“Ask and you shall receive,” my dad used to say. I have to laugh now thinking about that phrase and what a great sense of humor my father had. My dad worked for the government most of his adult life in one capacity or another. Because of his keen intellect and grasp of irony, working in a large bureaucracy afforded him many opportunities to see the ridiculousness in a lot of situations. A recent interpretation of ORS 471.403 by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission comes into play now for homebrewers whose hands have been tied simply because a brewery asked a simple question that should have returned a simple (and logical) answer. Ask and you shall receive-but probably not what you wanted or were anticipating.
The question was simple enough. Deschutes Brewery asked if homebrewers could bring their beers to an event at their brewery. (Source: Keep handcrafter beer and wine at home, Oregon state officials say by Jessical Van Berkel, The Oregonian) Now, being a restaurant owner, I understand why they asked the question-the LAST thing any bar, restaurant, or brewery wants to do is get on the wrong side of any liquor regulatory agency. When we ask questions of these agencies, it’s because we are all acutely aware of the need to follow the letter of the law or risk our license and our livelihood. We do, however, expect a level of intelligence in interpretation of the intent of the laws in place. Unfortunately for the agents interpreting these laws and the people affected by them, the laws in place are not always intelligent. Many laws were put into place so long ago that their intent no longer represents the intent of the state. For homebrewers and winemakers in the state of Oregon, this was the case. The answer they got was that no, they couldn’t by law take their craft creations anywhere outside of their own homes. This puts a terrible crimp on many summer competitions where homebrewing and winemaking afficionados go show off their abilities. In Portland particularly, a city known worldwide as the birthplace of many world-class brews, that’s a BIG deal. The law, obviously, needs to be changed. But we all know that getting a law changed is easier said than done.
We have similarly silly liquor laws here in Washington, but I won’t bore you with the details here. Let it suffice to say that all states have silly laws in place that the legislature, with budget shortages and problems spilling out of their ears, aren’t about to deal with anytime soon. However, the Oregon legislature should deal with this one, as their very lucrative beer and wine industry was built by the very people whose hands they have now bound. I can hear my father laughing his ass off at this from wherever he is up in the great beyond.
Restaurant recycling is still, unfortunately, something most restaurants don’t bother to do. The reasons are many. Most waste companies don’t have mechanisms in place for business recycling. It’s messy. It stinks up the vehicle you use for recycling. You have to create an area inside or outside of your restaurant to store the materials intended for recycling. But still, recycling is easier and more common than composting.
Composting our restaurant waste is something we’ve been talking about for awhile now, and something we want to implement this spring/summer. Help from the local waste company would be wonderful, but I don’t think we’re there yet. Here’s an article in the Orange County Register that details a restaurant composting pilot program that’s happening there. Wouldn’t it be great if we could get something similar started here?
Alright, everyone. Here is another case of the big guys with deep pockets picking on a small indy business for a ridiculous reason. Rock Art Brewery has a beer called the Vermonster. Doesn’t sound to me like anything that will be easily confused with Monster energy drinks, unless someone is mentally-challenged. Maybe the leadership at Monster is.
Boycott Monster, and tell them exactly what you think of them with the only thing they understand…the almighty dollar.
So, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is upset with the American Veterinary Medical Association. Why? Because they are holding their annual convention in Seattle this year, and they’ve asked the world famous Pike Place fish throwers to do a demo for the vets’ entertainment.
Can't we all just get along???
Now, I used to be a vegetarian. My cholesterol, however, couldn’t take it. My body is carnivorous, and it does better when I feed it high quality animal protein, like oh, say, salmon, for example. It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about animals or feel that animals should be abused. However, THESE FISH ARE DEAD. These fish throwers have been doing this for I don’t know how long, but a long, long time. They’re a major Seattle tourist attraction, they are not killing them just to throw them around and then throw them away, so where’s the harm? Does PETA really not have any place better to put their efforts?
Is it wrong of me to find this humorous? I sympathize with PETA’s mission to protect all animals, but this is, well, a little silly to me. Click on the link below and view the video for yourself and see if my sense of humor is becoming a bit bizarre.
Well, folks, the price of beer in the keg has gone up significantly ($8.00 a keg on microbeers just last week). I’m sorry to say we had to raise our prices on tap beer .20 a pint to help cover the price increases. Bottle prices were affected much less, so most of those prices remain the same on our menu, although we raised our domestic non-micro bottle prices to help to cover the increases. I know you’re all feeling these hits in groceries and consumables just as we are, and we’ll do our best to keep our side of the equation down as much as possible.
On a related note, I went to high school in a very small town in Illinois, and some of my best memories from there are the beautiful fields of corn shimmering in the wind and sunlight. Now, suddenly, I’m feeling some hostility toward corn. Who would have ever thought? (If the end of this post seems random, read our blog article on ethanol in The Politics of Food category and this will all make sense.)
Like the prices you’re finding at the grocery store lately? I know I’m not liking the prices I’m getting from my food suppliers. I hear a constant string of “why’s” from my salesperson that have more to do with the war in Iraq, gas prices, ethanol, and politics than they have to do with crop freezes and the basic rules of supply and demand.
I never knew much about ethanol until recently. Ethanol, in the US, is made primarily from corn–the same corn that is normally used to feed people and the animals that feed people. How does this affect the price of food? Well, one reason is that corn that would normally be feeding livestock is being used for the production of ethanol. This raises the price of feed corn, and thus, the prices we are charged at the grocery store. What it also means is that more farmers are growing corn on land that used to grow barley and wheat, which raises the price of these commodities as well because there is less supply but the demand for these crops remains the same. (I was watching CNN one morning this week and saw the president of Barilla (the pasta giant) explaining how ethanol has caused the price of pasta to rise. And the CNN newscaster was horrified to learn that this also affected beer (due to barley price increases).
ADM, the largest supplier of ethanol in the US, receives more government subsidies than most of us can comprehend, and after learning that ethanol is a fairly inefficient form of energy to produce, I am surprised that my senators and congressional representatives are not using these funds to support the development of a more efficient form of alternative energy.
Don’t get me wrong here…I’m a huge believer in the green movement. At the restaurant, we recycle everything we possibly can…I don’t want to add anymore to landfills than we absolutely have to. It’s just that what I’ve read and heard so far on ethanol leads me to believe that it may not be the end-all-be-all that it’s being portrayed to be.
To read a thought-provoking article on this complicated subject, read Jeff Goodell’s article in Rolling Stone . . .
