Widmer Drifter

When a major brewery introduces a new beer in its regular line-up, it doesn't do so lightly (well, not anymore, anyway). It represents a gamble of time, money, and credibility. Widmer has cleverly limited some of the risk by testing beers in various venues--in the Gasthaus, at festivals, and in their experimental "W" line, where Drifter started life. But nothing is without risk, and Drifter arrives with more than modest intentions. The brewery is shooting for something novel. Here's Rob, discussing the beer:

We used the word Original because we really feel that Drifter is unlike all the other pale ales. Summit hops are my new favorite hop and they have taught me something that may have been obvious to others but was kind of a break-through for me. I now believe that eveyone likes the aroma and flavor of hops but many people just don't like the accompanying bitterness. The cool thing about Drifter is that beer geeks that I've sampled love it because it is so unique and delicious and "regular" folks like the tangerine/pink grapefruit quality but appreciate the lack of "afterburn."

So there is the goal for the beer, boldly laid out for us to examine. Did the Widmers hit the mark?


Tasting Notes
This beer isn't exactly the same as the W '07. It's a hair more alcoholic (5.7% to 5.4%), a hair less bitter (34 versus 32 IBUs). But the main thing is that it's got different hops. Here's how the Brothers tinkered:

_________'07_______________Drifter
Boil_____Alchemy___________Alchemy
Aroma____Alchemy, Summit___Summit, Nelson Sauvin
Dry-hop__Summit, Chinook___Summit, Nelson Sauvin

Nelson Sauvin--ring any bells? How about "Full Nelson?" That was the beer that Widmer sent to last year's Oregon Brewers Fest, hopped with the titular, rare New Zealand hop. A bold choice indeed. Full Nelson was a beer that thrilled some and kind of grossed others out. The quality is orangey--a nice idea to complement the lemony summits--but also strongly astringent, like urine or sweat. (At least to some palates.)

Which brings us to Drifter. It's ironic that Rob described the goal as a universal beer, because I think the result is a product that will divide drinkers who love or hate the Nelsons. It pours out surprisingly darkly--a rich copper. (Perfectly in accord with the style, but some folks may wonder what's "pale" about it--Jon has an accurate pic over at his review.) Superficially, the aroma has the standard citrus of an American pale. Sniff more deeply. You pick up an astringency that some are describing as piney or herbal, but which in my nose smells of sweat. It's the Nelson's. This is a chemical process, and the way you react to the scent will depend on your nose. (Mostly people are lovin' it.)

The palate continues in this vein. You get the nice lemony/grapefruit quality from the Summits, the astringency of the Nelsons, though without much bitterness at all. I'm shocked to see the IBUs listed at 32--this beer seems to have about 20 to my palate. I recall the '07 distinctly, and I liked that beer quite a bit better. It was more bitter, more lively, and didn't have the Sauvin sweat note. On this count, however, you really shouldn't take my advice. This is a beer to experience, not read about. Find out for yourself.

I will add, in conclusion, that the Widmers have gone boldly here. The instinct for a brewery is to make beers more broadly appealing--and therefore less characterful. Drifter is an original, and to the brewery's credit, that means, different strokes for different folks, some people just won't be thrilled. I wasn't. But it also means that some folks will be--and they'll appreciate the moxie it took for a major brewery to put something thrilling in the market. Their cred on the line, I think Widmer has acquitted themselves nicely.

Stats
Malts: Pale, CaraVienne 20-L, Caramel 80-L, Carapils
Hops: boil - Alchemy; finishing - Summit, Nelson Sauvin; dry-hopping - Summit, Nelson Sauvin
Alcohol by volume: 5.7%
Original Gravity: 14° Plato
Bitterness Units: 32
Available: Year-round

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PHOTO CREDIT: J. Wilson, Brewvana

Good Food + Good Beer

There remains one great frontier for good beer: good food. Well over a decade ago, Higgins added the most expansive beer list in Portland to their menu (even hiring a beer steward), an act I assumed would precipitate full beer integration into the city's best restaurants. But no. Go to a nice place, and you'll be offered a wine list, a cocktail list, and a slightly anxious look by the waitress if you ask about the tap list. Beer remains segregated.

