[00:00:04] Speaker A: The rise and fall of the original electrolyte beer.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: One man's quest to screw all the.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Breweries in New Jersey freehouse is going to the courthouse.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: This is it's. All beer.
Welcome to it's all. We are recording this on November 30, which I don't have to tell you is National Personal Space Day. I celebrate the day with traditional way by shutting all but the bare minimum human contact, maintaining at least a healthy and at worst and awkward distance from those I do encounter, and regarding anyone who could be described as a people person or a hugger with a mix of fear, suspicion, contempt. I'm Jeremy Jones.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: That's why you want to do this podcast remote tonight?
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Why I want to do every podcast remote, Tyler? I say because I have a kid, but actually that's been an elaborate lie.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: You just hired a child actor?
[00:01:02] Speaker B: No, I actually hired a midget.
He's adorable. His name is Steve. He comes over every once in a while.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: I just imagine a midget who looks like your son walking out of your house, just ripping a cigarette, being like, fucking weirdo, man.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Fucking, fucking cheap son of a bitch.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Won'T even give me health insurance.
Told the other midgets we should have unionized.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: The weird thing is he is growing, so I attribute that to the high quality food he gets here. Tyler, how did you celebrate National Space Day?
[00:01:46] Speaker A: First of all, didn't know it was that, but I worked, saw a lot of people, and then went and got a little tour of gemste brewing from our good friend Chris.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: So ignored it altogether because it sounds like you engage with humanity a lot, which is not what this holiday is about. This holiday used to be about something, and now it's got all commercialized. And there's National Personal Space Day cards. National Personal Space Day gifts.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Space suit.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a guy in a red suit who comes and hugs you, which is completely against the spirit. National Personal Space Day has gotten way too commercial. That's all I'm saying.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: Honestly, if I would have known, I would have tried to buy, like, an astronaut suit and be like, it's National Personal Space Day.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Everyone would have been like, wrong space.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Nice.
How is Chris? And how is Gem State Brewing going these days?
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Chris is doing good. He's ready to be open. The building is beautiful and fantastic.
He's got beers in the tank right now.
Got to say, that ten barrel brew system he has looks very sleek and sexy.
Tried a couple of the beers off the tank. Tried his IPA and oatmeal stout they are tasting good during the fermentation process as well as they taste.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: While fermenting, which is okay, a beer mid fermentation often tastes like, oh, this is hopefully going to be really good in a couple of weeks.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: I can see where this is going.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: To be really good when it's not too sweet and riddled with diacetal and uncarbonated. This is going to be fucking fantastic if all those things get cleared up, and usually most of them do. What are you drinking tonight?
[00:04:04] Speaker A: I am drinking some Bourbon County brand stout from Goose Island.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: You corporate whore.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: You're just as much as I am.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Jeremy, if not more. How is it this year?
[00:04:19] Speaker A: It is delicious. It's honestly one of my favorite barrel age beers every year. It's boozy. It's rich, silky, little bit of chocolate notes coming through. Get some of that vanilla from the barrel and yeah, I couldn't bring myself to buy one of their variants because hard for me to stomach $30 for a 16 ounce bottle.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: I was about to ask you if you had gotten a hold of the Bananas Foster because in my position I've not had to buy one. But I have had the Bananas Foster and I was surprised how much I actually dug it.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: I've heard a lot of people say it's fantastic and I'm like, I want to try it, but I don't want to buy the bottle. So I just need to sucker someone into buying it while I'm around and popping the mean.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Really you just need to work where.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah, Jeremy, I used to work where you don't pay me enough.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: It's a really handy well, you don't get paid in money where I work. That's very passe. You get paid in job satisfaction and free booze and if I'm being completely honest, mostly free booze.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Jeremy, what are you drinking tonight?
[00:05:49] Speaker B: I went ahead and grabbed because when we do release this podcast, it will be December, so it will be officially Christmas season. I went ahead and grabbed the freem Belgian style Christmas ale because it seemed like well, A, I wanted to try it and B, it seemed like the time to do so.
