Diners drinking raki, a traditional Turkish alcoholic drink flavored with anise, at a restaurant in Istanbul.
Photo: Jodi Hilton for NPR

Listen to the Story on Morning Edition

Post by Peter Kenyon, The Salt at NPR Food (6/7/13)

The ongoing anti-government protests in Turkey are about a lot of things — including a recent law to restrict the advertising and sale of alcohol. The limits aren’t any more onerous than those in some other Western countries, but secular Turks see them as another step in a push by the ruling party to impose conservative social values on the population

Turkey has long tolerated and, in some quarters, embraced the Bacchanalian fruit of grape and grain. The modern republic’s revered founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, set a strong example — so strong that when he died in 1938 of cirrhosis of the liver, many Turks assumed it was from what one biographer discreetly termed “his strenuous lifestyle.”

It’s a crime in Turkey to insult Ataturk, so eyebrows were raised when the country’s new dominant leader, conservative Muslim Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, appeared to intentionally slight both Ataturk and his successor Ismet Inonu, though he didn’t name them while defending the new alcohol restrictions in a speech to ruling AK Party members.

“How come a law that was made by two drunks,” thundered Erdogan, “has been recognized while one that follows the values of faith is unacceptable and must be rejected?”

Some people were shocked by Erdogan’s language, but even Turkey’s tipplers have to admit that he has a point. The restrictions in this law – no television advertising, no alcohol sales within about 100 yards of a school or place of worship – are the kind of limits already in place in some Western democracies. Furthermore, establishments with tourism licenses are exempt from the law’s ban on sales after 10 p.m.

But that exemption doesn’t apply to the numerous small convenience stores, called “tekels,” that dot Turkish streets. In Beyoglu, arguably Istanbul’s most Westernized district, one tekel owner would give only his first name, Ramazan. He says the new rules are an economic nightmare for him, unless his customers radically adjust their schedules.

“We sell most of our alcohol after 10,” he says, adding “What do they expect, people to start drinking at 5 so they can be done by 10? Most shops like this will wind up closing, I think.”

Around the corner at the Urban Cafe, young Turks and visitors are enjoying their libation of choice in a setting that might be found in any Western city: premium spirits behind the bar, a lounge cover of Nirvana on the sound system, and cigarette smokers mingling out on the sidewalk, happy for the warm spring night.

Manager Cem Gul — with a shaved head, Dead Kennedys T-shirt and earring — says these seemingly modest restrictions are alarming secular Turks, because they’re just the latest move by the AK Party to slowly reshape the country into a more conservative Muslim state. And the problem is, he’s not sure anyone can do much to stop it.

“Of course everyone’s talking about this interference in their personal lives. But there’s too much going on,” Gul says. “A bomb goes off here and then there’s an alcohol law. People don’t have time to respond. What I’m really worried about is if this party wins another election, there’d be no one who can stop them.”

He pauses and then shrugs philosophically, “Me for example, I’m an atheist. They can ban me from drinking, but they can’t make me pray.”

Gul’s smile suggests that while he respects those who follow the straight and narrow, he’s more of a follower of what the late W.C. Fields is reputed to have said: “Everyone has to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Magnolia Pub & Brewery on Haight Street

Dave McLean in the Magnolia Brewery basement

Quail Scotch eggs

Bay Area Bites: Tell us about the new Magnolia Dogpatch brewery.

McLean: The whole move to go over there was basically driven by us not having enough beer production capacity here. We were already maxed out with continually growing the business and have a nice wholesale draft business. We were looking at the whole place craft beer has gotten to and it makes sense to grow in a more robust way.

We built Magnolia Brewery 15 years ago and it’s really a finite space—we can’t add another tank or vessel downstairs. We created a way to grow our business as well as grow our packaging and bottling. To give the amount of energy and attention needed to do this, I have broken things up into phase one and phase two.

We will open in the Dogpatch in very late June or early July. There are a lot of moving parts because we are also building a full service restaurant over there. With expanding, there’s always the fear of losing the thing you do well that makes you special. We want to focus on a few initial steps that are logical and get the brewery up and running and get the beer to taste the way we want it, which is no small task. For us, bigger and better things means doing packaged beer outside of the Bay Area and bigger distribution.

Magnolia’s Prather Ranch cheeseburger

Bay Area Bites: How did you decide to work with the Namu Gaji folks, who will do the restaurant portion of the brewery?

McLean: I think that honestly evolved organically out of mutual admiration. I’ve long been a huge fan of what they do since the Namu in Balboa opened. I love going there. They have amazing sake and I drink the beer we make there. They’ve been semi-regulars to Magnolia and Alembic, too.

Bay Area Bites: How will the Dogpatch brewery be similar and different to your other places?

Magnolia’s kegs

In terms of the restaurant itself, the extended Magnolia family has grown and evolved. The everyday customer is most familiar with the relationships we have: Prather Ranch and Arnold Sutton. That’s what you taste when you eat and drink here. I think people understand who our extended family is.

