Police raided a California home today where they suspected people were producing opiates. They arrested 28 year old Chad Renzelman, who said he used dried poppy pods to brew a home beer a month ago. He obtained the pods on eBay.

“All I did was make a poppy beer,” said Renzelman. “I spent all morning in jail for brewing beer. I had no idea what I was doing was illegal.”

However, police claim that Renzelman, a PhD candidate in chemistry, used a chemical process to extract opium from from the pods and converted the opium to morphine. Morphine is the active opiate in heroin.

Renzelman was arrested on suspicion of possessing and manufacturing a controlled substance and faces up to seven years in prison.

My post about the resurgence of Schlitz (and other “retro” or “nostalgia” beers) generated the following question:

Why did Pabst change the name of their beer to Pabst Blue Ribbon?

And here’s your answer:

Pabst changed the name to Pabst Blue Ribbon since it was the first beer to win a blue ribbon at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.

The 1893 World’s Fair also marked a few other firsts… Aunt Jemima syrup, Cracker Jack, Cream of Wheat and Juicy Fruit gum also made their debuts alongside diet carbonated soda and hamburgers, which were introduced to the United States.

Apparently, it was quite an event!

In case you’re looking for another reason to go organic when it comes to beer, consider this: additives in beers are not strictly regulated in all countries.

And when I say additives, I mean, oh, say, carcinogens.

The Chinese beer industry, one of the top beer producing countries in the world, was found to include formaldehyde in 95% of beers brewed in the country as recently as 1995. Yep, formaldehyde.

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One of the frustrating things about Pennsylvania is that it’s nearly impossible to sample a new beer outside of a bar without buying a whole case (stupid beer laws, don’t get me started). One of the things that I love about vacationing in Maine is that you can pop into local stores and buy just one or two beers - a nice option when you’re in the mood to try something new.

A few years ago, I was itching to try some of the organic brews hitting the market. Chris was a bit skeptical. And we didn’t want to end up with a case of something we’d hate - so it was nice to have the option of picking up just a couple of different bottles while on vacation. Some of those that we sampled - especially the Samuel Smith organics - have become favorites. It was incredibly hard to local them outside of the smaller beer specialty stores until the last few years when they hit the mainstream markets.

Organic beer sales are actually skyrocketing, according to the Organic Trade Association, with sales more than doubling from 2003 to 2005, even while beer sales overall fell slight.

Larger breweries are taking notice. The now Belgian owned Anheuser-Busch produces organic brews - a sign that organic is perhaps more than a trend. Two of the first organic products to hit the market from A-B did not even flout the Budweiser name. Wild Hop is brewed at the A-B brewery in Fairfield, California, and Stone Mill is brewed at the Red Hook brewery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

While larger breweries are making an impression in the organic market, it’s the smaller breweries who are leading the way. In 1999, California-based Eel River Brewing Company became America’s first certified organic brewery (as an aside, nearly ten years later, the brewery became the nation’s first biomass powered brewery).

Other popular organic brews include Wolavers, Peak and, as mentioned earlier, Samuel Smith (all Samuel Smith beers are also vegan).

So what makes a beer organic? It’s made the same as regular beer, but under USDA standards, to be labeled “organic”, at least 95% of the ingredients must be produced and grown without the use of chemicals and pesticides.

No junk in your beer? Always sounds good to me!

Do you have a favorite organic brew? Tell us your favorite by clicking here. You can win some cool beer merch!

(c) Brew Ha-Ha, 2008

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All summer long, I’ve beaten myself up about not planting hops. I had previously posted a quick primer on hops vines that got me to thinking about planting some in the garden. And I didn’t. I had already planted three clematis vines, only one of which has taken off, leaving my garden with an ugly bare spot. Serves me right, I guess.

Next year? There will be hops.

Hops are pretty vigorous growers and not particularly picky. Today, on twitter, the enjoyable Jeff Louella posted that he had photos of his hops garden on his blog. I thought the photos were great and Jeff graciously agreed to let me link to him from the site. So wander over and take a peek.

While I was planning on planting hops for purely aesthetic reasons, Jeff’s vines are for use in homebrewing. Be sure and stop by his blog from time to time to see how it’s going.

Last week I spent some time in London with a friend and, needless to say, we enjoyed ourselves a very nice pub crawl or two. Now, after years of drinking lager beers in Germany I’ve become accustomed to ales here in the US, so I am perfectly happy with either (most of the time, anyway). My friend, however, is German, and although he’s become more British than German in many respects, he’s still a resolute lager drinker.

That’s how I noticed that there are no more lagers from Britain, at least not on the taps of London. Lest you think I exaggerate, we went to at least seven different pubs and did not find a single lager on tap. Most of those pubs had at least four or five lagers on tap, from every country in Europe, but not a British lager. Kronenbourg was ubiquitous, as was Stella Artois, but we also saw Peroni, Staropramen, Foster’s, Becks, and a host of other continental lagers. Not one British lager. Even the first brewery of lagers in Britain is in danger of extinction, as reported by the BBC.

