Left Hand’s vs White Labs

Haven’t posted in awhile, will try to do better in the future. News broke last week about the lawsuit filed by Left Hand against White Labs claiming contaminated yeast. Specifically that yeast was contaminated with diastaticus. Now I gotta admit I don’t know as much about yeast and yeast variants as I should, but my understanding is diastaticus will chew up sugars other yeasts leave behind and Left Hand has a very popular Milk Stout which undoubtedly contains lactose which is widely accepted as largely unfermentable by most yeast. Add in a yeast which chews up anything which is thrown at it and you have a recipe for disaster. Left Hand contends they had to dispose of over $2 million in beer and White Labs didn’t even send a condolence card.

At first you might be thinking what I am thinking how do you prove this is the source of the contamination? If you perform a web search you will find many instances in both the Pro and Homebrew arenas where people complain about contaminated batches of beer and the commonality was White Labs yeast. For me a single instance or brewery is not enough proof as anyone can have an off batch if they are not careful with cleaning and sanitation, but when you begin to add all of them together there could be some merit in the claim. I read somewhere diastaticus takes a week to incubate and most breweries don’t have time for that, but you would think a yeast company should be running long term QC checks.

At any rate, this one should be interesting. Does it move forward in the court system, settle outside of courts, or ultimately go to trial. I know I’m grabbing the popcorn and you should as well.

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Sunday Morning Drinking – Almost

You may or may not have heard Senate Bill 155, the Brunch Bill, has been sent to Governor Cooper to be signed. This bill was actually entitled ABC Omnibus Legislation and made several changes to the law including the definition of Homebrew. Assuming he signs it quickly that does not mean you get to run out and have a bloody the following Sunday morning. In fact now you will have to wait for your city or perhaps county to allow those sales. Yep, it may be quite some time before you actually can have a Sunday morning libation in a restaurant or bar depending upon when the governing body for each area meets to allow or disallow those sales. I suspect you will be walking into a small town restaurant next year on a Sunday morning and order that mimosa only to be told the town has still not approved those sales. I’m all for big government allowing small cities and towns to be the master of their fate, but I’m also for uniformity, especially when it comes to alcohol. I should be able to expect the same rules in each and every place where it is sold in NC. Anyway, the bill has passed and soon enough the larger cities will jump on the bandwagon. No more waiting until noon to head out to Sunday brunch. Now I can thrown on a hat and have some hair of the dog first thing in the morning.

There are many other tweaks to the law in the bill. The text is available here.

NCGA House Alcohol Beverage Control Committee

You know how they say a picture is worth 1,000 words. How about several photos which demonstrate a point. I got to wondering the House ABC Committee and their decision to gut House Bill 500 and why that might have happened. Then I took a few minutes and looked at the campaign contributions they have received from the NC Wine & Beer Wholesalers and it paints a picture of pay to play politics. Take a gander at the screen shots below and see if you come to the same conclusion.

It should be noted a few are not in the pocket of the NC Wine & Beer Wholesalers, but it should be obvious a majority of the committee are on Tim Kent’s payroll through campaign contributions.

House Bill 500 – Gutted?

Word on the street is House Bill 500 was gutted in the ABC Committee to remove the language which would increase the cap for self-distribution. The problem is the NCGA website doesn’t reflect any changes. I have it on good authority what happened is backroom politics spurred by generous giving from Tim Kent and the NC Wine & Beer Wholesalers. Deep pockets have made fast friends. I guess legislators don’t care who they get in bed with provided they are getting paid. So our good friends at Craft Freedom will have to hope for a miracle or take the state to court to win their freedom. I know I’ll be looking hard at who has received funding from Timmay in the next election and will be sure to let everyone know when the jury has been rigged.

Tim Kent Is At It Again – H500

So this week Timmay went on a smear campaign against House Bill 500 by declaring 23% of North Carolina breweries are not paying their taxes. What he and his cronies did is take information and twist it to make it look as if small breweries are tax evaders. What was actually stated was “23 percent of resident breweries are not in total compliance.” So what does that mean exactly? Is it some of the breweries have asked for extensions of tax filings? Is is they have not paid their taxes? Is the check in the mail? No, what TK has done is twist the facts. So 23 percent becomes 1 in 4, which is a falsehood from the beginning. Tim could say 1 in 5 and be covered, but by stretching to 1 in 4 he becomes a slimy liar. Then to go further and say they “DON’T PAY THEIR TAXES” also pegs the pants on fire meter. He doesn’t actually know if they pay them or not or what level of “not in total compliance” they are. If he did then the personnel who told him would be breaking confidentiality which I’m pretty sure would end their employment with the state and might actually land Timmay in some hot water. I’m not showing the front side of the mailer below which indicates it comes from the NC Wine & Beer Wholesalers and ends with the NCBeerFacts so we now have definitive proof of just how shady Tim and his gang are by depicting themselves as factual when in reality they are far from it.

Tim and the NC Wine & Beer Wholesalers do not act in the best interest for North Carolina. We have no large Bud-Miller-Coors breweries anymore. We do have some big breweries, but not on the level of Miller which left the state. Most of Tim’s cronies are distributing for the Bud-Miller-Coors of the world and are working in the interest of foreign corporations so by default Tim is a pawn of foreign companies. What House Bill 500 will do is allow mid-sized breweries to become larger and hire MORE staff which will create jobs in the brewery and with their distribution. It will not take jobs away from beer distributors because they are already employed and busy keeping up with demand for the foreign corporation products. So if those people are not in danger of losing their jobs all this bill can do is CREATE jobs. Tim and his ilk would prefer to have this bill never get out of committee so you should help him fail. To do so please contact each of the members of the ABC committee via phone and urge them to vote for House Bill 500. Also take note of which representatives vote against the bill. You can use that as a voters guide on which representatives to oppose in the next election cycle.

