All's Quiet on the Western Front

A curious thing happened in Viroqua on Monday.

People actually demonstrated in favor of concentrated animal feeding operations. Local large-scale farmers hauled over fifty pieces of farm equipment onto the streets surrounding Western Technical College, mostly to express opposition to a measure being evaluated by Vernon County's Health Committee that would temporarily restrict development of new livestock operations of 500-1000 animals. Regulations surrounding herds of more than 1000 "animal units" would still fall under Wisconsin Statute 93.90. So basically, Vernon County has proposed to have a stricter standard than the rest of the state of Wisconsin.

City folks and small-scale farmers demonstrated to express their support for the proposed moratorium. Virginia Goeke was there are and laments that

Unfortunately, some of the media has portrayed this issue as Vernon county Farmers are against the moratorium, meanwhile city folks are for it. John and I, along with other small family farms have spoken publicly in favor of the moratorium at the recent public hearing, however there was a very large showing of very large-scale farmers, replete with their large, new, shiny tractors & spray rigs, that of course grabbed the media eye.

It all started when Jeff and Bonnie Parr proposed the development of a 2400 "animal unit" hog operation.

As a moratorium, it wouldn't permanently ban the development of such large-scale farms. Health Committee member Gail Frie said, "This is a temporary short-term moratorium, not a prohibition." The idea is that the committee needs more time to arrive at a definitive conclusion on the best way to move forward. The board supported passing the draft moratorium on June 11 on the testimony of David Chakoian who demonstrated that large scale hog farms promote the spread of antibiotic-resistance pathogens. Chakoian's view was rebuked by that of Arthur Mueller, a veterinarian, who concluded that "The important thing is this confinement unit will not threaten the public health of its neighbors."

This moratorium is not only a good idea; it doesn't go far enough. The conditions that allow concentrated animal feeding operations to exist ought to be made illegal, and I hope that Vernon County will make it so. Furthermore, it is in the best interests of everyone that Vernon County acts in this manner.

In a confined animal operation, animals are kept in such close proximity that anti-biotics have to be administered to entire herds. This is even more important because many of these pigs, once able to subsist on anything, are bred or genetically engineered in such a way that they would die outside. Pumping an animal full of antibiotics and then eating it sounds like a recipe for the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and it does in fact result in nasty infections. Chee-Sanford et al. demonstrated in 2001 that antibiotic-resistance can also be transmitted by ground water from liquid animal waste.

Given the solid scientific evidence demonstrating that the continued use of antibiotics poses a human health risk, and given that such antibiotics are administered most on concentrated animal feedlot operations, it only makes sense that the proposed moratorium would have a positive impact upon human health.

In talking about health risks, we run a risk of focusing too myopically on health and safety issues in neglect of environmental, ethical, culinary, and public interest considerations. These large farms won't be able to compost their animal waste, leading to groundwater pollution. The swine that will live on the Parr's farm will experience very low quality of life, which many people would consider unethical. Omnivores ought to demand this moratorium in light of the fact that happy animals taste better than sad animals. Is it in the public interest that the swine industry should become progressively more consolidated? Is this in support of the area's famed rural agrarian heritage? Does the potentially lethal malodorous effluent rank high on the dread-and-outrage scale in the public view? Does an increase in antibiotic resistance bacteria post a threat to national security? This is precisely the sort of political trap the food industry has relied upon for decades. Hasn't anyone read Safe Food by Marion Nestle?

The Vernon County board should open the discussion to consider all relevant views of the topic, not just health and safety.

The real insult to injury here is that the Wisconsin's Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (!!!) (DATCAP) has threatened to sue Vernon County if the moratorium goes into effect. Virginia Goeke alleges that the "DATCAP/ state of Wisconsin has been consulting with the National Pork Industry Council on this issue." Pint and Fork cannot confirm nor deny this claim. If they define consumer protection as doing everything in their power to subvert the public interest in favor of private interest, they're doing an excellent job
fulfilling their mission statement.

Farms that confine animals and use antibiotics pose a threat to human health, contaminate Wisconsin's ground and surface waters, threatens our heritage and debases our collective identity, and is not in the interests of anyone. Wisconsin has long been an agricultural leader; standing our ground and not giving in to the interests of a few factory farms preserves that leadership.

Life's for livin'

Have a drink, have a drive
Go out and see what you can find
-Mungo Jerry from "In the Summertime"

The Wisconsin State Journal today devoted their staff editorial to the need to getting serial DUI offenders off the road. To recap... Shockingly, Thomas J. Dworak has been convicted a dozen times for drunken driving. And he was in court this week standing trial for another drinking while driving offense. William A. Skare has been convicted on fourteen counts of drinking and driving. Clearly, these two Wisconsin men should not be allowed behind the wheel. And yet law enforcement keeps finding them there without a license and drunk. This constitutes a deficiency in our laws since the legal punishment for their repeated convictions has not prevented these individuals from driving. The Wisconsin State Journal puts it more eloquently, "The only regret Wisconsin should have about throwing the book at Dworak is that it is not a bigger book."

Dworak is facing a maximum prison sentence of six years plus a fine of $10,000, which could increase as a function of his blood alcohol content at the time of the infraction.

Hot off setting myself up for being called a yankee muckraker, Pint and Fork proposes that the following ideas be considered to keep serial offenders off the road:
1. Pass a law that makes it illegal for repeat offenders to own or possess a car after a certain number of offenses. I mean if we can make laws that "infringe" upon a convicted felon's "second amendment right" to bear arms, we can make a law that restricts access to motor vehicles. Cars in the hands of the intoxicated are deadly weapons and killed nearly 17,000 people in 2005 alone (insert obligatory comment about the number of US soldiers killed in the Iraq War, or on September 11, 2001). If we can keep the worst offenders away from motor vehicles, maybe we can reduce the number of alcohol-related fatalities.