This article discusses the drop in lager sales, but it doesn’t really reflect the fact that the British consumer appears to be turning away from British lagers, not lagers as a whole. There are a few who are standing up for lagers in general and British lagers in particular, but it’s not making to the taps as yet. It’s a shame, because I’m sure there are some worthy British lagers out there.

image by me

For anyone who cares, I did in fact crack open my bottle of La JBK from Kohler Rehm, and it’s neither dark nor a Maibock. To be honest, I have no idea what it was, but it was reasonably tasty, if a little on the sweet side.

I still have no idea what the name means, but the bottle did state that “elle port le nom du célèbre Général.” Other than De Gaulle, I’m not sure I know of any famous French generals, and a Google search didn’t provide an obvious answer. Anyone?

image by Chris Erb

Yesterday I wrote about Vogelbräu, a brewpub in Karlsruhe Germany. I had neglected to mention that, not only was it an evening with perfect biergarten weather it was asparagus season, as you can see from the above photo.

Now, for those of us who grew up with green asparagus, those funny looking white things in the picture above are in fact white asparagus. I’m not sure how it’s grown, although I’ve heard something about it requiring darkness, but there’s a very short season in June when the stuff is fresh and available, and it’s really quite tasty. The traditional accompaniment is Hollandaise sauce, although there are many alternatives to that.

Of course, a good beer is the best accompaniment I can think of, here Vogelbräu’s unique unfiltered Pils (in the wrong glass, I know, I’ve gotten over it).

N.B. - if you want to know the difference between white and green asparagus, check this out. Frankly, I enjoy both.

photo by Chris Erb

Vogelbräu is a brewpub on the outskirt’s of Karlsruhe’s city center. Being the selfless fellow I am, I checked it out for you in the lovely (and surprisingly large) beergarden which is hidden in the interior court of the brewpub building. The pils was delicious, but not in the classic sense. When I think of pils I generally think of a clear, light-colored, and hoppy beer with relatively little malt taste, and usually highly filtered.

The pils at Vogelbräu, in contrast, is not filtered, and the hops are challenged for supremacy by a strong malt taste. It’s a good beer, although I can’t say as I would necessarily order it if I were really in the mood for a pils. The most comparable beer I can think of is Victory’s Hop Devil, a fine ale, but hardly a classic pilsner.

I also tried the weissbier, although I generally refrain from drinking pils and weissbier in the same sitting. Karlsruhe is in Baden, where the term weizenbier is preferred to the Bavarian weissbier, but Baden and Swabia probably have an equal claim to good wheat beers. In this case, unfiltered is the rule rather than the exception, and the wheat beer was largely conventional, if unconventionally served. The Vogelbräu weizen was definitely more bitter than most Bavarian weissbiers, but very tasty. Both the pils and the weizen were served in a mug which, at least in Munich, would only have been used for a Helles.

Overall, the beers were good, the beergarden very pleasant, and I can definitely recommend Vogelbräu for the beer lover who finds him or herself in Karlsruhe. Better yet, many of the beergarden tables are framed by a vine-overgrown trellis, which hides a large awning. The result? Beer garden comfort even in the rain, not a bad thing in Germany.

And my favorite touch? On the bottom of the glass, written so you can read it, is printed the words “Oins geht noch,” loosely translated as “You can handle one more.” They were right.

As my wife and co-blogger mentioned, we went out for dinner the other night without kids! For those too young to know, that’s a very exciting thing to us parental types.

In any event, I was pleased to note that the restaurant, already discussed in this post, had a number of beers from the Belgian farmhouse brewery Dupont, including the highly regarded Saison and the relatively rare Blond ale. In one of those rare moments of luck, I ordered the Saison Dupont, which was quite tasty, and my wife ordered the Foret Blond, which she preferred (and which I didn’t find on Dupont’s beer list). I thought the blond was a little bland, not to be punny about it. In any event, both were good.

Brewery Dupont is a bit of an oddity in the brewing world, in that it is one of those rare farmhouse breweries which remains more or less right where it started in 1844, in a farmhouse located in rural Belgium. In addition to traditional Belgian bottle-fermented ales, Dupont also has a range of organic beers. For those who will be in Belgium any time soon, there’s also a bakery and what they term a “cheese-makery.” Do we have a better word for that? In other words, they’re doing just about everything I’d want to do if I had a farmhouse and enough cash to sustain me.

In any event, I’ll be near Belgium next week, but doubt I’ll make it over for a tour, so I’ll just have to be satisfied with the beer for now. Dupont fans, try it and let me know what you think!

image from Wikipedia, public domain