ILCC cracks down on homebrew events

I don't know. I get it. It's illegal, so...perhaps 4/20 isn't the best date to be making that argument

If it's for raising money (even if the alcohol itself isn't being "paid for"), you have to pay taxes on alcohol. Just the way it is. The point is that the people enforcing the law aren't in the wrong. They've been in the wrong by being unaware and not cracking down sooner. Now they're doing right.

Of course, when I say "right" and "wrong," I'm speaking strictly in regards to the legality of the issue, not morally or socially speaking.

 

This is just plain ignorant. The scientific facts don't support this "concern." Beer just isn't a place where pathogens grow. And beer isn't distilled, so there isn't any risk of methanol or other harmful alcohols either.

I don't mind the law being enforced, even though it really sucks that such a law exists. But perpetuating ignorance or using nonsense as your "reason" for having "concerns" is just plain stupid, and showcases your lack of education on the matter.

Sounds like the city's laws need to be modified to be more homebrew friendly. Seeing as they are currently not, and that having homebrews at festivals isn't legal, so be it, time to lobby for an update to the laws. The decline in participation/enthusiam in the festival due to the lack of homebrewers might help to bring support towards changing the local statutes in time for next year's festival.

 

Laws need to change, plain and simple. Just happened in Wisconsin... not exactly farfetched.

 

Setting the tax issue aside (which I'm honestly not that familiar with, but will be something our homebrew club is going to have to look into in the future), I take more of an issue with the characterization of the safety concerns regarding homebrew. I pretty much agree with everything AlCaponeJunior said above.

Thanks for passing this information around Beergurujr as this is the first I had heard of it, U spread it around to our local homebrew club as well.

Cheers!

 

But there are nefarious people out there that may not be the most sanitary, or caring of what goes in the beer. They are saying, I think, that there is no way to tell if someone may have put something in the beer that was actually bad for people to consume. And there is little in the way of tracking it back to one person.

 

True. But then you could say the same thing about many home-made products that people either give away or sell and then donate the proceeds to charity. So the next time your local church has a spaghetti dinner, the authorities should probably shut them down, because lords knows what might be in those meatballs! And when your high school band has a bake sale to pay for band camp, they better be on it, because those macaroons might be unsanitary!

Sorry, don't mean to sound like I'm putting you down, but I feel like this is just one of the many examples of the ways in which alcohol enforcement laws just don't make rational sense. A more enlightened view would be that home-made beer is very, very unlikely to be harmful--that's part of the reason people were able to make and enjoy safe beer for hundreds of years before they even knew what sanitation was. It should be enjoyed by consenting adults without the interference of government ignorant enforcers and an event like this should be looked upon more or less like a church spaghetti feed where wine is served. End of lecture! I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

 

Honestly, homebrew probably less likely to be harmful than the meatballs at the spaghetti dinner. If there was a problem and there were some bugs in the beer you did not want you would taste it whereas you might not notice some funky stuff going on in your meatballs. But even if there were some bugs you didn't want in there everyone would be fine because the alcohol and low ph of beer keeps all known human pathogens from growing in it. The only way to get sick from beer is drinking too much of it.

And the threat of people purposefully putting dangerous things in food they give away is the biggest overblown crock of shit ever. Who has ever heard of that happening? It's a boogeyman completely fabricated by paranoid moms and morons in the media.

Odds are you are safer with homebrew than most other things people make at home.

Yes it is the law and they should evenly enforce it, but it is also a ridiculous law.

 

Agreed. My understanding is that there isn't anything that can harm you that can live in beer. So even if the beer was infected, it would just taste a little sour or whatever. And the idea that somebody would intentionally put something bad in it ... at a charity event ... c'mon. If you're going to worry about things like that, you just can't have any sort of gathering, because there's always going to be the potential for some nut to do something weird, or some terrorist, or a nut with a gun. If I really thought my friends and neighbors would try to poison me by putting something in the beer at a charity event, I'd probably never leave the house.

True, the law is the law. But police and prosecutors have some leeway in terms of how they're going to enforce. They don't have to ticket every jaywalker out there, and they didn't have to do this. The whole thing was just a waste of valuable time and resources that could have been spent doing something construction.

 

I was planning on bringing beer to this festival, now I'm not going at all. And I don't think I'm the only one. Homebrew actually offers something unique to events like this; without it, there's nothing there I can't just buy at Friar Tuck.

 

The really crummy thing about what happened in Wisconsin was that it was a local brewery that filed a complaint with law enforcement.
What i dont get is that This went on for 20 years and no one got hurt so why is it issue now? The USA is becoming a nanny state!