2. Impose criminal penalties for allowing a known repeat offender to operate a vehicle in your possession. In my mind, this is similar to laws that we have in place concerning the provision of alcohol to minors. Law enforcement doesn't just penalize the offending minors; they can also penalize those who provided the alcohol in the first place. And so it is with cars and repeat DUI offenders.

3. The Wisconsin State Journal cites South Dakota law that allows repeat offenders to drive if they submit to Breathalyzer tests twice daily with the sheriff. I'm not sure that the article makes it clear, but the South Dakota law is a so-called "24/7 sobriety" zero-tolerance law. That is, a person can get a special permit to operate a motor vehicle so long as they get tested, pay the expenses of the testing, and consume absolutely no ethanol. The detection of any amount of alcohol necessarily revokes that individual's right to operate a motor vehicle.

However unlikely, it may be possible to fool a Breathalyzer. Google helped me find all sorts of tricks for beating a Breathalyzer including breathing heavily before analysis, eating shit, and sucking on activated charcoal. My scientific training and an episode of Mythbusters has me doubting the effectiveness of any way to cheat the test. To obviate any technique for fooling a Breathalyzer analysis, blood samples should be randomly collected from program participants.

I'm not sure that measure three would stop Dworak from driving, seeing as how he wasn't deterred by having his license revoked by a preponderance of repeat offenses. So while this 24/7 sobriety program offers a legal road map to obtaining a driving permit, it is insufficient to keep the worst offenders from driving because they will do so with or without a permit. Still, I regard this as a significant step forward.

All my ex's

And that's why I hang my hat in Tennessee.

Some folks think I'm hidin',
It's been rumored that I died,
But I'm alive and well in Tennessee.

-George Straight from "All My Ex's Live in Texas"

The media never ceases to amaze me.

In case you haven't heard, Tennessee took a tough stand against underage drinking recently when it created a mandatory carding law at all grocery and liquor stores.

At least that's the impression one comes away with looking at the news coverage the new law has created. What they don't tell you is that this law will do virtually nothing to reduce the consumption of alcohol to minors. And secondly, it's an insult to beer drinkers.

At the heart of the issue is the Responsible Vendor Act of 2006, which was sponsored by State Senator Joe Haynes (SB3316) and State Representative Gary Moore (HB3210). What it does is make carding mandatory for all beer sales at grocery and liquor stores in Tennessee starting July 1, 2007. It's the first law of its kind in the union and is on a trial basis until July 1, 2008, when the law is set to sunset. It is widely believed that, if successful, the sunset provision will be removed (pdf, 20 kb). This law does accomplish some noble goals, including eliminating carding discrimination and reducing the positivity bias noted by McCall and Nattrass. A complete copy of the act is available here (pdf, 48 kb).

It's like creating a law that says that you can't buy alcohol for home consumption after 9 PM (in Wisconsin), it just means that people who drink will buy their beverages earlier in the day, having a presumably negligible influence upon drinking habits. If minors aren't able to buy beer themselves, they'll just have other people buy it for them in greater numbers.

Without increasing the penalty for providing alcohol to a minor and stepping up enforcement efforts, this loop-hole will drain the Responsible Vendor Act of any effectiveness beyond encouraging the responsible sale of beer. What happens to beer after its sale is less controlled and even less controllable. I don't know how to prevent the provision of alcohol to minors; I do know that the lack of effective and suitable preventative measures means that this act will accomplish little.

Moreover, the act merely raises the street value and prevalence of having fake forms of identification. Fake identification documents are already ubiquitous as illustrated by an article in the Christian Science Monitor that describes just one of many sources minors turn to to obtain a fake id. I mean, look. I'm not CNN and I'm not going to harp about how this is going to aid terrorist groups, but it does expose a fundamental flaw in the bill and in state-issued forms of identification. So long as identification cards can be counterfeited, this act will have little impact.

In fact, I'm curious to see in what percent of cases underage drinking was due to the failure to card in the first place. Based upon my personal, anecdotal experience, I never tried to buy alcohol before I turned 21. And yet, I had absolutely no problems sourcing any kind of alcohol I wanted. Go figure.

One thing I find most curious is that the bill only addresses the sale of beer for off-premise consumption. Not wine coolers, not wine, not liquor. It doesn't affect bars either. A study put together by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (part of the NIH) determined the prevalence of consumption of beer, liquor, wine, and wine coolers among 18 - 20 year old individuals. Interestingly, only 26.8% of individuals drank beer at home while 62.0% of individuals said they consumed beer in the homes of friends or family. In comparison, 31.1% said they consumed wine coolers at home while 59.1% consumed wine coolers in the homes of friend or family. Similarly, 22.3% said they consumed liquor at home while 61.8% said they consumed liquor at the homes of friend or family. It is clear that beer consumption is only one piece of a larger puzzle. As a result, even if this act reduces the sale of beer to minors, it is unlikely to affect wine coolers, wine, or liquor consumption as the bill doesn't apply to these forms of alcohol.

The same study broke down consumption habits by gender and race. I am not a statistician and could not tell you what a significant difference is between values presented in Table 3. However, upon an uneducated glance, it strikes me that the type of beverage is related to both gender and race. If the act will reduce consumption among men and women, American-Indians and Alaska natives, the hispanic, and college students most of all, it does little to curb consumption among other groups. For example, 5.0% more women drank wine coolers at home than men. Liquor consumption is prevalent among all groups in the homes of friends or family. But this act: no impact. This could be especially hurtful to asians who have the highest rates of out-of-home liquor consumption (70.7%), for example.

