H.R. 4278

Federal legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 4278, is a bill which you want to bring to your representative’s attention.  The purpose of the bill is to lower taxes on beer produced by smaller brewers.

New legislation like H.R. 4278 could really make a difference in your local craft brew community

The new legislation will reduce the taxes on the first 60,000 barrels to $3.50.  The next 1,940,000 barrels will be taxed at $16.  According to Harvard University’s John Friedman’s study, Economic Impact of Small Brewers Excise Tax Reduction (H.R. 4278), the new law should create 2,700 new jobs the first 18 months and 375 new jobs each of the following years.  It creates new jobs because the money the brewery would be spending on taxes can go to hiring more help and improving their breweries.  It’s a win-win situation.  H.R. 4278 creates jobs, and it supports the local brewers we love so much.

This new beer law won’t affect the major brewers, but that’s not it’s intent.  This bill is designed to help the smaller breweries and brew pubs.  Brewers who produce more than 6,000,000 barrels a year cannot take advantage of the new rules.  To give you an idea of scale, A-B InBev produces over 300 million barrels of beer a year.  H.B. 4278 supports the beers from your local brewery that none of your friends outside your state have heard of.  The bill will also help the medium sized brewers making less than 6 million barrels of beer a year.  Hopefully it will reduce the price of local beers, and encourage beer lovers to drink locally too.

How to help your local brewer

You never know, this bill could help you start your own small brewery in the future!

Unfortunately this bill is still just a bill sitting on Capitol Hill (Gen-Xers can thank me later for getting that annoying ditty stuck in their heads).  This is where you come in.  If you want to see this bill become a law, you should contact your local represenative.  The Brewer’s Association has created a resource page to help you locate your represenative.  On the resource page, you will find a link to a list of current sponsors of H.R. 4278. If your Representative DOES NOT appear on this list, please take a moment and email your Member of Congress to ask them to cosponsor H.R. 4278.

Hopefully we can all help the brewer that gives us the craft beer we love so much, and push this bill into law.

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The word green—formally a noun, now typically an adjective—is applied to just about anything possible (green dog food!).  Opinion polls and the American tradition of the focus group both have found the populace expressing more concern for the environment, hence a deluge of green labeled products in the last few years, including alcoholic drinks—most notably beer and wine.   If one wishes to indulge but doesn’t wish to have the guilt of wrecking the environment added to the inevitable stupid-crap-people-do-when-drinking, what should you look for?

Organic drunkenness versus conventional

A drink that uses organic ingredients is a good for the planet right? Suprisingly there really isn’t a lot of hard research (read published, peer reviewed studies in scientific journals) on this subject.  It’s probably most accurate to say under certain circumstances, it may be less bad on a short time scale or better on a longer time scale.   Which is better for the planet, conventional versus organic agriculture is—all advertising by the organic industry aside—extremely complicated.  “Better for the planet” for the purposes of this article means less polluting, less non-renewable energy consumption, less damaging to the soil, less production of greenhouse gases, and less negative impact on biodiversity.

Growing hops without pesticides is very difficult to do on a commercial scale

Pollution

Organic agriculture is easier on the environment than traditional production methods in a some ways.  Organic methods eschew the use of chemical fertilizers, using animal or plant based products for this purpose instead.  This has several benefits but also some drawbacks.  Manure based fertilizers maintain or even improve soil fertility with much less pollution—chemical fertilizers, because of their chemical composition, easily leach into groundwater, lakes, or rivers which can cause oxygen sucking algal blooms that kill everything.   Organic agriculture certainly comes out on top in the pollution department.

Energy Use

The creation of chemical fertilizers involves the use of a non-renewable ingredient—natural gas.  However, animal and plant based fertilizers can also use quite a bit of energy—for transportation—and can produce the greenhouse gas methane during their composting and cow fart stage.  Manure fertilizers also contain less nutrients by weight than chemical fertilizers. Also added to the what-is-greener equation: organic fields can produce less crop per area than traditional methods, meaning more land is needed to get the same yield.  Depending on the location, methods, and crop in production, organic versus traditional agriculture may come close to similar levels of energy use but this is obviously, highly variable.  In a 22 year study assessing the differences in energy use between conventional agriculture, organic animal manure agriculture and organic plant manure (legume) agriculture, researchers found the organic systems used 28 and 32% less energy than the conventional system (Pimentel et al.  Bioscience 2005 55:7).

