDA really saved lives on the road? Maybe, but nowhere near the thousands claimed by proponents: have a look (and note that this is not speculation, but reasoned from cited sources).

For example: are young brains really more susceptible to damage by alcohol? The evidence is inconclusive (and like I always say...where's the epidemic of brain damage in countries with lower LDAs?).

Go and take a look. This is not screeching, preaching, or speculation. This is a call for debate on a national issue with deep personal consequences, an issue that is open to debate, that begs open debate.

Drunks Prefer Beer, says scientific study done by scientists

Have you seen this AP story by Mike Stobbe? It's about a study done by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that found binge drinkers are more likely to drink beer than liquor or wine. "The study of adult binge drinkers found that nearly 75 percent mainly or exclusively drank beer, 17 percent focused on liquor, and 9 percent were wine drinkers." When the study looked at people who weren't exclusive in their drinking choices, "bingers who drank a variety of beverages, for example, a few after-work beers, a cocktail before dinner and wine with dinner," the numbers shifted: "beer accounted for 67 percent of binge drinks consumed, liquor for 22 percent and wine for 11 percent."

Keep in mind that if you have two cold beers while grilling the steaks, a third of a bottle of cabernet with dinner, and then sip a dram of single malt while perusing the latest issue of the Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report (the CDC's death journal)...you're a binge drinker.

Hmmm... "binge" is defined by Merriam-Webster as "1 a : a drunken revel : SPREE b : an unrestrained and often excessive indulgence (a buying binge) c : an act of excessive or compulsive consumption (as of food) 2 : a social gathering." The etymology: "English dialect binge (to drink heavily)." Does that evening of drinking, eating, and deep mind improvement sound like a drunken revel or an act of excessive or compulsive consumption to you?

In any case, my point here is that I fail to see why this is news. The CDC researchers speculated that beer may be the choice of drunks -- I'm sorry, bingers -- because it is cheaper, more easily available, and more heavily advertised than liquor; speculation which is reported as conclusive fact in some of the local treatments of this AP story.

Folks: beer is the most common choice of all drinkers in the U.S., by a large margin. Admittedly, the margin on these "bingers" is higher; beer sales are closer to two-thirds than three-quarters of the total. But it's no mystery why binge drinkers prefer beer: Americans prefer beer.


Which brings up the other half of this interesting release of information: teen-aged underage drinkers prefer liquor. It's not really surprising. Think about it. Teens have been told that alcohol is a drug. They're told that "hard" liquor has much more alcohol in it. Even the dullest teen knows that the common mainstream lager beers have to be refrigerated to be palatable, while liquor can be kept at room temperature indefinitely, consumed at that temperature, or added to cold soft drinks just before drinking. They know that drinking is a crime for them, that they can't do it in public, and that they often have limited time to get a load on-board.

Well, duh: what's going to be the drink of choice for concealment, speed of effect, and ease of use? Put another way: what's easier to conceal in your jacket pocket or glove compartment, one 500 ml bottle of vodka, or ten 16 oz. cans of beer? Even an anti-alcohol fanatic could figure that one out. It's the Iron Law of Prohibition, the same inevitable reduction that gave us crack cocaine. It's easy enough to understand, which is why the popularity of keg registration laws with anti-alcohol policy wonks is so mystifying. Look for liquor registration laws to be proposed soon...

Oh. No. Wait a minute. Liquor and wine registration laws won't be on the agenda. Some of the policy types drink that stuff.

Snobbishness and class assumptions about beer, wine, and liquor are stupid, offensive, and ill-informed. The real take-home from this piece is that the choices of binge drinkers roughly parallel the choices of moderate drinkers. Drinking one particular type of tonsil-oil doesn't make you better or worse than anyone else.

An end to theory on IPA

Pete Brown (if you don't know the name, go read "Man Walks Into A Pub" right now, and then come back and read this) is one of my favorite beer writers. He might be my favorite if he wrote more. But he's pretty much unaffected by the reams and reams of dogma and "he said it, I said it, it must be so" speculation about beer that the rest of us regularly churn out. He doesn't care. It's just a good drink to him, and God bless him.

So...he's the perfect guy to take this trip. Pete's taking a pin of IPA from the UK to India, by sea. How's that for balls? I'll be watching his blog to see how it goes.

Get Ready for National Bourbon Heritage Month

National Poetry Month, National Ice Cream Month, National Women's History Month, National Pet Month, National Mentoring Month, National Head Lice Prevention Month... It's about time we got National Bourbon Heritage Month!

Next month, September 2007, has been declared such by unanimous vote of the U.S. Senate, a deliberative body that I suspect is responsible for Washington, DC, being one of the biggest bourbon markets in the country. The federal government declared bourbon to be "America's Native Spirit" back in 1964, and laid down regulations for its definition, a kind of reinheitsgebot for bourbon.

And now we have a national month for bourbon. These "national months" are silly, I confess, but Bourbon Heritage Month will be what we make of it. Myself, I plan to blog from the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, and get some bourbon tasting notes up here. Let's make this a real thing, at least around here!