There’s also the family of craftsman and artisans who have been creating with us. At the new place that will make for a similar look and feel. If it’s similar, it’s because we have some of the same people and we can almost finish each others sentences. The flip side of that is it’s an industrial space in a very different neighborhood across town. We’re very sensitive to not produce the “Haight Alembic Magnolia experience.” The only truly identical thread is the beer.

Bay Area Bites: What’s it like working with the City on the Dogpatch build out?

McLean: Everyone likes to complain about the city and I feel like I could. The most enthusiastic people we’ve seen are the Dogpatch residents and businesses. The neighborhood association was very welcoming and there’s already a sense of community there. It’s great to feel welcome and it really wasn’t an easy process to go through. Small artisan manufacturing is the kind of business the city wants to cultivate on the 3rd Street corridor. Some people in planning and the Mayor’s office of economic development are focused on the health of the neighborhood and that was kind of great. The planning and building department process can be convoluted and it definitely added a lot of time and cost to the project. No one can just make that go away.

Bay Area Bites: What beer are you brewing now that is more experimental? Where do your ideas come from?

McLean: I’m currently working on a potential family of beers from the same starting point using wooden barrels. The beer is blended with an unaged version of itself. Since I’ve got elements of time and space, I can stack in the new space and let the beers sit and do their thing.

We work with a farmer in England. Each year we started out trying one ton of malt which sounds like a lot but it got us through four or five batches of beer. This year since we had the space we can get malt and have it at Dogpatch and then bring it over here and use as needed. We have room to play around with it.

Inspiration comes from everywhere. There’s a general receptivity about ideas that strike you at time–in conversations with colleagues. Collaboration is the nature of our industry. We talk a lot online and in person. That fosters an environment. An idea can come from any time if you’re being open to it. Research is not the norm anymore, but it was at the beginning of my career.

Magnolia Lunch scene

Bay Area Bites: Where do you think we are with craft beer production and appreciation in the Bay Area and nationally?

McLean: In both cases it’s at an all time high. I don’t know if my peers 15-20 years ago were setting out to change the American beer industry. The American beer culture has changed. The share of the market that is craft beer is higher than people ever thought possible.

Just like the food movement, people are showing that they prefer to identify with things made in their back yard by people they know. Those same hallmarks are showing up in the craft beer world. Not that long ago that you had to go to a craft beer pub but now you can’t open a restaurant without a decent craft beer component. I would expect it for the Bay Area because this is the cradle of the craft beer movement. One could argue that only recently the Bay Area is realizing its potential for the craft beer community.

The rest of the country is definitely catching up. There are more interesting statistics –a vast majority of Americans live within ten miles of a craft brewery. That was a surprise.

Bay Area Bites: Tell us about your career and goals.

McLean: The nature of this craft beer movement at magnolia is that what’s possible continues to expand and that bucket gets bigger. It allows for this constant assessment and reformulation of vision.

In the beginning I was a 26 year-old home brewer. At that point the goal was surviving and not going out of business. The industry grew and we started making more beer. I got involved in events and had a history with people, which is important to add that to my vision.

This next growth spurt is a new level of visioning of what to do with the beer. I don’t want to characterize things as doing it by the seat of our pants because there is strategic thinking involved. Yet some of the charm of what makes it fun to come to work is figuring out, “Where are we going with this?”

It’s not all been a super easy or rosy path to get here and I have made dumb mistakes. Thinking as a brewer that it is easy to run a restaurant was almost catastrophic mistake Number One. I hired friends, and we spent a lot of time nearly failing. Now I’d like to pivot off the trial and error period that’s lasted ten to fifteen years and make something that’s built to last.

Now that I’m in my forties, I think about the fact that there are breweries that outlive their founders. So it’s coming up with a succession plan. We’re going to grow the business and grow the brand. I’d like it to be such a great place to work that we keep folks for a long time. There’s a natural maturation when you manage and operate something that leaves a good mark. Being a bit bigger gives you more freedom and flexibility to create a better work place that’s more sustainable in all ways, not just in ingredient sourcing. I try to live up to that.

Bay Area Bites: What are your favorite local joints for beer and food?

McLean: We have such a community of people approaching their craft in the same way. When you go out, it’s “who do you want to check in on and see what they’re up to?” I subconsciously landed myself at the nexus of cocktails, craft beer and food.

I love the Ferry Building. My wife and I love Nopa and our whole family loves the quesadilla roja con chicharon at Nopalito. I admire and look to Nopa and Nopalito to see how they do it – the folks there are kindred spirits.

Similarly, running into Bi-Rite Market’s Sam Mogannam at events always feels like I’m with a long lost cousin or brother.

Zuni is a familiar comfort spot. At the off peak times, it’s better and feels like an awesome San Francisco thing. That inspires me. I love that you can be hungry at three in the afternoon and find a place that’s doing killer drinks and food.