In an ideal world, I wish we would instead teach our children to respect beer the way they do in many other parts of the world. Our "alcohol is bad" approach just reinforces the notion that alcoholic beverages only have value in proportion to their ethanol content (I also suspect it undermines our much needed "crystal meth is bad" message). Beer is a wonderful beverage with a rich tradition extending back thousands of years. Why aren't we instead teaching children to appreciate it, within reasonable limits? Abstinence only sex-education may be best in theory, but certainly not in practice. It's the same with alcohol-education.

Saving the moment

Like practically everyone else in my generation -- and probably yours, too -- I grew up with little dependence upon foods that had been preserved at home. Yet, people have been figuring out ways to slow down the inevitable decay of foods for thousands of years. And people have been canning foods since Nicolas Appert figured out how in 1809. I concede our forebears preserved food more out of necessity than for taste, which I hope you know by know is one of the leitmotifs throughout all of my writings for Pint and Fork.

However, there are good reasons to preserve food today. When we capture a product at the peak of its season, we have that vegetable at its seasonal prime all year. This is the overarching reason why I intend to can large amounts of tomatoes this year including derivative sauces such as pasta sauce and tomato salsa. Francis Schott and Mark Pascal, of The Restaurant Guys fame, swear by this approach at their flagship restaurant Stage Left.

Moreover, so much of our food comes from thousands of miles away by anonymous growers. Reducing the energy consumed schlepping food around the globe has to be a good thing. And furthermore it gives me an excuse to support local farmers to a greater extent. Call it sentimental hogwash, but I like knowing the names of the people growing my vegetables.

Of course, I'm also just curious and eager to try something new. That's why this year I'm going to put more emphasis upon food preservation in hopes that I'll have some good eats this winter. Throughout the summer I hope to show off all the food I've put aside. And besides, maybe canning is going to become cool the way knitting is these days.

I bought five pounds of asparagus from the Priske family at the Dane County Farmers' Market this last weekend. Since asparagus has very little acidity, it has to be autoclaved ... I mean pressure canned (i.e. not water bath canned). To prepare, I cut the spears so that they would fit inside my widemouth pint-size mason jars. I fit as many as I could inside the jars. Then I added boiling water and half a teaspoon of canning salt to each jar. After attaching the lids, I processed the cans under 11.6 psi for thirty minutes and then allowed the pressure to attenuate naturally over 25 minutes.

As the provenance of canning recipes is important (unless you want to get botulism, which you don't), I followed these directions from the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Next time I get my hands on fresh asparagus, I think I'm going to try pickling it.

The people have spoken

Assembly Bill 122, which was the subject of my previous post, was signed into law today by Governor Jim Doyle. Obviously, Pint and Fork's strong advocacy of this bill was instrumental in its passage...

But seriously, I did think it was interesting that the only feedback I got was for the bill. This shouldn't be that surprising since most of the readers of Pint and Fork probably value beer and eschew neo-prohibitionism.

Whenever I say something about a person, be it good, bad, or otherwise, on Pint and Fork, I make a reasonable effort to notify that person via email. I do this for several reasons. The first, and most selfish reason, being that I want to increase the reader base of my blog. The more people who know about Pint and Fork, the better.

But the second, lesser, and more ethical reason is that I want to give those whose opinions differ from my own a chance to disagree with me. I hope that eventually some good discussions will take place in comments in my blog. I also feel that notifying people I talk about also keeps me honest in my writing. It's easy to say that so-and-so is stupid when you're doing it behind their back, quite another when it's in the open.

So the reason I was surprised was this: I heard back from the office of State Senator Pat Kreitlow. No one wrote in to say that I'm a dumb-dumb for supporting AB122, which is surprising because Pat Kreitlow is only one of two people I mentioned who support the bill. I mentioned three or four people who are against it.

At any rate, I think this speaks well to our state... Especially in comparison to Alabama, where the sale of bottled beer is unreasonably restricted. No beer sold in Alabama can exceed 6% alcohol by volume or come in a bottle greater than one pint. South Carolina, West Virginia, and Mississippi are the only other states that have similar restrictions. But when the house had a chance to change the law in Alabama, they decided to table it instead. I've been planning on doing a full-fledged piece on the issue at some point, and may still do one as there's more drama than an episode of the Gilmore Girls, but in the mean time I wish Alabamans that support the so-called gourmet beer law the best of luck in their political pursuits.

Not Funny

I think everyone that knows me well knows one thing about me: I love comics. When I was little, I read Garfield and Peanuts voraciously. Then I got into The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbs, and Doonesbury. And I've always had a thing for political cartoons. When done well, they're clever depictions of complicated issues. As something simple, they can be incredibly powerful statements of opinion. Just look at Thomas Nast.

So I can take a joke.

But I think Joe Heller's recent political cartoon about free beer samples in grocery stores wasn't funny.

At stake is Wisconsin Assembly Bill 122, which would allow free samples of beer to be given out at grocery stores in Wisconsin. Specifically, it allows a maximum of two 3-ounce portions to be given to a person of legal drinking age between 11 AM and 7 PM unless specifically prohibited by municipal government.

The bill, sponsored by State Senator Pat Kretilow, passed the Senate Affairs Committee unanimously and is to be scheduled for a vote on the senate floor.