Getting closer in Conestoga

I was in southern York County over the weekend, rusticating with the family, my parents, and Uncle Don and Aunt Alice on the Susquehanna River. Saturday morning the menfolk got the hankering to explore, and we hopped into the Passat and cruised the river hills on the Lanco side. It was a trip down memory lane: Don and my dad had family in the area years back, and they talked about how things had changed. The river hills are still pretty rural; dirt roads abound, there are a lot of small stores and woodworking outfits, no grocery stores or malls or convenience stores.


As we got a bit farther north, we started homing in on Conestoga, where Matt Keasey is building his startup micro, Springhouse Brewing. We cruised the main drag, and saw no signs or other evidence... but then I saw a barn with insulation oozing out of the cracks between the planks, and a stainless tank peeking out through the door...Brewery sign.

Sure enough, when I called Matt and asked if he was around, that was the place. He was away, but was in this morning, when my son and I were headed back, so we cruised up twisty River Rd. again, and stopped in for a visit. There were two electricians laying cable, and Matt himself, standing by his JVNW brewkettle.

The system's out of Via Maria in Holland, MI, according to Matt, and maybe out of a place called Black River Brewing in Holland before that...but that wasn't quite clear. What is clear is that there's still some work to do here, probably a month or two of work, but things are coming along.

The solid stuff: It's going to be mostly draft, with one bottled beer (probably 7 Gates Pale Ale). Matt's in the process of deciding what the line-up will be. There's not going to be a pub; strictly production, and pretty local to begin with. "Local" means Lancaster and York, probably; there aren't a lot of liquor licenses in the local area.

The setting is about as southern Lancaster as you can get: just outside a small town, beside a working farm, surrounded by open fields and pasture. The building is an old tobacco barn, insulated with blow-in foam. It's a tight fit, but workable.

With luck, we'll be seeing Spring House beer by November. And yes, there actually is a spring in Matt Keasey's house, next door to the brewery. Here's a picture: it's in the bottom floor of the house (right beside a big dehumidifier!), and yes, those are goldfish in there. Pretty cool barroom springhouse set-up that he may open to the public once things get rolling. Cheers, Matt!

New Beer Blog in NEPA

A new beer blog, On Tap, started yesterday out of Wilkes-Barre, done by two Citizens Voice staffers, Coulter Jones and James Reeser. They're enthusiasts, and they've got two good lists of top five beers, so we'll see what happens. I'm just glad to see a voice for beer out of NorthEast PA. (Note: you do have to register to comment on posts.)

Maine Street: the Portfolio column

It's "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" time on my Condé Nast Portfolio column. It's a piece that looks at the way Maine folks love their local beers, which gobble up an estimated 10% of the market, about three times the national average. Nothing earth-shattering, just a feel-good kinda piece.

By the way, the "friend" who suggested Rollie's to me is Todd Bross ("BuckSpin" on BeerAdvocate, which is where I met him), a PA transplant who is The Beer Guy at McKean & Charles, a wine store right on Rt. 1 in Waldoboro, with a growing whisky selection (biggest in Maine, and it was a nice selection. Todd's got a great beer selection going, too, very impressive, and good links to local Andrew's Brewing: he had beers I didn't see anywhere else in Maine. Some good cheeses and specialty eats, too: pretty cool store.

Old Schaefer Brewery to make beer again: Sam Adams beer

Huge story, IMO: Boston Beer, tired of screwing around with tax incentives and sewer service in Freetown Mass, is in an agreement to buy the big former Pabst/Stroh/Schaefer brewery in Fogelsville, PA, outside Allentown, from Diageo, who is currently using it to manufacture Smirnoff Ice. If all goes correctly, the purchase will take place in Spring, 2008.

I toured this big brewery twice in the early 1990s, and it's a beauty, a showpiece, built to be toured. I've heard it called "the last big brewery built in the United States." I'm just really happy to see it going to guys like Boston Beer.

Will this cause even more grousing about "Boston" Beer Company not being from Boston? Sure. So what? Like I keep saying: I don't drink that. I drink beer. Cheers to Samuel Adams, Jim Koch, and the guys who kept the lights on in Fogelsville (and to Stephen Beaumont, who passed this on to me).

The August Buzz: Peanuts & Salmon

The new Buzz is up on my site: an open letter to single-source beer drinkers in general, and sportswriter Norman "Couch Slouch" Chad in particular. Chad's looking for a "new beer" to replace the Rolling Rock he drank for over 25 years, and I've got a radical suggestion: how about all of them? Seems obvious to me, but I hope I provide some arguments to crack open some brand prejudices.

Chill, Craft, & Corona: What's Hot

I've got a new BeverAge piece up on "hot beers." It's a trade piece, so it's more about selling, but there's some good stuff on how the beer biz is working, and where it's headed in the near future.

And yes, I'm working on a new Buzz. Should be up later today; I'll let you know. Not much going on in August, travel-wise; I should be able to get some work done, get some blogging in, and get the website book updates...um, up-to-date.