 

i see your point. but public health laws are not intended to control foods that are properly made. you may be making homebrew in the usual manner, but that does not mean that the next guy is not using any sort of additive. you can get violently ill or worse with homebrew. don't kid yourself just because it is unlikely and you only know honest people.
using well water? what is the quality? just because harmful food bacteria is not an issue in homebrew does not mean that 1000 ppb of benzene is acceptable.

has the brewer added methanol to increase the abv? that is exactly what some Austrian wine producers were doing in the 80s.
the list goes on and on.

to those that say America is a nanny state i say Bull Shit. it is not the fault of the health department that the occasional producer violates ethics and standards.
health compliance issues are not a burden. ask anyone living in a society that has little or no health code enforcement and i think you know what there response is going to be.

Cheers.

 

The exact same festival in another city or state that allows homebrew would certainly not cause such worries, and there are many places where homebrew can be legally shared in public, often at festivals. Why are these other locations not preoccupied with these concerns you speak of? Perhaps because the science just doesn't support such worries. People bringing tainted homebrew to festivals and making other people sick just isn't something that's been a problem or is likely to become one. And just because some douchebag in Austria spiked the wine with methanol or antifreeze or whatever back in the 80's doesn't mean it's reasonable to disallow homebrew at festivals "to keep this from happening again."
If you keep looking for monsters under the bed, you may convince yourself you have found them. That doesn't mean they actually exist though.
While it is reasonable to protect yourself from legitimate dangers, it's just not possible to absolutely eliminate every possible scenario of danger at all times, no matter how unlikely. Nor is it reasonable to try to do so. Certain highly unlikely scenarios could happen, but that doesn't mean there's a significant or even measurable likelihood they will happen. Therefore it's unreasonable to try and reason that laws should be based on prevention of these highly improbable scenarios.
And as sneakybird said, they are skipping the festival because of this issue. That hurts the charity in an immediate, real and measurable way.
Plus, as has already been stated, I'd be far more wary of the home cooked meatballs than I would be the homebrew.
Cheers.

 

Has anyone ever seen the guys that want to put tabacco in their beers - nicotine is a poison?

Then there are the stories of the brewery back in the 50s or 60's (can't remember which country) that used cobalt as a head stabalizer - until some customers died.

The Rheinheitsgebot was a tax law to make sure barley went to beer, wheat and rye went to bread, and other adulterants were kept out of beer. You can look it up.

Not saying that homebrew is poison. Not saying that commercial beer is good for you. Not saying that natural ingredients are good for you. Arsenic is 100% natural.

 

playing devil's advocate really doesn't take anything away from how silly it is to suddenly disallow homebrew at a festival where it's been a success for the last 19 years.

 

I agree with you in principle. The laws need to be changed. Wisconsin has had a change to allow this. Oregon had to have the laws rewritten to allow for competitions outside the home. Michigan had to have a bill passed to allow for homebrew to be in licensed establishments for competitions hosted at the place, or for a club meeting.

There will be those that think it is a danger until you prove therwise. I gave some examples of what they can think. It is up to the people in IL to work to get the laws changed. The AHA will be involved with that.

Saw it here first.
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=11882.0

 

this is a common safety fallacy. it is impossible to eliminate natural risks. earthquakes, tornadoes. the fact that these risks can not be elimnated is what makes them natural.
it is possible to eliminate risks that are not natural, though it may not be practical or feasible. so if we stop driving or stop flying we can be assured that all driving and aviation fatalities are eliminated.

the next step of course is our risk acceptance. i disagree that we must elimnate sensible health codes because some homebrewers want to present their brews at a festival. it is not a terrible burden to enforce the health code.

again, this is a fallcay. the risk is direct and measurable. further, we have ample indication of the specific risk involved. we have factual evidence, recent evidence, where people have been poisoned or killed due to poor sanitation, adultered food product, lack of enforcement or combination of all this and more. not doing anything does no good at all. nothing.

again, this is false. will not having a health code prevent this type of thing from happening? do we just wish away the risk because it makes us feel good?
so, bascially, you don't like the idea of living in a soceity that provides some oversight of commercial food. where as I and others recognize that the burden is relatively light but the benefits are tremendous.

a long response, but your analysis is long on opinion but mostly logical fantasy. you certanily can have an opinion. i appreciate that, though i think you are more concerned with the idea of the happy homebrewer needing to comply with The Man than anything else.
Cheers.

 

Like a slug?

 

Dumb law. Needs to be changed so that homebrew can be allowed out of the home. I'll accept that the authorities need to make sure tax laws are not circumvented but he sanitary/health issue is completely bogus.

 

The supposed sanitation issues are no different that they are for any other homemade consumable. No more bake sales or lemonade stands, folks! We're afraid you'll put cobalt and antifreeze in it.