Greenhouse Gases

Greenhouse gas production in both types of agriculture comes from the combustion of fossil fuels required to run all the equipment needed (including transportation), fertilizer production (including the production of animal and plant based organic fertilizer), and soil processes that occur during production.  Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4).  Organic production generally involves increased tillage or tractor usage which is damaging to the soil and releases CO2 into the atmosphere.  However, using manure as fertilizer replenishes soil carbon and can remove CO2 from the atmosphere.  Like I said, complicated.  Which presumably explains why I had such a hard time finding scientific studies that compare the net greenhouse gas emissions of organic versus traditional agriculture.  Since I could not find such a study after quite some time looking, I’m going to hazard a guess.  Since organic agriculture can use less energy than traditional, I’m going to say overall it probably also produces less greenhouse gases—but that’s not a given.  A qualified maybe here.

Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the number of different species (plant, animal, bacteria, fungi, you name it) in a specific area or habitat.  Higher numbers are assumed to be good,  but there is significant debate in the science of ecology—as opposed to “environmentalism” which is something else—whether this is the case.  In general parlance and most certainly in marketing materials for organic products however, the more creepy crawlies = good, less = bad is the dominant thinking.  Organic agriculture wins hands down in this category.  A metastudy (a study of many different, related studies) published in 2005 (Biological Conservation 113), found land under organic agriculture had significantly higher biodiversity than conventional agriculture in most cases.  The difference was attributed to more animal friendly cultivation methods such as the non use of pesticides and herbicides in organic agriculture.

Although there isn’t really enough scientific evidence to satisfy me (meaning multiple studies done with a variety of crops in a variety of places in both organic and conventional paired plots for several years), it does seem safe to say choosing beer or wine with organic ingredients is probably more green than the same products made with conventionally grown ingredients.  And if you like bugs, organic is definitely better.  However, because it’s a complicated calculation, consuming alcohol made from organic ingredients most likely isn’t as green as people think it is.  If you choose a beer or wine that is organic but shipped from a long distance instead of locally, the pollution and greenhouse gas production from the transportation alone may negate the environmental benefits of organic growing methods.

Local Drinking

There’s been a big upsurge in interest in local eating and by extension, drinking.  Eating and drinking local means exactly what it sounds like—going out of your way to purchase and consume locally made products.  The idea here is to reduce transportation effects on the environment.  Now living in the Front Range of Colorado makes this easy—there are many local craft breweries and quite a number of wineries in the state on the Western Slope.  However, if you live somewhere that’s not too hot for growing either grain or grapes, drinking locally will be significantly more difficult.  However, anytime you can reduce transportation required for the creation, distribution, and sale of an item, the more green it will be.  AND, walk to the liquor store/pub instead of drive, that will also increase the green quotient.

Of course, the ultimate local drinking is to grow the ingredients and make the beer or wine yourself.  Grapes are fairly easy to grow in many parts of the U.S., but growing enough of your own barley can be a bit of challenge.  Hops however, are very easy and can even be grown in containers.  Compost the leftovers and you will really be able to feel environmentally smug.

Drinking at local pubs in walking distance reduce transportation effects and drunk driving!

Sustainable Brewers and Wineries

Another option for green drinking is purchasing products from breweries or wineries using sustainable methods or technologies in production. New Belgium brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado is well known for their sustainable, green practices such as their use of wind powered electricity and using more efficient brew kettles.  As far as wineries go, many wineries are switching to organic production or biodynamic production—which is essentially the same as organic with some ridiculous new age mysticism thrown in for good measure.

