June 19, 2013

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It’s Craft Beer Week in Iowa

May 14, 2013 By

With temperatures bounding into the 90s today, it’s a happy coincidence for Iowans who like to sip suds from a frosty mug or an icy bottle. Many of the state’s beer microbreweries are pairing their beverages with an array of entertainment this week, according to Jessica O’Riley, communications manager in the Iowa Tourism Office.

“Craft Beer Week is intended to be a fun week to highlight the craft beer industry in Iowa,” O’Riley says. “It’s actually National Craft Beer Week but of course, you can celebrate right here in Iowa.”

The industry has more than doubled in size in recent years in Iowa and continues to grow. The state is now home to 33 microbreweries, with 15 opening since early 2012 and several more planning to open soon.

“So often, the breweries and wineries have special events all the time with music on the weekends or in the evenings,” O’Riley says. “The thing we’re finding with a lot of the craft brewers, they’re located on bike trails. So if you’re out biking and you need to take a little break and refresh yourself, stop by one of the breweries.”

A state law change a few years ago allowed Iowa beer makers to begin brewing varieties with higher alcohol content, which helped spark the industry’s growth. Plus, O’Riley says, Iowans like being able to patronize establishments that are close to home.

“There’s a movement for people to buy local, eat local,” O’Riley says. “It means something more when you can talk with the brewer. So often they’re so passionate about their endeavor that they’re happy to tell you about all the ingredients and how it comes about. There’s just that movement for beer, wine and food.”

Find the various microbreweries across the state at: www.iowatourism.com

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Alcoholic Beverages Division sends out alerts on April alcohol opportunities

April 10, 2013 By

The Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division (ABD) is joining other organizations across the country to observe April as Alcohol Awareness Month. Shannon Pogones, oversees the ABD’s training programs for retailers.

“This is the time of year when youth are typically out attempting to purchase more alcohol, having graduation parties, and spring break parties, and prom parties and after parties and things where alcohol is present,” Pogones says. The division sent out reminder letters to retailers on the issue.

“It went out to licensees — even restaurants and places that just have beer and wine permits — saying ‘hey’ prom and graduation are coming up more, just be aware that you may be seeing more of an increase of youth attempting to purchase in your area,” Pogones says. The letter also reminds the retailers of the online training ABD has created to teach employees how to avoid selling to minors.

“We also helped create a tool called I-ALERT which helps stores and on and off-premise locations make a policy for their establishment,” Pogones says. She says those policies allow them to decide if they are going to card everybody, or just people who look under 30, and then they can then give it to their employees and have everybody sign off on.

The ABD website also provides information for parents on how they can help prevent problems with alcohol. Pogones says simply being up to meet your child when they come home can be a deterrent.

“Communicate with other parents and school officials on where your child may be going and discuss the consequences that your child’s school may have around if they get caught possessing or consuming alcohol,” Pogones says. “Whether that my jeopardize your graduation or future sporting events or things like that and also just the consequences of the harm you may do to yourself and potentially others.”

Pogones says it’s important for parents to keep the lines of communication open about the dangers of alcohol, and that conversation can start before they reach high school age. Find out more at Iowaabd.com.

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Supreme Court says bar should face trial for fight in parking lot

April 5, 2013 By

The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled a Guthrie Center bar should go to trial for damages after a customer was injured in a fight in their parking lot. On March 20 of 2009 Curtis Hoyt and several members of his construction crew stopped into Gutterz Bowl & Lounge for a drink after work.

Hoyt saw Curtis Knapp — a man who he had a disagreement with — sitting at the bar. Hoyt and coworker approached Knapp and confronted him, but Knapp did not respond.

A waitress who feared there would be a fight got the owner of the bar and the owner cut off their drinks. They continued to taunt Knapp and the Gutterz owner asked them to leave. Hoyt left the bar and as he was walking to his car he was hit in the head, knocked unconscious, and suffered a broken ankle.

Knapp later admitted to hitting Hoyt, but said he did so in self defense. Hoyt sued Knapp and Gutterz for damages.

The district court ruled Hoyt’s injury was not foreseeable and Gutterz did not breach its duty to protect him. The Court of Appeals overturned the district court ruling.

The Supreme Court agreed with the appeal ruling, saying that establishments that serve alcohol are known to have fights, and just because Hoyt was the one who was the aggressor, Gutterz could have foreseen a danger to him. The ruling however did not specifically say Gutterz was liable — it said that is an issue for a jury to decide.

Justice Thomas Waterman issued a dissent in the case. Waterman said there was no reason to eject Knapp who was the victim of a troublemaker’s verbal abuse or call the police before Knapp unexpectedly jumped Hoyt in the parking lot. He said the uncontroverted facts establish the defendant acted reasonably as a matter of law.

The case now goes back to district court.

See the complete ruling here: Gutterz ruling PDF

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Swisher distillery rolls out first batch of malt whiskey

April 5, 2013 By

A distillery in eastern Iowa is bottling Iowa’s first single malt whiskey this week, three years after the state legalized the commercial sale of micro-distilled spirits. Kolin Brighton, production manager of the Cedar Ridge Distillery in Swisher, says it takes several years for malt whiskey to age, so it’s hard for small producers to compete with large commercial operations.

“They really are investments,” Brighton says. “We have to buy the raw material, make it, buy the barrel, store the barrel, wait two to three to four or five years, pay the labor to actually get it bottled, haul it to the state warehouse in Ankeny and then pay the tax on it before we ever get a dime back.”