The way the law is now written, two 3-ounce portions of wine may be given free of charge to an individual of legal drinking between 10 AM and 6 PM (AB122 changes the times to 11-7):

125.06(13)(a)
(a) The provision of wine taste samples of not more than 3 fluid ounces each, free of charge, by a "Class A" licensee to customers and visitors for consumption on the premises. No "Class A" licensee may provide more than 2 taste samples per day to any one person. This subsection applies only between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Notwithstanding s. 125.07 (1) (a) 1., no "Class A" licensee may provide taste samples under this subsection to any underage person. No "Class A" licensee may provide as taste samples under this subsection wine that the "Class A" licensee did not purchase from a wholesaler.

125.06(13)(b)
(b) Notwithstanding par. (a) and s. 125.10 (1), a municipality may prohibit the provision of wine under this subsection.

A play-by-play analysis of the exact changes proposed in the current version of AB122 is provided here (PDF, 20kb). In its current form, it proposes that section 125.1 be revised from

125.25(1)
(1) Every municipal governing body may issue Class "A" licenses for the sale of fermented malt beverages from premises within the municipality. Subject to s. 125.34 (5) and (6), a Class "A" license authorizes retail sales of fermented malt beverages for consumption off the premises where sold and in original packages, containers and bottles. A license may be issued after July 1. That license shall expire on the following June 30.

to (changes noted in bold)

125.25 (1) Every municipal governing body may issue Class “A” licenses for the
sale of fermented malt beverages from premises within the municipality. Subject to s. 125.34 (5) and (6), a Class “A” license authorizes retail sales of fermented malt beverages for consumption off the premises where sold and in original packages, containers, and bottles. A Class “A” license also authorizes the licensee to provide, free of charge, to customers and visitors who have attained the legal drinking age fermented malt beverages taste samples that are not in original packages, containers, or bottles and that do not exceed 3 fluid ounces each, for consumption on the Class “A” premises. No Class “A” licensee may provide more than 2 taste samples per day to any one person. Taste samples may be provided under this subsection only between the hours of 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. Any other provision of this chapter applicable to retail sales of fermented malt beverages by a Class “A” licensee also applies to the provision of taste samples, free of charge, of fermented malt beverages by a Class “A” licensee. A license may be issued after July 1. That license shall expire on the following June 30.

So basically all Assembly Bill 122 does is make legal for beer what is already legal for wine.

Yet, here's Joe Heller portraying a bunch of men standing around a grocery store chugging beer at a grocery stand resembling a bar. The figure behind the "bar" resembles a young store clerk. By portraying someone who might potentially be underage serving beer implies that there's no check to make sure that all samples are given to people of legal drinking age. And it could be construed to imply that the underage clerk himself might have access to beer, and help himself.

There are four empty cups littering the floor around the men. This depiction implicitly suggests that individuals who would sample beer at a store are irresponsible.

Moreover, there are two women in the cartoon. With a dour look on her face (the other woman merely looks condescending towards the men), one of them says, "He never wanted to come to the grocery store with me... now I can't get him to leave!!" This further implies that all beer drinkers are men, and that men love beer more than their spouses. It also implies that there's no limit to the number of free samples, or that the serving sizes are large. And indeed, the cups don't appear to be tasting portion sized. As a result, it seriously misrepresents the AB122.

Finally, the caption reads "Wis. legislature considers allowing grocery stores to hand out beer samples." Again, there's no indication that responsible alcohol service is legally mandated by the bill.

The hue and cry about AB122 is beyond absurd. I will first address Heller's apparent criticisms, then I will respond to the arguments of other opponents of the bill. Finally, I will argue in favor of AB122 and strongly urge its approval without delay.

First, grocery stores providing beer samples will have to do so in a responsible manner. Regulations surrounding who can and cannot serve alcoholic beverages will apply to the distribution of free samples. And more than likely, the grocery store won't set up a bar. It might have a small table, which draws far less attention.

While people do litter, I question the apparent causal relationship between a free beer sample and litter in grocery stores. You can't tell me that everyone who takes a toothpick of Mystery Sausage at the grocery store puts the toothpick into an approved trash receptacle. You also can't tell me that men are more likely to litter than women. Or that beer drinkers are more likely to litter than wine drinkers or Mystery Juice drinkers.

With serving sizes limited to two 3-ounce pours, individuals trying a free beer sample would have to leave at some point because there's no reason to stay. It wouldn't lead to massive crowding at grocery stores. It wouldn't lead to public drunkenness. It wouldn't lead to neglected spouses. And let's face it: the times I've had a sample of wine at retail locations, the pour was more like one ounce. The volumes given are maximums, not The Exact Amount Which Must Be Poured and Then Consumed.

Having read numerous press accounts of the AB122 controversy, I found some more criticism of the bill. Nearly all of them go like this, "AB122 promotes drunkenness, alcoholism, and increases the chances of underage drinking and alcohol-related traffic fatalities. In addition, AB122 could be harmful to children and recovering alcoholics."

To be fair and balanced, I'll allow the critics to speak in their own words.

As quoted by Patrick Thornton of the Green Bay Press Gazette, Portage County District Attorney Tom Eagon says, "There are a lot of places in our community for people to get a drink." Yes, but if I wanted to go out and get a drink I want to go out and get a drink. What I wouldn't do is cruise around to grocery stores walking up and down each isle to see if free tasting samples were being distributed. And even if I found a grocery store that was providing tasting samples, I'd get at the very most six ounces (half a bottle) worth of beer. Given the amount of time and effort that an individual would have to spend obtaining a ridiculously small amount of beer, Mr. Eagon's argument is absurd. It is also an irrelevant point because people could already go out to grocery stores and get free tasting samples of wine.