Greener Drinking Tips

• Walk to the bar/liquor store
• Buy beer or wine made with organic ingredients
• Grow your own ingredients and make your own beer or wine
• Buy from local breweries or wineries
• Buy from brewers or wineries using green technologies
• Compost your vomit

Further Reading

• Environmental, Energetic, and Economic Comparisons of Organic and Conventional Farming Systems
• New Belgium Sustainability

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For most beer lovers, a trip to Munich is like a trip to the big game.  Oktoberfest is the holy grail of beer festivals!  Unfortunately with rising energy costs, the closest most will get is watching BeerFest at home.  It doesn’t need to be that way and in my neighborhood we brought Oktoberfest a bit closer to home.

A few years back, two years before I moved into the neighborhood, a couple neighbors decided to hold their own Oktoberfest.  One of the neighbors was a homebrewer, and the rest of the neighbors were willing beer drinkers.  This was all they needed to start a tradition.  Now six years later, the neighborhood Oktoberfest has a couple hundred attendees, a plethora of beer on tap, food, games, and a spiffy jumpy castle for the kids.  One neighbor plans the festival and the rest of us chip in and help.  So what do you need for your own Oktoberfest?

If you can't go to Oktoberfest, bring Oktoberfest to you!

Get a bunch of your closest friends

Seems obvious, but you need a supply friends to celebrate with.  The best group is neighbors.  Sure the downtown Oktoberfest of your metropolitan city might be fun, but celebrations are always better with a group of people you know.  There are several hundred people in my neighborhood and the numbers are still growing.

The best part about holding the celebration in your neighborhood is no one drives home.  It is an important consideration.  You don’t want to serve everyone massive amounts of beer and then tell them to drive home 20 miles.  Local is the new “cool”, and partying with your neighbors helps establish a great sense of community.

The hood is a great place to hang

We have a park in the center of our neighborhood where previous Oktoberfests were held.  Unfortunately inclement weather and inconvenient distances to restrooms dictated we move our festival to the neighborhood community center.  Many newer subdivisions have a community center.  If you live in a neighborhood with a community center, I’d recommend hosting your Oktoberfest there.

If you have lots of kids in your group (it’s a law to have at least one under six here), you’ll need to consider ways to corral the kids.  This is another reason our community center works.  The center has a fence built all around it.  This is just something for you to keep in mind when looking for a location.

Tents and fences are things you might want to plan for

A tent is a great idea if you expect lots of sun or possible rain.  In Colorado, we expect both every ten minutes.  A tent with tables makes a great place to eat and socialize, and provides protection from the elements.

Let the games begin!

While for most of us drinking beer all day is entertainment enough, others need more to keep entertained (I know, I thought that was weird too).  For games, we usually have pretzel tosses, musical chairs, and other games.  Some of the games come complete with prizes.  This encourages even the shyest people to join in the fun.

Oom Pa Pa Music!

You can’t have an Oktoberfest without Oom Pa Pa music.  It’s a moral imperative.  Usually we have a boom box playing a CD on repeat, but as the party grows we hope to have a live band in the future.

Something for the kids

Unless you want your kids whining to go home every 10 minutes, you need a distraction – a really big distraction.  Our method of distraction is a big jumpy castle .  You can rent these for a hundred bucks.  It’s like a big inflatable baby sitter.

If you can swing it, a jumpy castle will keep kids occupied for hours

Lots of Beer! (and food)

And oh yeah, you need beer.  The best part about our Oktoberfest is most of the beer is homebrew.  This adds a personal touch to the festival, much like the real festival in Germany.  The first few years a different homebrewer provided the beer, but he moved away and I’ve stepped in his place.

Oktoberfest is the day I look forward to every year.  In fact I am usually asking the planner about the festival in July.  If you are making homebrew foryour celebration, you will want to start planning in July too.  It takes a few months to make this much beer.

Each of these kegs is homebrew, and they all came back empty!

This year we had a Munich Dunkel, Vanilla Porter, Mandarin Orange Hefeweizen , Märzen , Blonde Ale, and Hard Cider – 30 gallons in all.  The idea was to provide a little something for everyone.  We even had homemade Root Beer for the kids.  At the end of the party, we had a bit of Root Beer left.  Lots of thirsty people!