A tiny bit of good news, then. In today's Oregonian, Christina Melander alerts us to Micah Camden's newest venture, Fats:

...a gastropub centered on burgers, beer and brunch at Northeast 30th and Killingsworth. Fats will be his fourth restaurant. His mini-empire stretches over a couple of blocks and includes Beast (The Oregonian's Diner Restaurant of the Year 2008, co-owned with chef Naomi Pomeroy) along with foodie spot D.O.C. and design-savvy Yakuza Lounge, co-owned with Dayna McEarlean....

Camden says he wants to attract a more everyday clientele than his other restaurants. The beer list -- some 80 brews strong -- and digestible prices (with entrees around $15, burgers $9-$10, desserts $6-$8) should help draw a wider swath of Portlanders.

Admittedly, this isn't upscale food, and Camden's other restaurants haven't exactly rolled out the welcome mat to good beer. One could argue that there's a ghettoization problem here--the downscale restaurant gets the beer, Camden's chi-chi joints get the wine and liquor. Let's take the opposite view: at least good beer will now be served alongside good food, pushing the ball down the field a bit. For someone who laments the lack of good beer places to get decent food, this is a great piece of news.

Blog Cleaned Up

I doubt regular readers spend much time glancing at my right-column matter, but should you do so, I think you'll find it less cluttered. I've tried to put as much content as possible into collapsing, clickable menus. This is the case with the blogroll, too, but I hope that doesn't daunt you from opening it up: I've added a few, deleted old, dead ones, and reorganized them. Blogs are best when taken collectively, so find a few you like, and use the links.

That is all.

Beer Styles, Slight Return

Because cranks like company, I direct your attention to Tom Cizauskas, whose rant about proliferating beer styles was much to the same tune as mine.

Styles, historically, were not necessarily legal codifications but measures of provenance. Of course there were purity laws, and tax laws, and monopolistic grants. But it was what the local water, what the local economy, what the land, and what exigency would bear and allow to flourish that determined 'style'.

A beer is what the brewer says it is, as tempered by the success the brewer has in sharing that 'belief' with a drinker. But is it a style?

Styles, now, at least in the US, seem to be determined by formalistic minutiae, and, once in place, fiercely defended by the killer phrase "not to style."

Amen, brother. Do tell.

The Joy of Beer

Before the Oscars, NPR replayed a Fresh Air from December in which the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman discussed his own alcoholism. "A couple glasses of wine is just not interesting to me at all," he said. "It's not a great pleasure for me to have a couple glasses of wine. That's just kind of annoying. (Laughs) Do you know what I mean?--why aren't you having the whole bottle? That's much more pleasureable."

Last night, I had a couple glasses of beer--the first since my accursed flu struck me down a week ago. We went out to Belmont Station, where I spent a huge premium to get glasses rather than pints. Sally had the Russian River Salvation (a full pour) while I started with Cascade Pas D'Anglais. We were there an hour or more, she stopped at the one while I went on to a second glass, of Ommegang Hennepin.

Unlike Hoffman, the joy of beer for me comes from two sources: the wash of sensory experience of the beer itself, of course. We are experience junkies, and beer delivers a range not available in any other product. The fact that there is alcohol in the beverage is--let's not fool ourselves--a part of the experience. Whether a sensation comes, tickling the base of the skull, loosening the joints, this isn't paramount. But the possibility of it, like waving your hand through a flame, enhances the experience. That's not the reason we drink beer, but like every other element we admire it for its own sake.

The second reason I love beer, and the reason living in Portland is such a joy, is the hunt. It is possible, on any given night in the big city*, to encounter a novel experience. The Russian River Salvation Sally had last night--what a bizarre beer! The aroma was distinctly meaty, like holding your nose over a platter of lamb and mint sauce. The palate, among other things, was bloody, metalic. I have been drinking beer for 20+ years and there were flavors in that beer I've never encountered. I wasn't a huge fan of the Cascade. It was fine, and I could see where the experiment was headed, but I found that the notes were subdued. Ron brews an absolutely astonishing number of beers, and some of his experiments thrill me less than others. But isn't that also the joy of the hunt--you never know. The Hennepin? Ah, Hennepin.

Anyway, good to be back in the saddle again. After our draft pours, I picked up the new Ninkasi, a Southern Oregon pale, and Fallen Friar, so reviews are on the horizon. Cheers--

______________
*Small town.

Utah's 4% Beer - End of an Era?