Ryan Farr’s burger at his 4505 Meats stand is always amazing. It’s an addiction.

Related Information:

Magnolia Gastropub and Brewery
Address: Map
1398 Haight St.
San Francisco CA 94117
(415) 864-7468
Facebook: Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery
Twitter: @magnoliapub

The Alembic
Address: Map
1725 Haight St.
San Francisco CA 94117
(415) 666-0822
Facebook: The Alembic
Twitter: @alembicbar

Home brewing will become legal in all 50 U.S. states, if Alabama’s governor signs a recently passed bill. In March, Mississippi approved a bill that will take effect this summer. Photo: iStockphoto.com

Post by Bill Chappell, The Two-Way at NPR (5/8/13)

The Alabama Legislature has approved a bill making it legal to brew beer at home, a practice that had been forbidden in the state. If Gov. Robert Bentley signs the bill, as is expected, home brewing will soon be legal in all 50 states.

Alabama lawmakers voted on the bill to legalize home brewing months after it was first introduced. And while it met with earlier debate and resistance, the arrival of the legislation — House Bill 9 — for a vote Tuesday night seems to have come to its supporters as a pleasant surprise.

Right To Brew, an advocacy group in Alabama, said that “after all hope seemed long lost, they brought up HB9 unexpectedly, out of the blue, and passed it 18 – 7 – 1 tonight, without a single word of debate. The Alabama Homebrew Bill has passed the Legislature!!!!”

Alabama had been in danger of becoming the only U.S. state in which it was illegal to brew beer at home. As we reported in March, Mississippi recently approved a home-brewing bill; Utah and Oklahoma enacted similar laws in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

If enacted, the new law would mean that Alabamans who make their own beer “will no longer have the fear of arrest hanging over their heads for simply participating in a hobby that is enjoyed by residents of 48 other states,” a representative of Right to Brew said in an email.

Home brewing has been growing in popularity along with the public’s surge in interest in craft brewing. But the hobby had long been either forbidden or in a legal gray area. It wasn’t until 1978 that it became legal under federal law.

The Alabama bill limits how much beer can be produced, and it forbids brewers to sell their beer. It also discourages stockpiling.

“The bill allows 15 gallons to be produced every three months,” says Republican Rep. Mac McCutcheon, who introduced the bill, “and there shall be no more than an aggregate amount 15 gallons of beer, mead, cider and wine stored in the home.”

Brewers must also keep their beers under the 14 percent alcohol by volume mark.

The Alabama legislation’s success was welcomed by the American Homebrewers Association, which has advised state groups of brewers.

“After five years of working with Alabama home brewers to legalize the hobby of home brewing in the state,” says AHA Director Gary Glass, “it is gratifying to see the Alabama Legislature finally pass a home-brew bill.”

Despite being passed by the state Legislature after Mississippi’s bill was approved, Alabama’s home-brewing bill may take effect first — the Mississippi legislation is scheduled to take effect this July.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Many Bay Area home brewers are trying their hands at growing their own hops.

On a sunny day last week, Sam Gilbert dug a hole in the backyard of BrewLab SF‘s headquarters, into which he placed a hops rhizome.

Over the next several months, the rhizome, which looks like a stick with roots poking out of it, will grow vines that will produce a vital component of Gilbert’s home-brewed beer.

“Every brewer to some extent dreams of making a beer with their own hops,” Gilbert says.

Gilbert, co-founder of the home brewers’ collective, joins other dedicated home brewers throughout the Bay Area who have taken their craft to another level by growing their own hops. As home brewing soars in popularity, so does the allure of raising hops, a climbing vine that is inexpensive and easy to grow.

Sam Gilbert holds a Centennial hops rhizome to be planted in his backyard in San Francisco’s southern Mission District. His home serves as the headquarters for BrewLab SF.

“It comes down to passion,” says Ian Dunbar-Hall, who is part of a home brewing group called Euphemia Ales in San Francisco. “One way to extend that passion is to grow your own ingredients. While we don’t have the ability to necessarily grow our grain, we can grow our own hops.”

San Francisco Brewcraft and Oak Barrel Winecraft in Berkeley report normal sales of rhizomes this year, while MoreBeer in Concord has seen companywide rhizome pre-sales increase about 25 percent compared to last year, says store manager Dave Wonder.

“This has been our biggest year by far,” Wonder says.

More than a few members of the Bay Area Mashers home brew club are finally trying their hand at growing hops this year, says president Justin Unverricht.

“I have seen a large increase in people wanting to grow their own hops,” he says. “More people are aware of how to do it and there is now a fairly large wealth of information for people who are interested. If you have the space, it’s a fun distraction.”

Growing your own hops ensures peak freshness compared to the hops home brewers can buy commercially, Gilbert says.

“Everyone kind of prizes having the freshest hops possible in their beer,” Gilbert says. “There is no better way to control that than for it to be your own hops.”

Sam Gilbert plants a Centennial hops rhizome between cilantro and rosemary plants, which will also be used in home-brewed beer.