It is a Belgian style, I think, alcohol wise, I think it's a Belgian double.
It's got a really nice slight spicy like baking spice, cinnamon, maybe like a touch of doughy caramel on it as well.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: It's amazingly smooth like with notes of fig and caramel.
The spice is present but it's super subtle in true style of a Belgian beer. This is a fantastic winter spicedale. It's very nice.
Not sure if they list what is actually in it.
The notes on the back. We suggest foregoing cookies and milk and leaving Santa a free Belgian Christmas ale brewed with coriander in a rich duble base. Its toffee aromas and hints of ripe oranges will leave Santa feeling mean.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: I think Santa would appreciate for any children listening, I think Santa would appreciate beer over milk and cookies. But that's just my opinion. And also why are you listening to this podcast if you are a child?
[00:07:33] Speaker B: That is actually an old it was Calvin comes out and says, dad, do you think Santa wants cookies of milk? And his dad Riley answers, I think Santa would rather have a cold beer.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: I never read.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Should I have the complete Calvin and Hobbes? It's in the bookshelves behind me, which, among many other useless things the point is that your diploma is in that bookshelf. No, actually, it's hanging up there where I can throw things at it.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Natty Light didn't even want your diploma.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: I mean, it's not that he didn't want it, it's that we didn't know about it in I, and I didn't get on it. My high school diploma is over there. Does that help? I found it over there recently, and it's doing exactly as much as my college diploma.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: I don't even know if I have my high school diploma.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: I don't think you have a high school diploma. You went to a high school in northern Idaho. Do they have diplomas there?
Or do they just say, listen, you're not addicted to meth and you're not pregnant. Congratulations. Go out into the world because they.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Give the diplomas to the Pragers people, too?
[00:08:56] Speaker B: That's your argument? No, they let you graduate if you're preggers. Otherwise there'd be no graduating class.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Hey, I'm sure I've told you before, I'll never forget, I watched the most savage thing ever in high school, a pregnant girl. Because my high school is up on a hill. All the students had to park at the bottom of the hill, and then you had to walk this little trail up to the high school. The teacher's parking lot was up at the top of the hill with the high school.
Well, one of the pregnant girls asked the principal, hey, I'm pregnant. Can I park up in the teacher's parking lot? And he looked at her straight face and went, honey, if I let all the pregnant girls park in the teacher's parking lot, all the teachers would have to walk up that hill.
And I was like, oh, shit.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: Imagine that comment. In the age of social media.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: Paul.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: That would have been a whole thing by itself.
That would be at least a week on Fox News and then a counter week on all.
It'd be a clusterfuck. And speaking of clusterfucks, Tyler, do you want to kick us off this week?
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
Little update about the funeral of Anchor Brewing.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: It's coming back, man. It's coming back. Any minute now, it's going to pop that coffin lid open. Be like, surprise. The employees bought us. Everything's fine now. Everything is fine, and we're going to.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Continue making and then that coffin is going to spontaneously combust, and everyone's going to be like, well, guess we were attending a cremation.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: It's going to be fine, everybody. It's going to be fine.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: I saw this article from the Drinks Business.
The last known final kegs of Anchor Brewing are going to be tapped on December 9 in San Francisco. So if you're like Jeremy, and you're a sucker for the soft spot of Anchor Brewing and want to see it live and want one final pint, get your ass down to San Francisco, brave the bums and San Francisco and venture into Buzwords, based in the south of Market area of San Francisco at noon on December 9.
And they will have the last kegs of Anchor. They will have anchor steam Beer anchor chris Pilsner anchor tropical Hazy IPA anchor san Poncho Mexican style lager. Anchor west coast IPA anchor california Lager. And some of the anchor Christmas ales.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Some of the anchor Christmas sales.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Yes.