Lauri Rockman, coordinator of Portage County's Coalition for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention, is quoted as saying, "The environment we create for our young people is critical to their long-term health. We need positive adult modeling. Making alcohol part of a trip to the grocery store is just another way to make it so pervasive and casual in our culture." Of all the arguments against Assembly Bill 122, I think this is the most outrageous. Like a lot of things (sugar, salt, fat, etc.), alcohol is not inherently bad. Perhaps that's why her organization has the word "Abuse" in its title, not "Consumption." Anyway, I agree. It's extremely important that adults provide positive role models for their children. I just disagree with Ms. Rockman that the consumption of alcohol in moderation sets a bad example. Beer is a beverage with ancient roots, and strong traditions in many european countries (and a strong tradition here in the US). It can be incredibly complex and highly refined. To be honest, if I have kids someday I hope they have an appreciation for real beer as adults. If she doesn't want beer, she doesn't have to buy it or support retail locations that sell it. But please, Ms. Rockman, don't tell me that I can't or shouldn't enjoy it.

Mr. Eagon continues, "People with alcohol issues can't stop at one or two. One of the ways they deal with their problem is to avoid situations where they will be tempted. A grocery store should be a safe place." Ok, I get that argument. But where do you draw the line? If I recently had a heart attack, should I be tempted by fattening meats, whole milk, and candy bars in the checkout? If I suffer from celiac disease, should I be tempted with gluten-containing products? And furthermore, it stands to reason that economics would balance this out. If a store provides free samples of beer and you couldn't resist, then don't go there. If the grocery store loses enough business, it will be forced to stop providing free samples of beer.

But again, Mr. Eagon's argument misrepresents the issue. If grocery stores had a keg in the middle of the produce section and were handing out beers by the pint, I'd understand his comment about not being able to stop at "one or two." But let's face it. Six ounces of beer maximum is not a lot. And if you're talking about ethanol content it's far less than six ounces of wine. Let's say most beers come in around 4% alcohol by volume while most wines come in around 14% alcohol. That means in 6 ounces of wine, there's about 7 grams of ethanol for beer as opposed to 25 grams for wine. So you're going to end up consuming more than three times as much alcohol drinking the already-legal tasting sample of wine. And it's not like grocery stores don't already sell beer, wine, and hard liquor which could potentially compromise the safety of a store for a recovering alcoholic.

Assembly Bill 122 deserves to become law without further ado. The homebrewing and microbrewing revolution in the last twenty to thirty years in the United States has lead to the creation of some amazing breweries and world-class beers. Facing a dizzying variety of beer choices at a store (go to Woodman's Market or Steve's Liquor in Madison if you don't believe the selection could be intimidating), many customers won't know what to choose. If the retail location periodically provides free samples of beer, it helps beer drinkers try new styles without committing to a six pack. As a result, more people are more likely to try more beer.

This is a great for craft brewers who often survive on razor-thin margins. Paul Graham, president of the Central Waters Brewing Company, acknowledges this when he is quoted as saying, "Some people are hesitant to spend money on a beer they haven't tried before. This would give them a chance to sample our product before they purchase it." This legislation could potentially help smaller craft brewers compete with the macrobrewers.

This is great for the beer movement in the United States. For a long time, beer meant american light lager (e.g. Miller Lite). Then it meant american light lager and stout (e.g. Guinness). Then it meant american light lager, stout, and pale ale (e.g. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale). Now it pretty much means every kind of beer from every brewing tradition on the planet, plus experimenting with new ways of doing things. Helping people understand that beer can taste like fresh cherries (e.g. New Glarus Belgian Red) to espresso (e.g. Central Waters Bourbon Barrel Stout) and everything in between will help maintain diversity of brewing portfolios. And it may be exactly what is needed, given that the Capital Brewing Company discontinued Capital 1900 and Kloster Weizen, two worthy and unique offerings by a local craft brewer.

And finally, it helps raise the profile of beer drinking by making it placing it rightfully as wine's equal.

Assembly Bill 122 is a good measure that will help Wisconsin business, benefit Wisconsin residents, and maintain Wisconsin's reputation for beer. Although it has been assailed by critics, their arguments are very weak compared to the tangible benefits that AB122 provides. The state assembly should not delay its passage.

Book notes: Camembert

I just finished reading a particularly surprising and delightful book called Camembert: A National Myth by Pierre Boisard. It was originally published in 1992 as Le Camembert, Mythe National, but it wasn't published in English translation (thanks to Richard Miller) until 2003. In posting notes about this book I don't intend to dig up old news ("Kuwait has just been invaded, the implications could be...") but to help give this book some of the attention it deserves. As of the time of this posting, it has not received a user review on Amazon's or Barnes and Noble's online stores. Perhaps the book has an uncanny similarity to its subject: both the book and the cheese are difficult to approach, but that very aspect is the very basis for its merit. Peter Hepburn said that Camembert is "suitable only for academic food and French studies collections." Put one way, this book is erudite and engaging; put another, it is dry and pedantic. Which way you see it depends upon your perspective.

The book follows the full trajectory of camembert from its rural origins to its industrial transformation in the twentieth century. Camembert derives its name from a tiny Augeron village that today boasts of only 204 citizens. According to a widely-believed creation myth, camembert cheese was created by a peasant by the name of Marie Harel. As the story goes, a priest was given sanctuary from the revolution by Harel. In return the priest taught her the secret to making camembert. Harel and her descendents were the first notable producers of camembert, who gave rise to the reign of the "great families" as Marie Harel's descendents included increasingly many people. These producers rose to prominence and fell spectacularly over time. In the end, Michel Besnier ended up buying up the vast majority of camembert producers in the latter half of the twentieth century and industrializing its production.