As for the food, the party organizers bought sauerkraut, brats and hot dogs.  Everyone else was encouraged to bring a side dish or a dessert.  To make sure we didn’t get a stack of store bought cookies, we divided the responsibilities by last name.  A through M brought desserts and N through Z brought side dishes.  It works out great!

Eins, zwei, G’suffa!

Hopefully this gives you a few ideas to get started.  Our local version of Oktoberfest started with a couple of guys hanging out with a few beers.  Start small, invite everyone close, and eventually the party grows.  The whole point behind the local version is to celebrate with friends in your community .  Who knows, in a few years Oktoberfest might be the biggest local celebration in the world!

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A story in Reuters ran last week about Mike Hammond who was looking for a drinking buddy for his 88-year-old father Jack.  The duties included taking his father out for a pint once a day.  The best part about the job was that it paid.

Taking a shutin to the pub might make a great business idea!

Imagine that, a job which pays $14 USD an hour to be a drinking buddy.  If you are interested in the job, the position was filled by a retired doctor and a former military man.  There still is hope.

This occupation could be an unfilled niche.  The baby boomer generation is currently retiring at a massive rate.  Some reports speculate around 50% of the federal workforce will retire in the next few years, although it likely will be fewer for economic reasons.  Still many will be retiring.  Add in the workers from the public sector, and you have a large retirement party coming.  That is a lot of drinkers!

In the next few years, many of these people could use a drink at the pub.  See a need, fill a need – beer glass.

Many elderly are shut in and this might be a great way to give them a bit of their life back.  Not only would you be providing a valuable service, you get to have a pint on the job!

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1. Won’t You Be My Drinking Buddy Neighbor?

If you’re heading to a Chuck E Cheese’s in Killeen, Texas, you might want to reconsider; the one thing that could help you survive a night at this place is not for sale.  Mothers Against Drunk Driving and local patrons successfully stopped the local Chuck E Cheese’s from acquiring a liquor license to sell beer.   The “concerned citizens” claimed selling beer would ruin the restaurant for children.  Chuck E Cheese’s sells beer at more than 75% of their other locations; however, somehow this location in Texas would be harmed with a license.

The complaint by purists goes like this:  beer is adult entertainment and has no place in a children’s restaurant.  Pam Smith, of Harker Heights, started a petition to prevent the license to sell beer.  Her argument was that alcohol should not be sold in a place “where a kid can be a kid”.  These people do not want families around alcohol, because they feel alcohol should not be consumed around children.  Keeping families out of establishments that sell alcohol discourages community, and actually encourages over-indulgence and the problems associated with drunkenness.

No Strollers Please

The blog-o-sphere lit up this week about a bar in New York that is banning strollers in what was normally considered a family-friendly neighborhood.  Mothers would gather together for a social hour at the Union Hall Bar, but the owners now say the mothers are no longer welcome.  They even posted a sign stating, “NO STROLLERS PLEASE”.  Drinking patrons complained that crying babies were disturbing in a noisy bar, so the management evicted the moms.

Other bars in the neighborhood stepped up, like the Tea Lounge, to accommodate families.  The Tea Lounge even offers sing-a-longs in the day for children.  The bar is packed with local families, while the other bar caters to the drinking crowd.

There are kid friendly places, you just have to look around. Places with outdoor patios are good choices.

Even in my local neighborhood, which is predominately families with young children, the local tavern refuses to add children’s menu items.  The tavern would rather shun their closest customers than cater to the families.  Since the local watering hole is so unfriendly to families, many in the neighborhood resort to holding their own gathering at local parks and homes.

Why are alcohol and families separated?

Now that smoking bans are passed into law around the country, more and more families are showing up at the neighborhood pubs.  For some, bar enthusiasts and alcohol protesters alike, this is an unwelcome change.  The question has to be asked: why are the two, alcohol and families, separated in the United States?  Pubs historically have been community centers, places for the whole family to gather and meet with other families.  Before prohibition and the beer barons, pubs were family entertainment.