I don't know if they've sellered some of it or just have the Anchor Christmas Ale. And the article just worded it poorly.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: A couple of things I just want to interject here. First of all, I mostly bring up anchor is going to come back to annoy you. And also in San Francisco, you don't brave the bums, the bums brave you.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: It's like in Australia, it's easier to list the things that won't kill you versus the things that will.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: And it's amazing to me the amount of people who are looking for Anchor have not heard about the demise of Anchor and who are a little bit apoplectic as to its demise.
They just went away.
Well, they didn't go away. They got bought by Sapporo some years ago. And Sapporo said, we don't want to you no longer make yeah, actually they just kind of went away.
Well, do they brew the Christmas ale? Well, actually, yeah, they did brew the Christmas ale and then they dumped it because Sapporo is actually surprisingly bad at running businesses.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm like, you could have sold that whole fucking batch like that if you were just like, yep, this is the last Christmas ale ever. Everyone would have been like, I will take three of them.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: That would have been a nice last hurrah. But supporto doesn't give a fuck.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: But this is, in my mind, the final nail in that coffin keeping them from rising from the dead. This is cheers to anchor. Let's take one last mediocre look down memory lane and let's move on with our lives. After this.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: They're going to pop back up, they're going to do the Thriller dance, and.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Someone'S going to double tap him in the forehead and close that casket again.
Jeremy, what do we got next?
[00:14:25] Speaker B: What the fuck is happening in New Jersey news now?
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Do you really want to know?
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Okay. In the purview of craft beer, yes, I do. Anything else? I don't. In fact, I make it my business to find out.
I try to find out as little as I can about New Jersey. I had to break that personal rule a lot in the past couple of days researching this story.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: That's journalism right there, folks.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: Listen, I had to look up the New Jersey State Constitution for you bastards, and I hope you're goddamn happy.
A lot has been happening in New Jersey lately, but a lot of it has been in fits and starts until now. It was hard to get a reading on what exactly the status of everything was, but it sort of kind of came to a head this week. Bottom line, New Jersey is in the running for the worst beer laws in the country.
I think you and I should sit down and do a whole episode on just the beer laws and try to suss out which one has the worst beer laws because we've talked a lot about a lot of them, but we've not like, you know how much work.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: That would be to sit there and fucking us to coordinate all of this?
[00:15:49] Speaker B: It'd be something we have to do for an end of the season special to sit down and be like, okay, here are the beer laws we talk about and here's why they're fucked up and debate on which one is the worst one. But regardless the fuckery in New Jersey, it's got to be a contender, all right?
So much so that this summer the New Jersey legislature voted unanimously. They voted unanimously. They fucking voted unanimously for a beer that would ease restrictions in that state.
I want to stress unanimously because can you think of anything that lawmakers in any state would agree on? Like, I think if you went to most state houses with giant tanks of pig shit and told them that you're going to hose down the entire chamber unless they voted against it, there would be some fat son of a bitch with a pocket full of cash from, I don't know, big excrement or something. Who would argue that was good for the economy to or the pig farmer.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: That sold the pig?
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Yeah, there would be somebody who would screw it up. But in this case, they voted unanimously and the pig shit got spewed. Anyway, but before we get into that, I want to do a little recap because we talked about New Jersey's beer laws before, but it's been a while and we could use a refresher. So here's the rundown.
In New Jersey, in order to sell beer, wine, or liquor, you need a liquor license. However, in New Jersey, like many states, they cap the number of licenses to the population. So if you're trying to open a bar or restaurant that would like to serve the boozy booze and there are no licenses available, well, what do you do? Well, good news. New Jersey is like one of those states where you can sell your license on the secondary market, where in that state they fetch as much as 1.15 million in 2016.
Jump change depending on who you are.
But if you're going to open a brewery, there is another option. You could get a limited brewery license that's a lot cheaper. But again, all of this is not uncommon for many states who usually finagled the rise of craft beer with a special license to kind of allow it to happen, to try to capitalize on it. But these little upstart breweries then take business away from established bars and restaurants, which usually goes over as well as a fart church or whatever colorful expression you have up there in St. Mary's.
But it's not unheard of for the state trying to establish a kind of a balance between the popular new business and the interests of their big business, sugar daddies. But New Jersey's were well and truly crazy. So first, a brewery was not allowed to serve food at all.