Boisard casts the story of camembert's creation into serious doubt. Although there are extant birth and death certificates for a Marie Harel of Normandy, there is evidence that she lived in Roiville at the time – not Camembert. Boisard notes references to "Camembert cheeses" as early as 1702, so it seems as though the cheese existed before its supposed creator. What is more likely to have happened, Boisard reasons, is that Marie Harel was able to take credit for an older cheesemaking tradition. Although it seems unlikely that anyone would be able to claim credit for something that's been around for a long time, I remembered the on-going dispute over the terms Budweiser and Pilsener. Both words are used by American companies, but they refer to the Czech cities of Budweis and Pilsen respectively. The aforementioned American company has gone so far as to sue Czech breweries in an attempt to forbid them from (correctly) calling their beers Budweiser.

When I picked up the book I thought I knew what Boisard was going to say. "Camembert used to be so good. But then industry came along and wiped it all out leaving us with nothing but ersatz camembert." Although Boisard tries to provide a balanced narrative, you do come away with that impression. What I didn't expect was that the tragedy of camembert goes even further, and yet that hope for the cheese remains.

It's not just that the camembert of Marie Harel is no longer made; it's that it's not even possible to make it anymore even if someone really wanted to. When camembert was known only inside of Normandy -- that is, before it went national -- it was a truly rural product. It was fermented with Penicillium camemberti, which caused it to have a blue, green, or black mold. Urban consumers exhibited a strong preference for white camembert, which was made possible with the help of the Institut Pasteur by using P. candidum instead. This change almost certainly affected the taste of the cheese, by all reports, by removing the cheese's "peasant bite" (i.e. it became less sharp). But because P. camemberti had been use for so long, cheese factories were infested with it. Factory by factory, the bacteria was eradicated since it was viewed as a precursor to a product defect. The last known colony disappeared in 1961. No known culture of P. camemberti exists anywhere in the world today.

Moreover, the world in which camembert was born into is daily becoming relegated to history. Traditionally camembert was made from unpasteurized milk. In order to not wreck havoc upon a cheese factory, the milk has to be be sanitary. Sanitary unpasteurized milk must be collected with extreme diligence. The udders must be thoroughly cleaned. It must be stored as cool, but not too cool, temperatures, and cannot be allowed to stand for much time before it is used. Unpasteurized camembert, like all unpasteurized cheese, derives its unique flavor from its terroir. Modern cows are not only an inferior and untraditional breed -- Holsteins -- but are likely to not eat from the pasture as they once did. Modern dairy operations operate on a scale where these traditions are difficult or impossible to maintain. If the cheese maker can't trust the farmer, he will have little choice but to pasteurize the milk he receives. If the cows' milk has a lower butterfat content, it can't be made into the same cheese as it used to be.

As the European Union solidifies into a cohesive unit, the few remaining producers of unpasteurized camembert are under new pressure. There have been proposals that all cheeses produced in the EU must be pasteurized, presumably to optimize safety. One hopes that integration into the EU will have the same effect that it did on absinthe, which became legal everywhere in europe. The pasteurization issue combined with the invention of a ladling machine that makes camembert the "traditional", if automated, way, the future of the cheese certainly appears to be imperiled. I say "traditional" not traditional because this machine cuts the curd, which is not allowed in the traditional means of fabrication.

Boisard deals harsh criticism to Americans. Before 1949, when unpasteurized cheeses that had been aged for less than 60 days were banned in the US (per 21 CFR 133), Americans loved camembert cheese and imported more of it than any other country. Sometime in the latter part of the twentieth century, Americans became obsessed with food safety. In their zeal to eliminate bacteria from food, they did away with anything good or distinctive in camembert. Indeed, nearly all of the camembert available today in the United States is aggressively bland and insipid. Pasteurization removes any local nuance from a cheese.

This outrage could be justified if people were keeling over from consumption of raw milk cheeses. Yet americans were eating unpasteurized cheeses for hundreds of years and europeans have been eating raw milk cheeses for thousands of years without widespread sickness or fatality. Pasteurized cheese, on the other hand, has been shown to cause extensive sickness from time to time. You might object that if the improperly pasteurized milk causes sickness, then surely the unpasteurized cheese would have also caused sickness. But one of the main reasons why milk is pasteurized in the first place is to make up for inferior quality. If the raw material were of higher quality, it wouldn't be necessary at all. Perhaps efforts should instead be focused on education and microbial testing of milk entering the cheese factory.

Anyway, Camembert is an excellent book. My only complaint is that it doesn't come with samples of cheese! It may make me sad for my country, but I have hope that someday real cheese will again be allowed into the country.

... I understand that unpasteurized camembert can be ordered online. The blogging community should really have a "Gandhi marches to the sea to make salt" moment and all eat camembert contraband on one day. If bloggers can break political scandals before the mainstream media, bloggers can help craft sane food regulations.

A response to Vinography

I wrote this piece in response to Alder, who is the homme behind Vinography.

Alder wrote an article in which he argued that technological modification of wines helps winemakers stay on their vineyards, and benefits the wine industry in France (especially Bordeaux). While I am not an authority on wine economics, I think his overall argument is marred by a fundamental difference of opinion when it comes to quality and purity. Whether I think the application of modern winemaking techniques helps winemakers is an issue that I don't know enough to address, and consequently leave the matter to others.