Chad Gallagher of Berkeley began growing hops because he wanted to be involved in another aspect of the beer-making process. He started four years ago at a time when hops were very expensive because of a hops shortage.

Today, you can find hops rhizomes at home brew stores in the spring for $4-$5, but with hops being a hot commodity, growing your own ensures a steady supply. It can also be difficult to buy fresh hops to make a wet hops beer.

“There are some varieties that are in such demand that many home brew shops and hop distributors ration them out to a few ounces to home brewers at a time,” Unverricht says. “Large breweries often have direct deals with the hop farmers themselves to secure access to certain hops, but competition is pretty fierce.”

Hops rhizomes produce vines that can reach 20 to 30 feet with plenty of sunlight and water. It takes about three years for a hops plant to fully mature and develop its root system. Gallagher, who grows four hops varieties, has been impressed with how quickly they can grow under the right conditions.

“On a hot day,” he says, “they’ll grow two to three inches.”

But hops need regular maintenance and must be cut down to the ground after each harvest, says James Davids, an enologist with San Francisco Brewcraft.

“It’s a pretty crazy plant,” Davids says. “After a year or two, it could take over the entire side of your house.”

The home brewing supply store sells 10 different hops varieties, but not all grow well in some parts of the Bay Area with its varying microclimates.

“Cascade or Centennial tend to do well whether it’s foggy or sunny,” Davids says.

Gilbert is growing six or seven hops varieties, including Cascade, Centennial, Nugget, Goldings and Fuggles. They are a mix of rhizomes and mature plants donated by a BrewLab brewer, all of which he hopes will produce enough hops to brew roughly 15 to 20 gallons of beer.

Gilbert’s freshly-planted rhizomes join mature hops plants donated by a BrewLab brewer.

Like many home brewers who grow their own hops, he’ll make a wet hops beer. Since hops have a very short shelf life once they are harvested, they are usually dried or pelletized. Gilbert will instead add the just-harvested hops to the boil kettle to impart a fresh, grassy flavor.

“It’s more seasonal than any other beer,” says Dunbar-Hall.

Dunbar-Hall grows 32 plants with eight hops varieties on his family’s property north of Napa, which he says would produce more beer than he and his two partners could ever drink. They’ll use some of the hops to make a wet hops double IPA, and will give the rest to other home brewers or possibly team up with a local brewery for a wet hops beer.

On his family’s 85-acre plot of land north of Napa, Dunbar-Hall grows hops on two 16-foot trellis systems.
Photo credit: Ian Dunbar-Hall

Keep an eye out for wet hops beers on tap at local brew pubs around the harvest season from August through late September, he says. Sierra Nevada also makes Northern and Southern Hemisphere Harvest Wet Hop Ales.

With home brewed wet hops beers, there can be a lot of guesswork because unlike commercially-available hops, which are lab-tested, it is harder to determine the bitterness of backyard hops.

“Personally, I’m excited about making a beer completely with my own hops so I think I’ll play that roulette and see what happens,” Gilbert says. “Hopefully I’ll get something that isn’t too bitter to drink or not bitter enough.”

A pregnant woman holds a glass of wine.
Photo: iStockphoto.com

According to a new study published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, there doesn’t seem to be any measurable risk.

The study found that drinking up to two alcoholic beverages per week during pregnancy is not linked to developmental problems in children. But even the study’s authors caution that abstaining from alcohol is still best for mothers-to-be.

The research was done at the University College London, using data collected as part of the Millennium Cohort Study. The researchers looked at about 10,000 children born in the U.K. between 2000 and 2001. When the children were 7 years old, they were given math, reading and spatial skills tests. And parents completed questionnaires about the children’s emotional and social development.

The researchers found that children born to women who consumed a little alcohol during pregnancy had higher test scores on some tests compared with children of nondrinkers. But the researchers conclude that most of these differences were too small to be statistically significant.

“While we have followed these children for the first seven years of their lives, further research is needed to detect whether any adverse effects of low levels of alcohol consumption in pregnancy emerge later in childhood,” professor Yvonne Kelly, of the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies (ICLS) at University College London, and co-author of the study, said in a statement released by the journal.

The Department of Health in the U.K. recommends that pregnant women avoid alcohol altogether. But if moms-to-be do choose to drink, the government’s advice is “to not have more than one to two units of alcohol once or twice a week, and not to get drunk,” according to this U.K. government site. Under the British government’s definition, a small 4-ounce glass of wine is about one-and-a-half units.

Experts on fetal alcohol syndrome in the U.S. aren’t so convinced by the new findings. “Failure to see an effect doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, or that drinking in pregnancy is safe,” says Dr. Robert Sokol, director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development at Wayne State University, in an email to The Salt. He explains that the ability to detect effects of low levels of alcohol exposure depends largely on what’s measured.

