'Transparency' Mandate Would Burden Small Brewers and Distilleries

In the 70s, alcohol content was prohibited by ATF, except when required by state law. For example, Oregon required ABW listed for products above 4%ABW. In Washington anything above 4%ABW had to be sold in a liquor store (not the supermarket), so they might have had label indicating ABW or a range. In those days aunt ran a liquor store in Aberdeen and brought my grandparents short cans of Country Club Malt Liquor. I vaguely remember tasting supermarket Rainier Ale from WA, and thinking that it tasted good (4%ABW vs 6% in OR and CA). Now, alcohol is not required by the Feds.

 

Roll out the red tape!!!

 

Our gubment -- God bless their pea-picking hearts.

 

Is the recipe for Coca-Cola listed on the side of the can? I highly doubt the monks would have to give up their secret recipe and could just group everything under natural flavors…I would love calorie counts and info on what is in my alcohol. Does a whiskey have food coloring in it? Should be listed. Am I getting a cherry chocolate stout with cherries and chocolate added or is it just chemical flavoring? Would be great to know.

if you don’t like regulations, you probably shouldn’t be working in the alcohol industry.

 

Ingredients can be real basic, and leave a ton grey area about what they specifically are, and also where they are presented in context of an actual recipe.
Where in distribution of them will all of this additional stuff on an alcohol label become necessary? Will single and two to three state distributed entities really be impacted? Or, is it more to do with regional, on up to national.

 

Like @HouseofWortship, I want to know if my whiskey has food coloring. I want bottling/canning dates, too. Aren’t label regulations already in place for anything that hits distro? I know there’s folks who monitor label approvals/-watching for special releases, or just out of curiosity.

This article seems more alarmist than useful. Apparently, the push for greater label transparency has been almost two decades in the making.

 

Thanks for sharing. It’s great to hear what is going on with labeling regulations. However, the article is written with a distinct anti-regulation slant (it is on a libertarian magazine - not that there’s anything wrong with that) that ignores the aspect that other laws will still protect trade secrets (recipes). As mentioned above, there’s a long history of protecting these that won’t go away just because they are trying to standardize information presented on labels.

there’s no perfect solution - but I’d rather have more information to base my decisions on, than less. Either way, there will always be someone trying to game the system

 

I would be devastated to find out if my Stop & Shop brand grape soda did NOT in fact contain real grapes.

 

Any requirements would probably include any production volume. The first problem is to define what an ingredient is. Beer is not the sum of its ingredients, so a recipe isn't what would be needed. Malt, wheat, rice, corn, corn syrup, hops, and usually yeast, are not generally present in the item sold. The chemical process of fermentation has produced a product that is now defined as "beer". Beyond the definition, additional nonstandard ingredients now need to be noted. What to do about barrels, which are a flavoring agent? Currently, alcohol content, if mentioned, needs to be accurate to +-0.3 percent. If alcohol content was required, it might be reasonable to allow small brewers to specify a larger range. The questions about ingredients lists are not easy. Don't expect a rule to be imposed soon (maybe my lifetime?)

 

Oh, no! Not again!

 

Agreed. I think ABV, Calorie, Packaged Date, and Ingredient lists would be great requirement for beer.

Maybe a positive side effect would be the downfall of Pastry Stouts when people see they have 600+ calories in a pint can.

"Free Minds and Free Markets" - yeah to think this is an un-biased article is silly.

 

Just don’t look at the giant text on the label that shouts “Artificially Flavored.”
https://stopandshop.com/groceries/b...rape-soda/stop-shop-grape-soda-2-ltr-btl.html

 

This is a misleading and highly biased article from a Libertarian website. This has been talked about for years, nothing new. The TTB as a government agency is very easy to deal with and has made many changes in the last 4-5 years to make it easy for breweries to get label approval. To say this will "crush" small breweries is misleading. Cheers.

 

Probably only SLIGHTLY artificial though, everything else is just nature in a bottle

 

Yeah, it's much easier and quicker to get through the label approval process the last few years. Especially since Battle retired.

 

They have gotten rid of SO MUCH stupid shit you used to have to do. Remember writing "formulas" for every beer that had a "special ingredient" for COLA. Probably did 50-60. Mind numbing.

 

I'd much rather they mandate canning dates. Seems like just another hoop to screw with the little guy.