Without further ado...

It seems odd for Alder to assert that wine quality is necessarily reflected in higher sales. Is supermarket plonk wine good because it sells so well? It's not true of any other food product: Kraft cheese slices versus Hook's 12 year cheddar, cheese whiz versus a veritable brie. So why does he think it's true of wine? Greater sales may result because a product is of higher quality, but that is certainly not true a priori.

I've tended to agree with Karen MacNeil when she writes, "One of the most insidious myths in American wine culture is that a wine is good if you like it. Liking a wine has nothing to do with whether it is good. Liking a wine has to do with liking wine, period."

I agree that wine makers, like all kinds of farmers, need support to be able to stay on the land. While I agree that wine makers should be allowed to make wines that people like more, that doesn't necessarily make them better wines. The wines may or may not be better, but there is no logical relationship between like-ability and quality.

As for technology in wine making, I think the anti-technology camp is similar to the aversion that many serious beer drinkers and home brewers have to flavorings and adjuncts. If I were brewing a coffee stout for example, I would want to use grains that have been roasted to an appropriate extent to generate the correct Maillard flavors. This practice is better than throwing some coffee beans into the brew kettle and adding the flavor that way (although many good caffeinated beers are made that way). Indeed, I think one of the real pleasures of many beers is the fact that their flavors come from very simple sources: barley, hops, yeast, and water (e.g. the banana flavor of a hefeweizen from the yeast and fermentation conditions). In a blind taste test, I might not be able to tell the difference. But if I knew how they were both made, it's pretty clear to me which one I'd choose.

And it's the same with wine.

A wine that has been "manipulated" in one way or another may not be evident upon taste. But I think many of us would agree that we'd rather drink the wine that hasn't been oaked to mask certain flavors, chaptalized to cover-up a yield that's too large, etc. These techniques have their uses, but they can be used for good just as much as for evil.

To take this to the absurd extreme, imagine if flavor companies became interested in manufacturing the molecules that make up wine flavor. These chemicals could then be mixed with water and ethanol, and voila! Wine! Consistent replication of the finest Bordeaux and Barolo vintages with no chance of off-flavors, spoilage, or corking! Even if the products couldn't be differentiated from the original wines by a mass spectrometer, I wouldn't drink them.

Ever.

Beerfest

I wanted to avoid the movie Beerfest like BMC, but I knew at some point I'd have to say a few words about it. And that time is now.

The premise of this comedy is pretty simple: two guys go to Oktoberfest in München and get introduced to a beer-drinking competition called Beerfest. They get roundly insulted by the reigning world-champion German team, and the Americans unwisely challenge them and lose. The Americans spend a year training for a rematch and win. It's basically a sports movie.

Beerfest is really a mixed bag of bar nuts, some of them savory, some past their prime, and some rotten to the core. Since this isn't a film blog, I'm not about to actually review the movie so much as provide commentary on parts of it that I think will be relevant and interesting to the readers of Pint and Fork.

Perhaps the moment that made the movie worth the $3.99 I spent to watch it was the insults the Americans got from the europeans. They got called malt-beverage drinkers. Sadly, many people have lost their acquired taste for traditional, complex beverages like beer, wine, and fine cocktails. Traditional alcoholic beverages like wine and beer have been demonstrated to have numerous and wide-ranging health benefits. It's true that many Americans grew up chugging Mountain Dew, and have grown into adults drinking Mike's Hard Lemonade -- which has all the complexity of a solution of citric acid, sugar, and ethanol. And, obviously, I think that's a bad thing. Traditional alcoholic beverages, especially beer and wine, are Hieronymus Bosch; malt beverages, alcopops, and crude mixology are the covers of Hallmark cards. A gimmick, a laugh, an insight that, once understood, loses all of its value. I've been enjoying porters for five years now and I learn something new every time I drink another.

There's a part in the movie when the main characters find the long-lost recipe for the best beer in all of Germany, and proceed to make it at home. There's a scene where they're standing over a pot of boiling wort and they add a can of amber John Bull Malt Extract. This is completely absurd on a variety of levels. John Bull Malt Extract is renowned for its high dextrin content, which makes it ideal for making heartier British ales which are pretty much the exact opposite of the helles style that they presumably were drinking at the competitions. Second, no German beer recipe would ever use malt extract. Germans look down upon the use of malt extracts like no one else, and for good reason. The unique character of many German lagers can only be derived via decoction mashing, the really old school way of brewing. Third, beer formulations are almost never as extensively recorded as cooking recipes. That is, the recipe will give the quantities of the necessary ingredients; the brewer must know how to combine the ingredients. I believe professional bakers operate similarly.

Nevertheless, the characters had a beer revelation when they tasted their homebrew. Beer made at home can be really, really good. And beers are created very unequally. Sadly many people suffer from outrageous misconceptions surrounding homebrew. Dark, heavy, icky, sugar-filled, exploding bottles, undrinking, cheap buzz, equivalent to moonshine, toxic, it'll make you blind, it's illegal... And sadly, many people don't realize they're drinking bad beer. To some extent, that's fine. I drink soda like Coca Cola, and I realize that I could be drinking Sprecher, Lake Front, or Stewart's. (In my defense, I'm a beer geek not a soda geek.)

I was worried that the movie would be all Miller Lite here and Bud Light there and Coors over there. But there was no mention of BMC, nor any BMC taps visible in any scene in the movie. The only established brand depicted, Späten, is of course one of the world's premier bock breweries.

To be fair, the movie did have some genuinely funny moments. For example, there was a scene when the main characters turned down a suitcase full of euros for a suitcase full of US dollars ("euros... what's that worth? Like pesos?").