On a 58-2 vote (!), the Utah State House voted to eliminate the 4% cap on beer strength.

House Bill 349, sponsored by Rep. Curtis Oda, R-Clearfield, would likely result in bars and restaurants being able to serve greater varieties of beer on tap. Many small breweries don't bother to make separate batches of weaker draft beer for Utah.

I doubt Oregon craft breweries have been sitting up nights trying to figure out how to break into that lucrative Beehive State beer market, but there are probably a few shekels to be made there.

Housecleaning Notes, 90% Edition

I tell ya, it's no mean trick to keep the content flowing on a beer blog when you're down with the flu--unable to drink beer or go to pubs and events. The good news is that I appear to be on the mend--in sportspeak, I'm back to 90%.

1.
I want to alert you to the new link to the Oregon Brewers Guild blog. As you know, I am absolutely no good at tracking the flow of Oregon-related beer events. If you want to be in the loop, I would bookmark that site and visit it regularly. Along with John Foyston's, you'll catch news of at least 90% of the events in Oregon.


2.
On the events side, worth noting for this weekend is the Barleywine Fest at NW Lucky Lab (March 6/7, noon-10 pm, 1945 NW Quimby). Thirty-six big beers (fortunately, they're not all barleywines--that would get a mite monotonous for my taste), many of them years old. From my Wednesday perch, I like the cut of these beer's jib:

• 2004 SN Bigfoot Barleywine
• 2006 Pelican Grand Cru
• 2005 Deschutes Mirror Mirror
• 2007 Koningshoeven Quadrupel
• 2007 Bend Brewing Outback X

Full list of beers available here.


3.
It's been a long time since I've cleaned up the blog, so you may notice some changes in the sidebar content in the next few days. My blogroll needs cleaning up at the very least.

Okay, I'm 90% sure that's all I had in the updates list.

Waves of Contests

Apparently the age of tasting competitions has arrived. Over the weekend, two such events ended or evolved, and Oregon did well in both cases.

Beer Brawl
First, the Concordia Ale House hosted the second Annual Beer Brawl, a taste-off of four beers from Oregon, Washington, and California. Hat tip to John Foyston for posting the results he got off (drum roll please) the new Concordia website. (I'm actually more excited about that. I have now added their taplist to my list in the column at right.) Oregon cleaned up, 1160 to 941 for Washington and 840 for Cali. Deschutes' Armory XX Pale was the beer of the brawl.

2009 National IPA Challenge
I have been seeing references to this, but I really haven't the vaguest clue where it's happening, who's doing the tasting, or how the beers and brackets were selected. All I know is that Oregon's doing great--five of the Sweet 16 are NW, a quarter from Oregon. I turn now to Geoff Kaiser for this weekend's updates.

While many of us were pulling for all the NW IPAs to do well in Round 2 of the NIPAC this past weekend, I’m not sure anyone would have predicted the domination that our beloved IPAs smacked down on some very well-known challengers. The NW won all five of their matchups, including upsets of what could be termed 2 different “#1 seeds."

• Boundary Bay IPA takes down the well-known Bear Republic Racer 5 (none of us are surprised, but the rest of the country probably is…)
• Rogue Yellow Snow IPA defeats the midwest heavyweight of Bell’s Two-Hearted (I picked the Rogue upset here - hell yeah…great beer.)
• Big Sky IPA defeats Mad Anthony Sofa King’s Bitter IPA
• Deschutes Inversion IPA defeats Magic Hat HIPA
• Laurelwood IPA defeats Avery IPA

Round 3 Matchups:
Big Sky IPA vs. Moylan’s IPA
Boundary Bay IPA vs. Deschutes Inversion (NW vs. NW!)
Rogue Yellow Snow vs. Marin IPA
Laurelwood Workhorse IPA vs. Hoppin’ Frog Hoppin’ to Heaven IPA

So whatever it is, we're doing all right.

Original

I first visited New York City in 1993 with a girlfriend at the time. Her grandmother lived in Edgewater, NJ, and we had friends in the East Village and Brooklyn. (I could write a 10,000-word reminicence of that trip--hoo boy.) Among the several thousand things I wanted to do was have a slice of Ray's Pizza. Ray's is not a pizza chain, it's a state of being. All over the city, people have pizzarias named Ray's--Famous, Original, World-Famous, etc.--but they're all independently owned. A conspiracy of Ray's, brotherhood among competitors, a way of confusing the tourists. I was in the city less than an hour when, after a walk due south from Port Authority, I stopped in at a Greek-owned Ray's for a slice of offbeat kalamata olive. Ah, finally, the suchness of Ray's.