You could not order off a menu. There was no snacks. You couldn't have popcorn in a bowl to give away. You could have beer. And that's it. That's your nutrition.
To which you might say, it works. To which you might say, well, well, thank God we live in an age where food trucks are everywhere. New Jersey law prohibits any food truck from parking on the property of a brewery and actually prohibits a brewery from coordinating with a food truck, which I still not sure how they can manage to do that, but it apparently is a law. You cannot say, hey. You cannot, for example, have the menu of a food truck in the brewery and then they order in the food truck, like, races down the street, throws them through the window or some shit.
Second, a brewery can only have 25 events per year, which we talked about this last year, which begs the question, what counts as an event? And the answer is, pretty much anything that isn't selling beer to people. Like, try to enhance this experience in any way. Beer release party trivia. Banned. Yeah, banned. Some guy dancing on the table.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Bam.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: That's one of your 25 a year.
Here's a fun one. I don't think I'd covered this one when we did this one. I found this one when I was looking through the laws myself. All breweries are required to give a tour of the facility, whether you want one or not. And by the way, you have to be taken on a tour every year. And the breweries have to figure out a way to keep track of their regular customers to make sure they get a tour of the brewery every year.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I know.
Georgia had that law, like, the only time you could drink in a brewery was on a brewery.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: So but it's like, you have to take a tour every year that I thought was especially charming and in a way like, all right.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: I'm like, you really question the dedication some people have to their favorite brewery. They'd be like, Fuck, yeah. I'll walk around every year. Can I do it every time?
And you know, the brewers and the bartenders are just like, fuck this rule, all right?
[00:21:35] Speaker B: There are those customers that will honestly enjoy it, and those are both your best and worst customers.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: I mean, you love them. You love them dearly, and you also hate them with a burning passion. There is no middle ground.
But also I'm pretty sure a lot of those tours were stand over here. There's our fermenters. Fuck this state. Let's go drink.
They're not allowed to serve alcoholic drinks unless they are made on premises.
Here's a favorite of mine. They are not allowed to make cocktails of any sort, which of course counts beer cocktails, which is not a big restriction, but it does mean no Micheladas or other red beer combinations, no fun secret menus, no traditional style gozas with syrups. Basically, if you have two liquids, the law says you could pour one of those liquids into a glass, but neither in the twain they shall meet. Like, if the two of those liquids come together, you have a broken state law.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Which means breaking the law. Breaking the law. Breaking the law.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: Essentially, the spill tray is a federal crime.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: Fuck it should be a federal crime.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: There are other restrictions, but these were the most restrictive and frankly, most ridiculous.
They were also rather shittily enforced. For the longest time, food was a well known issue that breweries couldn't serve food. But it seems that a lot of breweries were doing events nearly every week like most breweries do, and nobody was really checking to make sure that people weren't doing that. There weren't random liquids getting mixed together at inopportune, you know, in a bar setting or later in the back for the bit of fun.
The short version of the story, that's.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: How you get VD. Jeremy.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Short version of the story.
COVID happened. All rules went out the window. Then after COVID, the state regulators, in order to regain some control, broke out all these rules and started to enforce them.
I get the sense they started to enforce them with the ferocity and single mindedness of the high school hall monitor on his first day.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: A lot of these breweries learned about a lot of these state laws. I just mentioned really for the first time, especially learning that their rules against you couldn't serve tea or coffee in your brewery.
But the breweries banded together. They brought these issues to their state representatives and Bill S 300:38 was created. This bill would allow breweries to sell food and, yeah, talked to food trucks.
They would allow 25 off site events a year and unlimited events in the brewery. Like I said in the intro, that passed unanimously. It got sent to Governor Phil Murphy, who promptly returned it with a conditional veto.