Another shortcoming of the study is that people tend to under-report alcohol consumption when they’re questioned about it, says Dr. David Garry of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University. And in this study, women weren’t asked to recall how much alcohol they drank until their child was 9 months old, so memories may not have been so clear. It’s “not a convincing study,” says Garry.

“If a woman has had some drinks in pregnancy, I would reassure her that the [child's] development is likely to be normal,” writes Garry in an email to The Salt. But overall, he says, drinking does pose a risk and should be avoided during pregnancy.

Robert Sokol agrees. “It’s still the case that it’s safest not to drink during pregnancy,” Sokol says.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

The process that turns this beer crystal clear also may impart trace amounts of arsenic. Photo: istockphoto.com

Post by Nancy Shute, The Salt at NPR Food (4/9/13)

Beer lovers might be alarmed to hear that beer can pick up small amounts of arsenic as it’s filtered to be sparkly clear.

But researchers in Germany reported Sunday that they’ve found arsenic in hundreds of samples of beer, some at levels more than twice that allowed in drinking water.

When we checked in with experts about arsenic and the filtering process, which is also widely used in the wine industry, they weren’t too surprised. That’s because the filtering agent in question, diatomaceous earth, is a mined natural product that contains iron and other metals.

“We already knew that,” says Roger Boulton, a professor in enology at the University of California, Davis. “The levels shouldn’t be alarming, because it’s the kind of thing you see in dust or air.”

One reason that chemists are now discovering arsenic in beer is that testing methods are much more precise than in decades past, Boulton says, detecting low levels of naturally occurring elements that have always been in food products.

Still, the prospect of arsenic in a frosty lager or a rich chardonnay does beg for further exploration.

It turns out that any beer or wine that’s clear has been filtered to strain out plant matter, yeast and anything else that would leave a drink looking unappealingly cloudy.

“It’s really there for aesthetics,” says Tom Shellhammer, a professor of fermentation science at Oregon State University. “People in general will make positive quality associations with clearer beverages.”

There are exceptions, he says, like a cloudy Hefeweizen beer. But the notion of a cloudy pinot grigio does lack appeal. “For many beer and wine producers,” he says, “clarity is a clear performance indicator.”

For centuries, the filter of choice for wine and beer has been diatomaceous earth. It’s a beige powder made up of the skeletons of diatoms, tiny algae that lived in oceans many moons ago. Because the diatom fossils have lots of minute holes, they do a great job of filtering liquids — from swimming pool water to pricey champagne.

Arsenic in beer hit the news this week when Mehmet Coelhan, a researcher at the Weihenstephan research center at the Technical University of Munich, reported at a meeting of the American Chemical Society that many of the nearly 360 beers tested in Germany had trace amounts of arsenic.

A few were found to have more than 25 parts per billion of arsenic. That’s twice the 10 parts per billion standard for drinking water in the United States.

Germany is proud of its Reinheitsgebot, a 16th-century purity law that demands that beer can be made of only water, hops and malt. Coelhan and his fellow chemists do a lot of work analyzing water and other ingredients for the German beer industry, so they know arsenic wasn’t in the water or malt.

But they did find it in the diatomaceous earth. “We analyzed kieselguhr,” Coelhan told a news conference at the ACS meeting in New Orleans on April 7, using the German word for diatomaceous earth. “We found high concentrations of extractable arsenic.”

But people don’t drink as much beer as they do water (or they shouldn’t), and there’s no U.S. or European standard for arsenic in foods. That has become an issue with arsenic in rice, which has been found in some products in the United States, including toddler formula and energy bars. So there’s no way of knowing if there’s enough arsenic in beer to pose a health risk.

The German researchers’ findings square with a much smaller 2008 study of Italian beers, which found similar levels in some brews, as well as cadmium and lead, which are also poisonous. A few other studies have found arsenic in wine.

The wine industry has been moving away from using diatomaceous earth for decades, says John Giannini, a lecturer and vintner for the University of California, Fresno — not because it contains arsenic, but because it contains silica, so breathing it “can do damage to your lungs,” he says. He has switched largely to cellulose-fiber filters to reduce the risk to students.

The downside, Giannini says, is that the cellulose can give the wine a bit of a papery taste. “What I’m doing is blending the two, to minimize the paper taste and minimize the use of DE.”

Other options for filtering wine and beer include polyethylene filters, centrifuges and cross-flow filtration, which doesn’t use a filter medium at all.

Washing diatomaceous earth before use reduced the amount of arsenic it released, Coelhan says, but that method hasn’t been tested commercially.

Indeed, scientists have some work to do to find out if diatomaceous earth really is causing problems with arsenic in beer and wine.

“The proper study would be to compare unfiltered beer to filtered beer, beer filtered using diatomaceous earth, beer filtered using perlite, beer filtered using cross-flow filtration,” says Charlie Bamforth, a professor of brewing science at the University of California, Davis. He’s skeptical that diatomaceous earth could be causing troubling levels of contamination.