All of this brings me to Widmer's new Drifter, the first beer I've decanted since getting this spiteful flu of mine. As you can see in the detail of the label at right, there's the curious adjective "Original" in the title: the Original Drifter Pale Ale. Original? In the case of Ray's, we can understand the jockeying: claiming the ur-status does not ensure quality, but there are certain bragging rights (though the claim does not make it so). Among a sea of Ray's, "original" has context. To my knowledge, however, there is no such glut of Drifters. In this way, the "Original" is a mite odd. Especially when you consider that the beer is only now just debuting. (No doubt marketing wished to offer an instant classic, burnished with age.)

As to the flavor and whether it's different from the W '07 that preceded it: I can't say. My flu-soaked body chemistry played cruel tricks, turning the beer into a glass of poison. It seemed almost to burn. If this were an Eastern European novel, I would worry that some kind of cosmic cruel trick was being played on me. But it's just a virus.

The Reviews Are In

My homebrew advice has borne positive results. Excellent. Whether or not homebrew saves you a great deal of money over the long haul, I will say it's hard to underestimate the sense of satisfaction one receives at having produced something worthy of the pro beer you admire. And look, he served it in an honest pint!

Beer Tax in England Also Unpopular

It looks like Oregon isn't alone in girding for battle. The Campaign for Real Ale is mounting an effort to defeat a beer tax in the UK, too. All politics are local, though; in this case, CAMRA and pub-owners are arguing that a tax could hasten the decline of the beloved English pub:

Pub experts have urged the government to scrap a rise in beer tax in the next Budget because of the recession.

CAMRA chief executive Mike Benner said: "It is time for the government to think again in order to save the great British pub."

Rob Hayward, the chief executive of the BBPA, said: "The British beer and pub industry supports 650,000 jobs and makes a vital contribution to the British economy. Yet it has been hit by a succession of tax increases alongside more and more regulation."

He said nearly six pubs a day were closing and thousands of jobs were being lost.

The early effort, like our own, has been vigorous.

More than 25,000 people have joined the "Axe the Beer Tax, Save the Pub" campaign, which was launched by the BBPA and Camra last November.

A Parliamentary motion calling on the government to axe plans to increase this year's rise in duty and to do more to support local pubs has been signed by 155 MPs.

Hmm, a "support your local brewery" campaign. That has a certain nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Random But Cool

There's a site called Wordle that performs a single, modest function--turning blocks of text or websites into word-cloud paintings. I plugged this site into it and got, once I rotated the image 90 degrees, a rather appropriate visual image:
How many times would you have to repeat this to get a pint-glass shape again? I'll never run the experiment. Cheers--

What purpose do beer styles serve?

To my sort of incoherent post on beer styles below (my health improves, but slowly), Ethan John poses the right questions:

I guess I don't understand what the problem is. That it's harder to be a beer judge now? What negative consequence can more formally recognized styles possibly have?

Or, put another way, what purpose do beer styles serve? Certainly, when Michael Jackson began compiling books about world beer styles, there was a taxonomical purpose. In the 1970s, beer was at a low point of industrialization and consolidation, and the extant styles (some had actually died out) had been around for decades or centuries. He created an ethnography of beer, tracing the influence of history, regional climates and characteristics, and local ingredients in creating these styles. It was particularly useful for introducing the world to the full range of beer styles so that we had a sense of what existed and why.

The Brewers Association has essentially followed this model, forever adding styles every time a brewer does something different. The critique I have of their practice and methodology is that a) the new styles are now removed from the "ethnographic" context--adding coffee to a beer hardly creates a style as distinct and revolutionary as Czech brewers figuring out pale malts, b) the resulting categories aren't styles so much as ever sprawling categories of ingredients.

The result, rather than adding clarity to our understanding of beer styles, confuses it. In my earlier post, I used the example of a strong ales. There are now a whole raft of categories for what I would call a single, distinct style:

• British origin: Other Strong Ales or Lagers
• Imperial or Double India Pale Ale
• Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer

There are actually more, like double red ales and barley wines and other high-alcohol beers. Distinguishing between the ones aged in wood and the ones aged in stainless is a distinction without a difference. It is also the case that the beer world is now international. I find the distinction between American-style ales and British-style ales wholly useless. There are regional variances between a Cascade-hopped NW pale ale and a Goldings-hopped London pale, but these do not constitute separate styles. In cooking, we wouldn't call a stew something else just because it didn't have potatoes.