And now as I was reading this, what at first, I have to say, when I was reading through this, at first I was on the governor's side because this was the quote that he came back with. He said the bill, quote does not sufficiently enhance our antiquated liquor license laws. He added that quote. He called for a more modern approach to these prohibition era laws to reflect the current economy and better support the present and future business owners, which, yeah, my stance from the get go. The problems are not the restrictions per se. The real problem is the draconian liquor license system that incentivize those who already have theirs to scream, fuck you, I got mine. You can't have yours to the next.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: But I'll sell you mine.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Yeah, but I'll sell you mine for a million dollars while those who and those who have the liquor license have no interest for the system to change. The simple fact this is just the kind of regulatory bullshit that stifles competition makes for worse products and services and keeps the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. So fuck them. And I was more the little gleeful that there was actually a governor saying that he was going to treat not just treat the symptoms, but actually treat the disease.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: And then you read the rest of.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: The quote, and then I read the rest of the story, except as I dug further, it turned out that wasn't what he was saying at all. What he basically wants is to keep the whole terrible system as it is with two minor tweaks. First, he wants to fix the so called pocket licenses, which is to say, if you have a license and haven't renewed it for a year, then it gets reissued for public sale, which fair enough. According to a related bill that was brought earlier this year in New Jersey, an estimated 1400 inactive licenses are out there preventing people from getting them. Like, there are 1400 people just sitting on a liquor license doing fuck and all with them.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: All right?
[00:27:33] Speaker B: And so that seems like okay, that does make a bit of sense.
Second, he wants a special permit, especially for establishments within shopping malls.
Shopping malls. The face you're making people if you're listening, you can't see it, but I can see it. The face that Tyler is making is exactly the face you're making in your car or whatever right now, which is akin to what the actual fuck, which.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Is the correct it sounds like Governor Numb Nuts is trying to open a bar or fucking brewery in a shopping mall.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: That would make more sense because have you been to a shopping mall recently? And I'm not talking around Christmas when the remaining stores put up an effort. I mean, on a Tuesday in, like, April, it looks like the end result of an 80s zombie apocalypse movie where the plucky team of survivors were holed up.
I went to a mall earlier this year.
I needed jeans, and I didn't want to order them online. And I was like, well, there's got to be a place in town that sells jeans. So I went to the mall, and what I saw was the end.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Jeremy, your 80s is showing.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: I was aware of my mistake immediately. I was right there. I'm like, they probably have could you not find the Sears somewhere in that gigantic fuck building? They had to have had jeans and the answer was they did. But no prices on them, no sizes on most of them. They just had jeans thrown around.
I walked out.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Jeremy just walked out muttering, I wish I still had the Sears catalog. They knew how to do it right.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: Get the fuck off my lawn.
I'm basically the old man who like the last old man that's like, you know what? I'm breaking out the old rotary phone. Why doesn't this fucking thing work anymore?
That is where I am in life. You'll get there too.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: The sad part is I'm not far behind.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Unless I'm truly mistaken. And maybe the good governor is trying to open a series of bars in fucking New Jersey or fucking New Jersey malls. I don't know. That would explain something.
Either way, the reason that leaves the Breweries of New Jersey right now essentially in limbo, because there seems to be, and I'm not exactly sure why, but there is an easing of restrictions while the law was going through.
The seemed you got the sense that a lot of New Jersey breweries were caught off guard when these laws started actually being started being enforced. And because the law in all likelihood was going to change because again, it passed unanimously, it seemed like state regulators were not eager to enforce it. So there was like this like, okay, well, the law is probably going to change, so we'll just kind of let some things slide. But come January 1, it sounds like the hall monitor is back and if the bill does not get signed, then.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Is the governor up for reelection next year?
[00:31:20] Speaker B: Now we're getting to the part that here's where I had to go and read the state constitution. So, all right.
Phil Murphy kind of an asshole. He's a banker, okay?
He's got his business daddies.
I don't claim to know his motivations, but I don't trust him at all, mostly because of the banking thing.