Cedar Ridge is among five licensed micro-distilleries in Iowa. More are springing up in other Midwestern states that grow the corn and barley needed to produce whiskey. Brighton says it’s an uphill battle to get established in the industry, especially going up against established giants.

“We don’t have a million gallons of capacity, so we’re doing things on such small scale,” Brighton says. “We buy ingredients in smaller quantities and we’re not getting some of the price breaks the big guys get.”

He says state taxes on spirits make up more than half of the retail price. The product is a single malt whiskey, which is a whiskey brewed with malted barley. If it were made in Ireland, it would be called scotch.

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Study links military deployment with child alcohol, drug problems

April 2, 2013 By
Stephan Arndt

Stephan Arndt

A University of Iowa study finds children of deployed or recently-returned military parents are at a much higher risk of alcohol use, binge drinking and marijuana use than non-military families.

U-I Psychiatry Professor Steve Arndt, director of the Iowa Consortium for Substance Abuse Research and Evaluation, says he was surprised the numbers were so high.

Professor Arndt says, “I expected to see some increase, but not as much as we saw and certainly not as much that it was consistent among all of the grades, even the youngest kids.”

The study was based on data from the 2010 Iowa Youth Survey, which got responses from more than 78,000 Iowa students in grades six, eight and 11.

The study also found when parental deployment resulted in a child not living with a parent or relative, the risk of binge drinking and marijuana use was even higher.

“We don’t know if it’s because one of the parents has to abruptly leave or if there’s something in particular about the military,” Arndt says.

“Those kids who had to go live somewhere else were far more affected by the deployment, staggeringly so.” In one example, the study found sixth-graders in non-military families had binge drinking rates of about two-percent. That jumped up to about seven-percent for the children of deployed or recently returned parents.

One of the likely reasons for the higher substance abuse rates Arndt gives is “destruction of the family unit,” when one parent has to be out of the household for so long. “It’s clear that the families of deployed military personnel need added support,” Arndt says.

“Schools, community organizations, even the military itself might want to attend to that because when the soldier’s family is in trouble, the soldier’s not going to be quite up to their full potential.” He says similar studies also identified a higher suicide rate in the same groups of students.

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Bill would open Iowa home brews to exhibitions, competitions

March 25, 2013 By

Legislators are considering a bill that would help Iowans who are a bit competitive about the beer they brew in their own home.

It’s illegal for Iowans to enter their home brews in exhibitions or competitions because state law says beer brewed at home is for personal consumption only. Senator Liz Mathis, a Democrat from Robins, says that means the judges in a competition can’t sample home brews made in Iowa.

“What the new bill shows is that you could be able to take some of your home-brewed beer and leave your home and take it to this exhibition or festival and allow judges to sample it,” Mathis says. “What it doesn’t allow for is for that home-brewed beer to be sold in mass quantities.”

Alabama is the only state in the union where brewing beer at home is illegal. Home brewing is a growing hobby in the United States. Membership in the American Homebrewers Association has quadrupled in the past seven years.

“I think even President Obama has talked about home brew beer,” Mathis says.

The White House chefs have bottled an ale and a porter, using honey harvested from the White House garden. A long time ago, Mathis wanted to try her hand at beer brewing.

“Back in 1976, there were five of us in a bio chem class and we were wondering if we might be able to try something like that, but were deterred by our teacher saying, ‘You probably shouldn’t try that.’ You know the drinking age was 18 back then,” Mathis says, laughing, “so we were very inquisitive and curious but, no, we didn’t go ahead with the plans.”

The bill to let home brewers enter their beers in competitions has unanimously passed both the Iowa House and the Senate, but senators made a slight change that must be approved by the House before the legislation can go to Governor Branstad for his signature.

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Training to prevent underage alcohol sales shows results

March 7, 2013 By

A spokesperson for the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division (ABD) says a one year review of their new on-line training course has shown good results in cutting the number of violations for alcohol sales to minors. Shannon Pogones oversees what’s called the “Iowa Program for Alcohol Compliance Training” or I-PACT.

She compared the numbers before and after I-PACT was implemented. “We’ve had 110 fewer sale to minor citations that were issued for the same time period,” Pogones explains. That’s a drop of 30-percent in citations, which is an improvement over the first six months of the program where they saw a 16-percent drop in citations.

Pogones says 12,-500 users have logged on for the training, which takes around two hours to complete. She says the idea is to give the companies that sell alcohol the knowledge to train their employees to prevent sales to minors.

“Under a new administration with administrator Stephen Larson, we’ve taken more of a proactive approach — getting out and educating our licensees and citizens alike in the State of Iowa to go away from having a ‘gotcha’ attitude to be more proactive than reactive,” according to Pogones.

The program gives businesses a freebie of sorts if an employee that has undergone the training still sells to a minor. The company can use what’s called an affirmative defense once in a four-year period to avoid a fine in such cases. “So far we’ve only had 12 establishments take advantage of the affirmative defense,” Pogones says.

She says that’s a pretty low number when there are 12,500 people who have been trained in the program. Pogones is working with the vendor to add around 15 to 20 minutes of updated content for the I-PACT training.

“There’s definitely some new things that needed to be upgraded, such as the temporary paper ideas…go into more detail on some of the great fake I-D’s that are coming in that are very hard to spot with the naked eye,” Pogones says.

Violations for illegal sales of alcohol to minors include a $500 criminal fine to the clerk, as well as a $500 civil fine to the retail establishment for the first violation. Subsequent violations can result in higher fines,license suspension or even license revocation.

You can find out more about the training at: www.I-PACT.com.

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