And finally, distinguishing styles based on ingredients--there are a whole batch that exist only because of a single ingredient. But is a coffee stout remotely similar to a coffee schwarzbier?

If I were to play armchair psychologist, I would say we have this sprawling list because Charlie Papazian, a scientist, finds order in categories. Styles are an art, though. The purpose of having them at all is to bring coherence to a vast diversity of beers--not to merely create a name for every single variation.

What Style Creep Tells Us

Just what the Brewers Association needed: two more beer styles. For those of you not keeping track, that brings the total to 141.

This year’s review of over 140 different beer styles is now complete. The Brewers Association 2009 Beer Style Guidelines was released today. Each year the Brewers Association reviews the beer style guidelines that provide the basis of many important international beer competitions.

Many categories were revised or further refined based on industry trends, preservation of traditions and concerns expressed by judges at various national and international competitions.

I will spare you yet another rant about how this style creep is unnecessary and silly. (A rant that would surely include pointing out that designations like "coffee-flavored beer" in no way constitute a beer style.) It is a frankenstein's monster built of the desire to please everyone in marketplace ("American style ice lager," "Wood- and Barrel-Aged Pale to Amber Beer"). These aren't style guidelines, they're a catalogue of all styles ever brewed.

Ah, but herein lies a lesson, perhaps. American breweries are now experimenting so expansively with style, method, and ingredients that a great percentage of beers don't hew to traditional styles. This is a good thing. The Brewers Association errs in trying to capture this by creating special categories for every method or ingredient used. A strong ale is a strong ale whether it's aged in a bourbon barrel or not. But their silly descriptives point out what rich diversity we currently enjoy.

Doc Alworth's Healthful Olde-Time Nutritional Stout Tonic and Flu Virus Remedy

A hundred years ago, milk stouts were regarded as nutritional. This was no doubt the function of a clever ad campaign by Mackeson, but it worked. Much like Americans now dose themselves with echinacea, in pre-war England they prescribed a glass of stout. I have attempted to revive the practice under the theory that if I'm going to get a placebo effect, it might as well come from stout.

In my basement is a slightly failed homebrew that strikes me, in my addled delirium, as something like a perfect health tonic. It's a stout of reasonable heft (export stout strength) with a couple ounces of Dagoba chocolate and one and a half chipotles. The failure came with the chipotles, which contributed WAY more fire than they were intended.* My goal was to extract almost no fire but a bit of the smoke. I wanted a stout with a flavor complexity drinkers would be hard pressed to identify; I ended up, more or less, unintentionally making Roots Habanero Stout.

But I may be onto something. Stouts, as we've established, are healthful. Chilis are loaded with Vitamins, B, C and carotene. They reduce pain, fight cancer, and lower cholesterol and insulin levels. And very recent findings show that theobromine in chocolate is more effective than codeine at relieving coughs (also tastier--but less fun). I believe two bottles of this beer might be more effective than a mug of echinecea or a slug of NyQuil.

I will test the hypothesis and complete this post on the morrow with my findings.

______

The morrow.
One program note: I couldn't drink two beers, and the one hit me, as Sally sometimes says, like a mallet to the head. Today I awoke with a cheese grater lodged in my throat. The trajectory is downward, as precipitously as the economy's. Would the descent have been sharper still had I skipped the stout? Surely. This is damn little consolation.

Back to bed.

_____________
*This is odd, because I was extremely conservative in my use. I purchased both the little black/red chipotles (morita), which are sweeter but less smoky, and the larger, spicier, smokier brown ones (tipico) I tested them out by steeping in water to determine quality and then decided to try one of each. I cut them in half, removed the seeds, and used only half the brown pepper. I prepped them by scorching in a skillet until the oils were roused, and then soaking in hot (not boiling) water for a half hour. Only then did I add them to the carboy just one day before bottling. Ah, the best laid plans.

Is This What Death Feels Like?