Here's the thing. So a conditional veto unless there's something I'm really not understanding about the New Jersey legislature, that means that the legislature basically could do one of two things at this point in time. They could come back with a simple majority vote, just give the governor what he wants and move on, right? Just say, okay, both those things are one of those things is useful. One of those things is stupid. Whatever. It would help our local breweries. Let's just pass it. I'm also fairly certain the legislature could just override the governor with a two thirds majority. And again, this passed unanimously. So the votes are there. What I can't figure out and what I can't find anywhere was why this is not an option. Every source characterizes this as basically the governor holding the breweries hostage. But what he essentially did was that he got the bill, he wanted some changes, he punted it back to the legislature, who, I don't know. They cried and shit their own pants.
This might be nothing. This might be some political showboating before they do their fucking jobs. But in the meantime, breweries are a little bit curious as to what they will or will not be able to do in a fucking month.
Once in a while I come across the think piece that is basically asking the question, why have Americans lost faith in their institutions? This okay, this is the fucking reason. They're essentially making Breweries watch a billionaire government sex party complete with leathers writing crops and impossibly large dildos. And the future of their business depends on the outcome of it, whatever they may be. So they have to sit there and watch the fuck party.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: And they're then watching the hourglass running as quickly as possible of the time that the bank loan is coming due while watching them move in a sloth pace to get something done. And they're like, oh my God, is this going to finish in time?
[00:34:05] Speaker B: I wouldn't be a bit surprised that if like zero hour, the legislature comes, that's and that's a part of this I don't understand.
And there very well be something about this process that I don't understand.
I don't understand New Jersey. I don't understand law. I pretend to quite often on this podcast more than is probably.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: Legally acceptable.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: Probably.
Listen, if you're getting your legal advice from it's all beer, you have many, many problems.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: You need to start putting this on retainer.
[00:34:46] Speaker B: That's where this is going. Yeah, actually, you owe us a lot of money for that.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: If you're getting your legal advice from us, two idiots drinking beer and talking about beer and stupid shit, god help.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Your soul, but no shit. Really? A conditional veto means that the governor says, okay, but I want these changes. It goes back to the legislature and they vote and again it passes with a simple majority. Either they vote Yay to make the changes, they vote no.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: To kill the bill.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: To kill the bill. And I'm not completely convinced they can't do a two thirds majority to override the governor. Now that one I'm less sure about.
Now that is a condition for a straight up veto. Like, if the governor vetoes a bill, the legislature can then override him with a two thirds majority. Now why you couldn't do that in the case of this, I don't know. Again, not a lawyer, please don't, but please put us on retainer.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: So if I'm understanding correctly, he said, I'm not going to pass this bill that you have sent to me. As it is, you need to add these two things and I will pass this bill. Correct. So if they vote yes, bill is passed. Breweries can now have 20 offside events a year?
[00:36:18] Speaker B: 25.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: 25. Breweries can have unlimited events at the Tap Room. Correct. They can admit to knowing what a food truck is.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: Yes. Not only that, they can have a restaurant. They don't need to. Rely on food trucks. A lot of them probably will, but they can serve food at that point in time.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Okay. Why the fuck aren't they just voting yes and getting this the fuck over.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: Is the big question.
And so we're going to be watching New Jersey for the next month to see basically watch the micro.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: You got a mouse in your pocket? Because I ain't watching New Jersey.
[00:36:59] Speaker B: I feel like I have to because it's like watching in miniature the collapse of American society right there.
The solution is right there. The solution is right there.
All you need is for adults to do the job to which they've been assigned, and I'm looking forward to watching that not happen.
[00:37:24] Speaker A: Yeah, what I'm waiting to hear is in like two weeks, you'd be like, well, so New Jersey actually that bill didn't go through. They then passed another bill that just completely banned the sale of micro or craft produced beer.
And you can only get domestics and liquor and protein powder in New Jersey.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: Now, fun fact, per capita, New Jersey is number 44th in the nation for craft breweries. And I wonder why.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: Well, they also do have a fairly high population, too.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Well, no, that's per capita.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: True.
I don't know.
I feel the laws are like 80%, but not the full reason.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: You don't think there are New Jersey hipsters?