Abandoning diatomaceous earth altogether won’t guarantee there’s no arsenic or other heavy metals in beverages, UC Davis wine expert and chemical engineer Boulton told The Salt. “The sense that if you didn’t use diatomaceous earth, there would be no heavy metals in beer at all is a little out of touch with nature.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Craft beers are offered for sale at Sam’s Wines and Spirits in Chicago. Craft beer has about a 6 percent market share in the U.S. beer market, which is dominated by Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Listen to the Story on All Things Considered

Post by NPR Staff, NPR Business (3/17/13)

America loves beer.

In the U.S., we drink $200 billion worth of the hops-brewed libation annually. What many Americans might not know is that most domestic beer, 90 percent in fact, is dominated by just two companies: Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors.

Innovators, however, are challenging that dominance in the form of craft beer breweries. Small “mom and pop”-style breweries — or regional breweries — now account for about 6 percent of domestic beer sales. That may seem like a small number, but it’s been growing every year since the early 1990s, while big brewer share is declining.

There are now more small breweries than there were before Prohibition, when beer was largely a regional business.

Why Craft Beer?

At Meridian Pint, a trendy D.C. bar and restaurant, you wouldn’t even be able to order a Budweiser, Coors or something else from the big two.

Sam Fritz, a cicerone, which is like a sommelier for beer, is the beer director for Meridian Pint.

“I try to have a nice mix of approachable craft beers, as well as exciting new stuff for people who have tried a lot of everyday beers,” Fritz says.

Meridian Pint offers brands such as DC Brau, Flying Dog and Oxbow. Fritz says he prides himself on this kind of handpicked selection, but there are some brands he won’t carry.

“I do not carry any beer that come under the Miller or Coors or Bud labels,” he says.

That’s just fine with his customers, like Landon Rordam, who says he’s not looking for those big names but instead tries to find “what haven’t I tried before.”

Big Beer Vs. Craft Beer

Consolidation of the big brewers also worries the Justice Department, which recently blocked an attempt by Anheuser-Busch InBev to buy the 50 percent of Grupo Modelo it does not already own. The Mexican beer maker, the world’s third-largest, owns Corona, Negra Modelo and other brands.

Journalist Elizabeth Flock, who reported on the blocked merger and the beer market for U.S. News and World Report, says the Justice Department said that AB-InBev, by buying Grupo Modelo, would effectively eliminate its competition.

The problem for craft brewers, Flock tells Jacki Lyden, host of weekends on All Things Considered, is that those sorts of mergers make the fight against big beer companies even more difficult.

“Everyone wants to be on grocery store shelves at eye level,” Flock says. “Craft brewers say big beer is increasingly pushing them out of those prime spots.”

There’s also the issue, Flock says, of what the Brewer’s Association calls “crafty” beers — beers owned by big beer companies disguised as small craft beer. A common example is Blue Moon, a Belgian-style beer.

“A lot of people think that [Blue Moon] is a craft beer, but is in fact owned by MillerCoors,” she says.

Craft brewers argue, Flock says, that this limits consumer choice. For instance, if a bar stocks the top brands from a big brewer along with these “crafty” beers, consumers are essentially only buying from a single company.

Not everyone agrees. Benj Steinman, an editor for Beer Marketer’s Insights, a trade publication, says these so-called “crafty beers” might be helping the craft beer market.

“What Anheuser-Busch and Coors have done through Shock Top and Blue Moon is opened up a greater number of consumers to the universe of craft beers and their innovation, flavor and variety,” says Steinman, a 30-year veteran of the beer business. “They’re sort of gateway beers.”

In other words, they are more accessible craft beers that might get you started wanting to taste other, more complex beers with notes of dark cherry or sassafras molasses.

Julia Herz, the craft beer program director for the Brewer’s Association, says big beer should print its names on the bottles.

“What we’ve called for is a transparency of parent company ownership, and to put that on the beer label so the beer-lover has a chance to know who’s behind those brands,” she says.

Herz says branding matters to many beer drinkers, especially those who care about the brands they consume and who owns those companies.

“A lot of millennials are associating themselves with what they consume, and what they hold in their hand,” she says.

The Question Of Cost

Craft beers are, without question, more expensive, which might make it harder for them to compete against the bigger brands.

“This is a very middle-class beverage; [a] working class beverage,” says Chris Thorne, a spokesman for the Beer Institute, the largest beer industry trade group. “So what a lot of people are looking for is what’s affordable.”

Thorne says fierce competition is nothing new in the beer business: It’s been that way since the days of Fred Miller, Freddy Heineken, Adolph Coors and August Busch.

“These are names that are rooted in our heritage, in the beer-drinking culture in the U.S., and they never got a break,” Thorne says. “They competed with each other.”

Back at Meridian Pint, beer director Fritz shows off his 24 beer taps, all pouring high-end craft brews. He really doesn’t want to lose that market share to beers pretending to be microbrews.