It burns, it burns! I have some kind of impending flu, the primary symptom of which is a pain I can only believe comes from rotting bone marrow. The cough and headache are amusing distractions by comparison. So blogging will slow.

Fortunately, good stuff at Beer Around Town (Fallen Friar Review), It's Pub Night (Vertigo Brewing review), Hops and Barley (beer tax!), Brewpublic (nice piece on East Burn), Brew Site (beer reviews), and something about an IPA taste-off I don't really understand.

I'll be off to die now.

Fundamentally Dishonest

I will use one of my allotted beer tax slots to highlight a particularly dishonest and misleading component of the backers' PR push. It has been successful enough that reporters now regularly parrot the talking point as if it's a part of the public policy under consideration. To wit:

The present tax translates into less than a penny per 12-ounce beer. It's about the lowest in the country, unchanged for 32 years.

The higher tax would tack a 15-cent tax on 12 ounces, a 20-cent tax on a pint.

That comes from an article in Thursday's Oregonian--though the calculation of the tax in terms of cost to the customer on a per-glass basis is ubiquitous. It's pure spin, and it's absolutely neither fact nor a part of the policy.

1. The bill proposes an excise tax on beer at the production side, not a retail tax. No one has any idea how much the excise tax will affect beer prices.
2. Backers use this framing device to minimize the perceived effect of the tax. This is political spin, not fact. Rather, it seeks to obscure fact. Some people use a different word for language that obscures fact.
   
3. Pinning the tax to a phony per-glass cost has the additional advantage of hiding who actually pays the tax. Consumers are asked to think they're picking up a very modest cost to pay for a large public benefit. Great politics, pure BS.

If any reporters happen to stumble onto this post, recognize that by identifying the costs using the spin of the beer-tax proponents, you are participating in the politics of the debate. That's not reporters' job, and my guess is the ones doing it aren't aware of the mistake.

One Mystery Solved

I won't embed this--I don't want it on my site--but I think this ad resolves the question about the orientation of the makers of Lucky Buddha beer. (Background here.) Uggh.

Ninkasi Release

I'm pretty bad about announcing events, but this one caught my eye: Ninkasi is releasing their latest beer tonight. They came out of the gate with a fairly stable line-up and haven't added to it much in the past year, so this is good news indeed.

7-9 pm, Saraveza
1004 N Killingsworth St.; 503-206-4252.

Spring Reign- Spring forward with this new ale! Biscuit malt provides a rich toasty malt note upfront that is balanced with bright hoppy noted from American hops. It is like a British Pale with American hops. Simcoe, Santiam, and Ahtanum hops round out the aroma and flavor. 6% alc./vol. 38 ibus.

Brewer Jamie Floyd will be on hand to dole out samples and charm you. According to John, it's also already on tap around town, notably at Henry's, Cassidy's, and Red Star.

PETA Joins the Beer Tax Debate

Okay, this is pretty amusing. I submit it without comment. (Though in the interest of full disclosure, I will note, apropos of having offended Ralph below, that I am a vegetarian. I do not support a meat tax.)

After learning that Oregon State Representative Ben Cannon is proposing a huge tax increase on beer, PETA [director Sarah King] fired off a letter to Cannon urging him instead to propose a 10-cent "sin" tax on every pound of meat sold in grocery stores and restaurants in order to keep beer cheap and Oregonians (and their economy) healthy.

The letter, which you can read in its entirety here, is mostly summed up in Sarah King's opening paragraph.

As an Oregon native and a beer aficionado, I was extremely interested to read about the bill that you recently sponsored to increase Oregon's tax on beer. On behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our more than 2 million members and supporters worldwide, including thousands of Oregonians, I'd like to propose an alternative that would keep beer—a product that's important to the state's economy—affordable, yet still bring in needed revenue: an excise tax on meat. A 10-cent "sin" tax on every pound of chicken, turkey, pig, fish, and cow flesh sold in grocery stores and restaurants would not only raise funds but also help stop climate change and reduce health-care costs.

I don't know if this is a good idea in terms of public policy, but it does shine a rather bright light on the issue of externalities and the degree to which Oregon breweries should be picking up the tab for asserted public costs. The beer tax could be a pandora's box of new taxing ideas: meat, beer, wine, liquor, tobacco, potato chips, corn syrup, SUVs .... Okay, some are more persuasive than others. Still, once you start talking about costs to the state, you better be prepared to talk about other things, too.