Boles 919-733-5903
Bell 919-715-3017
Gill 919-733-5880
Dobson 919-733-5862
Hanes 919-733-5829
Hastings 919-715-2002
Holley 919-733-5758
Hurley 919-733-5865
Jones 919-733-5821
Lucas 919-733-5775
Malone 919-715-3010
Murphy 919-733-5757
Potts 919-715-0873
Richardson 919-715-3032
Saine 919-733-5782
Willingham 919-715-3024
Yarborough 919-715-0850
Zachary 919-715-8361

BJCP South Region Judges – VOTE!

Elections are open through April 15 in the South Region for Regional Representative. There are three candidates and turnout thus far has been very low. If you are a BJCP Judge in the South Region please vote in the election.

House Bill 500 – About Time!

I have no idea if House Bill 500 which was introduced on March 28 will pass it the current form, but if it does we will all be better off. This revised ABC legislation does a host of things. I stole this synopsis from Facebook, but it sums it up well.

1) Makes crowlers legal for sale at retail
2) Allows breweries to sell wine and cider without food
3) Allows breweries to have off-site storage for beer
4) Allows QC sampling and other on-site sampling to be legal
5) Makes homebrew meetings & competitions legal
6) Authorizes farm breweries
7) Raises the self-distribution cap to 250,000 bbls wholesale (not produced)
8) Changes the wording of the franchise law to allow small breweries to more easily manage distribution agreements and partners
9) Clarifies and modernizes other parts of the law (mainly just makes things more straightforward and easy to understand without changing function)

Get behind this bill and contact your representative to support it so it doesn’t die.

BJCP Exam Policy

There was some recent discussion on the BJCP Forum about Exam Admins saving seats for homebrew club members which led to discussion on the BJCP Facebook Group about requiring examinees to pretest to have a seat in the exam. Well the BJCP has a clear policy on the matter. It states:

6. Sponsors may not require examinees to take a training course, or to belong to a specific homebrew club or organization. Any qualified person is permitted to take a registered exam.

That apparently was not clear enough for some so the Exam Directorate clarified the policy on Facebook.

Exam Administrators are not to reserve seats for clubs or study sessions as BJCP exams are to be open to anyone qualified. Basically there is not to be any restrictions beyond the BJCP requirements to reserve a seat. This includes being a member of a club, attending a study session or any pre-testing for qualification (other than BJCP entrance exam). If anyone becomes aware of one of these situations, please contact your Regional Rep, the Assistant Rep or Exam Director.

Reserving of seats should be on first come first serve. We understand opening reservations at time of exam registration can lead to a long wait list with people who are flooding lists looking for exams. This leads to a very high drop out rate as these people find other exams. It is acceptable to set a date which reservations will start being accepted, 1-3 months is generally enough lead time. As an exam admin you just need to provide that same info to everyone in order to maintain an open, and fair, opportunity to everyone. If someone contacts you prior to the reservation period, just inform them of the date you will start taking reservations so they can follow back up with you at that time.

So there you have it. There should be no confusion regarding the exam policy.

Celebrating Five Years

Today is the fifth anniversary for the blog. When it started 1,827 posts ago the direction was unclear and with this post once again the direction is a bit of a mystery. Trying to post daily has proven difficult when a fresh topic idea isn’t forthcoming, for that reason the plan is to only post when there is something relevant or fun to say. That might be a reminder of a particular day to celebrate a drink or beverage of a discourse on how ignorant a politician is on the topic of alcohol or firearms. The goal will be for topics to concentrate on firearms and fermentation only occasionally coloring outside the lines. Thank you to everyone who receive the blog via email and to those who visit regularly to read what we have to say.

Cheers to you all!

Which Constitutional Rights Should Require ID?

I had an interesting discussion yesterday with someone who tried to read words into my statements which were not there and made false comments so I ended our conversation before it lost civility. It was regarding voting and my comment was we should show proof of identity. Currently in NC you can look up any registered voter and you could take that information to a polling place during the elections, say the name, confirm the address, and vote. We had an ID law in place which was deemed by some court somewhere unconstitutional and struck down. I don’t actually remember the reasons why it didn’t pass muster, but I believe providing proof of identity should occur prior to voting. It could be an ID card or heck just a thumbprint on an electronic reader. If my cell phone can pickup my print to let me in the phone then one should be able to setup a voter identification app to do the same at the polling station.

All this got me thinking which rights require an ID already and if one constitutional right requires it why would it not apply to all of them? Certainly for the Second Amendment the laws nationwide involve an ID, so there’s one. I would think the Fourth would involve an ID to be sure when a warrant is served they have the right person. Probably the Sixth and Seventh, again to have the right person which leads into the Eighth. The Eighteenth took away our rights to alcoholic beverages and the Twenty-first brought back that right and last time I checked an ID is required for anyone who appears to be younger than the drinking age. In fact several places require ID no matter what your age. Without going through them all it would make sense to me that the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth, and Twenty-sixth should all require an ID since so many others do already. I read that 7% of the voting age population is without an ID. That equates to around 16 million US citizens who have no form of ID. I have no problem at all with us finding a means to get any registered voter a valid ID for voting purposes. Even if it cost an average of $25 per person to carry out and all 16 million took advantage of the program our total out of pocket would be $400 million which is a drop in the bucket of Federal spending. My suspicion is most of the 16 million are not registered to vote in the first place and so they don’t vote anyway even when an ID is not required. I still cannot wrap my brain around the position requiring proof of identity is a burden and will reduce voter turnout. The only thing reducing voter turnout was two candidates which were difficult to like.