If the concern for children were real, you would want to encourage behavior that promoted a more responsible and family friendly attitude towards alcohol.  Bringing families back into taverns would make the gatherings social affairs.  It would also discourage binge drinking.  Unfortunately, bars in America place the emphasis on drinking, not socializing.

Are they reducing DUIs or attacking alcohol?

With all the emphasis on reducing drunk driving and reducing binge drinking, you would think that MADD or other anti-alcohol organizations would encourage neighborhood pubs to be family friendly.  If you have a neighborhood bar that encourages your whole family to attend, you are not likely to drive or over indulge.

Unfortunately these organizations encourage the demonization of drinkers, and promote abstinence over personal responsibility.  Even MADD’s founder, Candy Lightner, stated “It has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I ever wanted or envisioned,” she says. “I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”

Bars are to blame too

The real reason families are unwelcome is bars want to sell as much alcohol as possible.  Most responsible adults will not get intoxicated around their family, but when they are away from their children they tend to “cut loose”.  Patrons would buy fewer drinks if the establishment were for families.  Bars without families encourage binge drinking, and thus higher tabs.  Bar owners want drunks for patrons, not families.

Ironically neo-prohibitionist groups are inadvertently supporting binge drinking.  By keeping families out of taverns, only drunks are left to keep the bars in business.

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When people learn you make your own beer or wine, their first thought is “How much do you drink?”  This question is usually couched inside a condescending voice saying “You must be an alcoholic!”  When they hear my answer, “a couple of beers a week” their reaction is usually shock.  Where does all the alcohol I make go?  In my case, it goes to my 100 plus drinking buddies.

The social neighborhood

My neighborhood, Bradburn Village, is unusual in that it is very social.  It is a new urbanist neighborhood, where the design encourages interaction between neighbors.  The design includes front porches, recessed sidewalks, several parks, and nearby businesses to increase walkability.   These features also encourage the neighborhood to be much more social.

A neighborhood like this is perfect for the homebrewer.  An average homebrew batch is usually 5 to 6 gallons, which makes about 40-48 pints of beer.  Averaging one beer a night usually means that a batch will last more than a month.  Maybe less than a month if there are two drinkers in the house.  A 5 gallon keg of my beer might not last the full length of one park party.

At first a bunch of thirsty freeloaders might sound like a bad thing.  It really isn’t.  I am not interested in hoarding my beer.  Homebrewing is a hobby that I get to share with my friends.  It does mean that I get to drink less, but it also means I get to meet more people.  We usually come out for park parties every Friday night during the summer months.  This allows the neighborhood to come out and meet each other while the kids run around and play.  Everyone gets to let loose a little after a long week, and everyone is close enough to walk back home.  No one has to drive after a few beers.

What’s in it for me the homebrewer?

But why is this great for a homebrewer?  I like many different styles but without my neighborhood, I couldn’t possibly try making every one.  Since I go through several kegs of beer a month, I get experience making many different types of beer.  I can get a feel for which recipes are worth making, which ones are easy or difficult, and which recipes I like.

I usually make the beer right outside my front porch.  It encourages people to stop by and see how the beer is made.  Since the neighborhood is still in development, I’m sure it attracts the interest of prospective homebuyers – for better or worse!

Heading to another park party with kegs

At each neighborhood party I also get honest immediate feedback on my beer – sometimes too honest.  For example one lady approached me at our local Oktoberfest; we throw a final party to end the summer each September.  She informed me that she did not like the Tripel (a Belgium style beer), because she liked beer with flavor not alcohol.  When I asked her what beers she preferred, she replied “Coors”.  You can’t please everyone.

Even without the feedback, I can tell how popular a beer is just by how fast the keg is drained dry.  I have even encouraged several other people in the neighborhood to start homebrewing.  This means I get to try even more different beers, and it creates a local homebrewing community.  That is really what the beer is about, community.