Now onto things that I didn't like as much.

Beerfest touches on some extremely controversial topics with jaw-dropping insensitivity. The portrayal of Germans in the movie is the Hans-und-Frans stereotype directly from Central Casting. There's also a Jew (portrayed as intelligent and metrosexual) who was encouraged to compete in Beerfest because it meant he'd get revenge against the Germans. Ok, holocaust reference. That could be ok, but later in the movie one of the German characters puts down the Jewish character on the basis of his religion. This causes the offended character to have "the eye of the Jew", eyes with bright gold stars of David in them. As a plot device, that sucks.

The movie had a tremendous amount of senseless nudity and otherwise unwarranted sexual depiction. A lot of women lose their shirts throughout the course of the film. And it turns out that one of the characters is a prostitute. Now, I appreciate and enjoy the female form as much as anyone, but this isn't Stripes. The unrestrained depiction of mature content de-elevates the entire film.

More importantly, however, I worry that the movie reinforces negative attitudes about beer. The characters drink massively, wildly unrealistic quantities of my favorite libation, and get drunk and do stupid things. Beer has so much more to offer other than ethanol. Drinking, especially the Bavarian drinking tradition, is something to do while you're doing something else like socializing or eating. As such, moderation is extremely important and many look disapprovingly upon drunkenness. The movie is so silly that I'm not going to be pedantic and suggest that Beerfest encourages these behaviors. But I don't think it can be denied that there is a subset of people who consider beer a drug, a disease, something that should be forcibly removed from society before it kills us. And to some extent these people do have a point. Alcohol is responsible for a large number of deaths every year, and may encourage violent, abusive, or otherwise unfortunate behavior. However, these people draw the wrong conclusions. It's not alcohol that's responsible so much as an overdose of alcohol. Nevertheless, a movie like this supports this negative impression of beer and the kind of people who enjoy it. That impression is the Animal House, party every night, drink to absolute stomach-pumping drunkenness, fratboy stereotype of alcohol consumption. While that model fits many people, it fits those who enjoy craft beer like kids' gloves.

I couldn't help comparing the movie to Sideways, otherwise known as The Movie That Panned Merlot. In that movie, there's a wine geek character who displays a range of emotions to which the audience is led to be sympathetic. He is articulate, knowledgeable, and sensitive. His friend enjoyed wine as a recreational beverage, and in contrast he was inarticulate, brutish, and a shameless womanizer. None of the characters in Beerfest are even as good as the latter character in Sideways.

Beerfest doesn't digress on how marvelous, complex, and diverse beer can be or try to improve audience appreciation for the beverage the way Sideways did. And although I fault that movie for slowing the plot down unnecessarily, it was something that wine geeks presumably liked and caused and gave the film value within that niche market. Sadly, Beerfest has no such hooks that elevate the movie above the trite, predictable, unartful flick that it is.

Am I embarrassed, even ashamed to have seen it? Of course. But did I enjoy it? Surprisingly, yes. Yes, I did.

Ankle Breaker Ale, part 2 of 2

While it may be rather assuming to review one's own homebrewed beer, rest assured that I do not review beers, I merely provide tasting notes. Maybe at some point I'll explain why I think reviewing anything as subjective as a beverage is bunk the way most reviewers do it. I, on the other hand, merely want to convey to my readers what's inside the bottle since the smellavision and tasteavision haven't yet been invented (despite Emeril's best efforts).



My first homebrew is West Washington ESB, otherwise known as West Washington Ankle Breaker Ale. It is so nick-named because I fell down some stairs when I was loading the (former?) West Washington Brewery in the back of my car. My ankle wasn't really broken, but I did have to go to the e-room (not the Escoffier kind!) and get the kind of assistance that only Röntgen can provide. But enough about me...

The bottle I sampled burst open with a hiss of cascade aroma that was unexpectedly slightly sweet and somewhat malty. The color can best be described as a orange-yellow, and the beer has fairly good clarity despite exhibiting significant chill-haze (no finings or cold conditioning). It raised a nice head of about 3 cm that sustains itself nicely. As a result of ample carbonation that is perhaps beyond traditional British style, the head remained a fluffy beige color covering the entire surface of the beer and that resulted in excellent lacing. There was some sediment in the glass as a result of bottle-conditioning. Some of the sediment was actually suspended by the carbonation, resulting in an interesting spectacle. I imagine this would only become more interesting as the number of Ankle Breakers consumed within the last day increases.

The taste opens with a hint of malt and Kent goldings hops. A bitter sensation follows that seemed to move sideways across my tongue in waves. The strong malty backbone comes close behind, which balances out the bitterness. The maltiness is similar to whole wheat bread crust. There are also some cascade notes, which brings pine, resin, lemon, and orange flavors into the mix. As the beer warmed up, some licorice notes were detected. Although being unexpectedly light, the beer has a very ale-ish character that isn't too clean. There are flavors contributed by the yeast, but they are subtle. This was accomplished by not straining the yeast (pitching plenty of yeast cells and maintaining a normal fermentation temperature). The aftertaste is very similar to sourdough.

Ankle Breaker is very easy to drink, and feels smooth on the tongue despite the carbonation. This might contribute to the sense of lightness noted above. The hop-flavors seem a little out of focus, which may have been caused by using bottled water from Mishicot, Wisconsin where the limestone rock surely contributes alkalinity to the water. Some pH adjustment may have been beneficial.

I am happy with my first homebrew, and hope to continue brewing as a collaborative partner at the new M233 Brewery (tentative name).