“It certainly is more expensive, but for what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to offer the highest-quality products that we can,” he says, “and that means buying from producers that use good ingredients and are innovative producers.”

In the bar, customer Rordam says even if he’s sampled some upscale micro brews at $6, $7 or $8 a pint, those prices might eventually force him to go back down the ladder.

“After I’ve had like three or four microbrews, I’ll think ‘wow that was $25 [or] $30, I should probably get a Bud Light now because this is getting ridiculous,’” he says.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Related Post from NPR’s Planet Money:
Beer Map: Two Giant Brewers, 210 Brands

North Carolina farmers Buddy Hoffner (left) and son Chris have been growing barley for Riverbend Malt House in Asheville since 2010. Riverbend then processes the grain into malt for use by local breweries Photo: Salisbury Post/Karissa Minn

Post by April Fehling, The Salt at NPR Food (3/5/13)

Brent Manning is a maltster on a mission. The co-founder of Riverbend Malt House in Asheville, N.C., wants people to be able to taste local grains in North Carolina’s beers, just as vino aficionados can identify the provenance of fine wines.

“In the wine industry … they will tell you that the No. 1 Syrah grape grows on this hillside over here because it’s a bit rockier,” Manning explains. “It’s that very same connection to the soil and the underlying geology that creates these nuances in flavors.”

And a critical element in creating beer with truly local flavor, Manning contends, is malt made from local grains.

Asheville’s beer lovers are “farm-to-table, local, local, local-focused,” Manning says. But when he and business partner Brian Simpson opened Riverbend in 2010, “it was almost comical that with so much of this local beer, the only thing local [in the beer] was the water.”

Valley Malt, in Hadley, Mass., works with 25 farmers growing six different types of grain in the Northeast. Photo: Courtesy of Valley Malt

Malt is an essential element in beer, along with water, hops and yeast. But while most beer drinkers know that malt comes from grain, many have no idea how it’s made.

That’s where the maltster — yes, that’s the name for people who malt — comes in: between the farmer, who grows the grain, and the brewer, who makes the beer.

To make malt, the raw grain (typically barley, wheat or rye) is sprouted in water, then dried. The process creates enzymes, breaks down the starch in the grain and produces sugars — all critical before brewing can begin.

For decades, breweries have typically purchased their malt from large-scale, mechanized facilities that pool massive volumes of grains grown throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe.

The explosion of microbreweries in recent years has spurred a small but growing craft malt industry, where tiny malt houses — facilities where malt is produced — conduct the malting process, often entirely by hand.

Emphasis on small. Andrea Stanley, who opened Valley Malt in Hadley, Mass., with her husband in 2010, says their business produces in one year what a typical Midwest malt house processes in a single day.

Throwback Brewery in New Hampshire is one of almost 20 New England breweries using malts from Massachusetts’ micro-malt house Vally Malt. Photo: Courtesy of Throwback Brewery

But micro-malting isn’t about being big, after all. Riverbend’s goal, Manning says, is “to create another niche market for these farmers to sell their grain to.”

That’s certainly true for farmer Peter Martens, who grows a variety of grains on his certified organic farm in New York’s Finger Lakes region. In 2010, he and his father planted 20 acres of malting barley for Valley Malt, “more out of curiosity than anything else.”

This year, they’ve planted more than 80 acres of malting barley. With demand strong, Martens is considering boosting production even further.

Craft malt houses have another benefit for farmers, says Manning: They offer some insurance against the vagaries of the market. Farmers’ livelihoods depend on the price they get when they sell their product — and that price can vary wildly. Riverbend’s goal “was to get farmers out of that commodity price loop,” Manning says.

Amy Poirier says that has proven true on her family’s farm, Hoffner Organic Farms, in Mount Ulla, N.C. Contracting with Riverbend has guaranteed a set price for their barley each year, she says. “So those fluctuations,” Poirier says, “we don’t have to worry about them as much.”

Back in upstate New York, farmer Peter Martens says he’s now getting calls regularly from new maltsters looking for certified organic barley.

More importantly, the craft maltsters “seem to be really knowledgeable about what they’re doing” — and intent on building a business model that can last, Martens says.

Brewing locally sourced beer is a business, after all, which means everyone in the production chain must have an eye toward staying in the black. Even so, the locavore ethos is alive and well.

In Massachusetts, for instance, Valley Malt encourages small farmers just learning how to grow grain for malt, Andrea Stanley says. She and her husband currently work with 25 farmers and offer assistance with seed, equipment and harvesting.

“It is a lot of coordination and a lot of work,” Stanley says. “I could easily just tell one of our [more experienced] farmers, ‘Can you plant more acres for me?’ … But for now, we have certain values that are driving our business that just aren’t about the bottom line.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

An aerial photo of Santa Cruz-area food and drink makers. Photo credit: Andrea Blum of My American Pantry and Kenny Blum Photography.