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1. The family friendly bar
2. Making Oktoberfest a local party
3. Won’t You Be My Drinking Buddy Neighbor?

You want to head out and have a beer (or two—three) with your buddies, but there’s a problem: you live in the suburbs, so here comes the rounds of “Who’s going to drive?”.  Standard suburban design, with housing separated from retail and office uses, forces people to drive for their every need, no matter how small.  One glass of wine in a nice establishment involves a minimum 10 minute car ride in most of suburbia, and any more to drink requires the presence of a designated driver. But things are changing, a neighborhood planning movement called new urbanism is creating communities all across the U.S. with design features that reduce the risk of drunk driving, so you can live in the suburbs and drink your beer too!

Heading to a park party with kegs

Promoting Community

30 to 40 adults stand talking in a small neighborhood park, their conversation knots are overlaid by the delighted shouts of almost as many kids carousing like dog packs in the warm summer’s twilight.  They are all neighbors. Every Friday night, residents of the new urbanist community  Bradburn Village in Westminster, Colorado gather for their weekly park party.  Adults socialize over beer and wine while the kids play together.   Bradburn is designed to encourage social interaction among neighbors, and judging by the packed park parties and the incredible number of social events here, it works.

Every home in Bradburn includes a large front porch—not just a token 2 foot concrete stoop.  Garages are all in the back, and homes here also have very small setbacks (the distance between the house and the sidewalk, or front yard), meaning the porches sit right above the sidewalks.  This means people sitting on their front porches easily see neighbors walking by, and they stop to talk, creating a community bond that is so elusive in most traditional suburban neighborhoods.

Porch party in Bradburn

Other community features that encourage social interaction among neighbors include  public spaces such as the many pocket parks—every home in the development is a 5 minute walk from one of these green spaces—wide sidewalks, and an interconnected street grid (no cul-de-sacs) that makes the community very pedestrian friendly.   As a result of these design features, Bradburn’s residents all know each other, and many have become close, meaning if you want to socialize with your friends over a few drinks,  you just wander on down to the park or walk 5 minutes to your buddy’s home.

Walking Distance to Bars and Restaurants

Because of zoning laws in the suburbs of America, it’s actually illegal to build residences too close to bars and restaurants.  Zoning laws in most suburban areas dictate single use for different portions of land: residences here, offices here, and retail here, with buffers (usually huge, ugly walls) between.  The most beloved places in America however, don’t follow this pattern, they mix uses close together, so that it’s possible to walk to many different things directly from home.  Most of these places were developed before the car dominated the lives of Americans—San Francisco, New York, Georgetown, Charlotte.  New urbanism (which is actually just old urbanism applied to single use zoned areas) revives the idea of mixed uses in the same neighborhood, something that is currently pretty rare outside urban areas.

Shops in Bradburn

Residents of Bradburn Village for example, are a 5-10 minute walk from 3 different bars and over 15 restaurants, with more to come as their downtown area is developed.  New urbanist communities mix retail, office, and residences all in the same development, so if you want to get a beer or glass of wine out, you don’t have to drive.

Access to Public Transit

The voters in the city of Denver, Colorado approved a sales tax increase in 2004 to support the construction of more than 100 miles of commuter train to connect the metro area and the nearby communities of Boulder, Louisville, and Longmont.  Communities are springing up all along future proposed stops for this rail line, providing residents of these areas an opportunity to live in close walking distance to exceptional mass transit.  These developments, often referred to as Transit Oriented Developments (TOD) are also popping up in different places across the nation such as Salt Lake City, Utah.  The new urbanist community of Daybreak will have two light rail stops as part of a recently approved extension of a light rail system.

These different neighborhood design features have one goal in common: to reduce the need for driving.  Residents of these communities no longer need to spend significant amounts of time bargaining with their buddies on whose turn it is to be designated driver for the evening—everyone can join in the libations without fear, and if that isn’t progress, what is?

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Related Posts

1. Making Oktoberfest a local party
2. My 100 plus drinking buddies
3. The ultimate system for your beer cave