Andrea Blum has spent much of her life following others. She once followed a cheesemaker back to his village in Italy to learn about where the milk came from. That’s also how she ended up in a butcher shop in Switzerland watching the curing of meats, or in a basement in Austria sampling homemade schnapps.

“It’s a passion of mine to go beyond what I’m eating and find the story behind it,” Blum says.

That curiosity about the people behind our food led her to create My American Pantry (MAP), a start-up company that promotes regional food and drink producers across the country. Blum is laying the groundwork for an online marketplace with a series of aerial photos of food artisans with their goods.

“I think of it as a Kickstarter for food artisans, where people can launch their businesses but in a very curated, beautiful and artistic way with recipes, videos, multimedia,” says Blum, who is a culinary artist in residence at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga.

Andrea Blum with her brother Kenny, who built the remote-controlled helicopter used for the aerial photo.

MAP just held its second aerial photo shoot in Santa Cruz on Sunday with nearly two dozen local food and drink makers, including the Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing Co., Creative Cultures, Uncommon Brewers and Shelley’s Biscotti. The first aerial photo took place in Marin last month.

The aerial photos are a way for Blum to bootstrap her company while she fine-tunes her business plan and raises capital. She says she may turn to Kickstarter herself to drum up funds so she can travel around the country taking photos of food and drink makers.

Blum plans to stitch the photos together into a multi-layered atlas. Users will be able to view food makers by region, along with their personal stories, recipes and videos. They would also be able to purchase products through the online marketplace, which she hopes to launch later this year. Blum also envisions regionally-focused cookbooks with recipes from the MAP producers.

One of the first videos MAP produced is a profile of Connie Green, who is something of a local legend who leads chefs on foraging expeditions and owns Wine Forest Wild Foods.

“She talks about her passion of collecting things in the woods, collecting mushrooms,” Blum says. “She was able to make it into a business that really represents herself. She made it her life.”

In Santa Cruz, a new group of food and drink makers gathered at the Homeless Garden Project farm in Santa Cruz with examples of their products, including apples, jams, sausages, mini-kegs and even a mild-mannered black duck.

Denise Arasin is a volunteer at the Homeless Garden Project farm and founder of Duck Lovers Adoptions.

The farm is community supported with some 1,200 volunteers, which Blum realized added another layer of meaning to the photo. This gave her the idea of also highlighting non-profits that are contributing to local food systems and economic development in future aerial photos.

During the shoot, Andrea Blum controlled the camera while her brother Kenny operated the remote-controlled helicopter, which he built.

To take the aerial photos, Blum uses a camera strapped to a remote-controlled helicopter built by her brother and fellow collaborator Kenny Blum. It rose above the group of food and drink makers assembled in a grid.

The Blums use two different remote-controlled helicopters for the project, including one with four propellers and one with eight, which is shown here and used in windy conditions.

“As a food producer, you don’t get to lay down very often,” says Melinda Harrower, owner of Melinda’s Gluten Free. “It was nice to just lay in the sun in a field.”

Shelley Fryer, owner of Shelley’s Biscotti, read about the photo shoot in the local newspaper and loved how Blum arranged the first group of artisans in Marin to resemble a quilt. Fryer hopes people will appreciate the diversity of food makers represented in the MAP photos, some of whom she’d heard about but had never met.

Shelley Fryer launched Shelley’s Biscotti 16 years ago in Santa Cruz. She says she hardly ever misses a day at the bakery.

“I work all the time so I don’t really see other people who do what I do,” Fryer says. “I’m aware of them but haven’t had the chance to connect, so it was nice to have that opportunity.”

Kristen Cederquist, co-owner of Serendipity Saucy Spreads, also doesn’t get many chances to hang out with fellow food producers in such a laid-back setting. She even discussed a potential collaboration with Chris LaVeque, a butcher with El Salchichero.

Melinda Harrower of Melinda’s Gluten Free and Kristen Cederquist of Serendipity Saucy Spreads talk shop in between photos.

Cederquist sees the MAP project as another way to tell her story and add a human dimension to her products. She and her mother have been making fruit preserves since they were both children and they created their company out of this family tradition.

“It’s not made in a factory,” she says. “Everything is made with our hands and we love what we do.”

Photo: Getty Images

A new study finds that even moderate alcohol consumption can increase the risk of cancer-related death. KQED’s Forum hears from one of the study’s authors, who says alcohol is responsible for 20,000 cancer deaths every year. But the study is not without controversy. Some researchers say alcohol may have certain health benefits, and that it’s risky to advocate total abstinence. Forum looks at the mechanism by which alcohol may increase cancer death. Should you give up booze altogether?

Host: Michael Krasny

Guests:

• Christina Clarke, research scientist at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California (CPIC)
• Curt Ellison, Scientific Co-Director, International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research
• Thomas Greenfield, center director and scientific director for the Alcohol Research Group at the Public Health Institute, and one of study’s authors

More info:
• Study from American Journal of Public Health
• Drinking Causes 3.5% of Cancer Deaths : Public Health Institute