[00:38:27] Speaker A: No, they all live in Brooklyn.
[00:38:32] Speaker B: That's the real problem. All the hipsters in New Jersey migrated to the city, leaving only angry teamsters and a few mafia rejects.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: And Guidos.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Your northern Idaho is showing. Tyler, what do you got?
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Hey, it's a pizza place. That's what I was talking about.
Well, staying in the Northeast, a minority shareholder of Treehouse Brewing is suing the two majority shareholders and he is requesting his day in court via a jury trial.
So Eric Granger. He is a 2% shareholder in Treehouse Brewing.
Apparently there used to be two more minority shareholders, but the two majority shareholders bought them out earlier this year to get 49% each of the company.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: So he's the loan holdout.
[00:39:49] Speaker B: He's the last person to have less than like 49%.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: Yeah. So there are three owners of Treehouse, and one of them is suing the other two.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: The two percenter?
[00:40:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
He is alleging that the pair paid themselves in excess, concealed millions in real estate investments, all while cheating him out of profits.
He filed the lawsuit with the Hamden Superior Court on November 15.
So if you're unfamiliar with Treehouse, they are beloved by New England beer lovers. They've been around since 2011. One of the kind of main brewers of the initial hazy IPA, new England style IPA, often like wave, often there's.
[00:40:48] Speaker B: Most people credit hetty topper from the alchemist with the invention of the hazy IPA, but there are a few that actually give the credit to Treehouse.
I was going to make a calculus connection between Newton and the other guy. Who had met a calculus at the same time. But that guy's name just left my brain. So I was going to be smart. And then I failed.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: Which is actually going to be the title of my autobiography. I was going to be smart.
Well, the lawsuit says von Leeden there we go. Okay, continue.
[00:41:35] Speaker A: Says that Treehouse attracts about a million customers to their facility a year and has garnered a combined annual economic impact of $143,000,000 in Massachusetts alone.
So Granger is alleging that the bulk of the benefits were wrongfully funneled to Nathan Lanier and Damien Goodreau, the majority shareholders.
So here's kind of where it really like. Here's what the allegations are.
So, from 2017, he alleges salaries and bonuses for their officers exceeded $4 million, and Lanier and Goodreau repeatedly purchased ultra luxury vehicles, including two Teslas, a Range Rover, Mercedes, and an Audi for personal use.
[00:42:38] Speaker B: Are you those ultra luxury?
[00:42:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I was like Tesla or Range Rover or depending what they're luxury, sure.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: But ultra luxury, that strikes me as like you've got a football size RollsRoyce Field limousine with basically a rotating sushi table at all times and helicopters who are dropping champagne through the sunroof of the limousine to land onto a pad that then bounces it into a thing of ice that you then open. That's how rich people live, right?
[00:43:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:27] Speaker B: I think closer luxury.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: He says, by contrast, he was deprived of any dividend distributions.
So he also alleges that the majority shareholders secretly created two LLCs in 2016 and 2018 and then used those entities to amass $13 million in real estate.
The properties included land in Charlton and a million dollar beachfront home near the Sandwich tap room. I'm surprised.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: Wait, is this money that came from the brewery?
[00:44:09] Speaker A: I don't know. The article doesn't specify.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: But he says by the idea that a brewery made a million dollars anymore.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: He said that through these LLCs, lanier and Goodreau then took the properties that they bought with the LLCs, leased the properties back to Treehouse to basically embezzle money from the company through renting them back. The shit they were able to buy based off their extraordinary salaries from the company.
[00:44:47] Speaker B: They had to have money coming from somewhere else. I mean, even a brewery like Treehouse, there is no way a million dollars comes out of a brewery.
Even a big one.
I'm pretty sure a million dollars doesn't come out of fucking New Belgium.
[00:45:06] Speaker A: Oh, 100% does?
[00:45:08] Speaker B: No, a million dollars is generated.
I'm convinced. A million dollars generated. But what actually comes out of that is, like, $5 and maybe a quarter that somebody found in their pocket, like, once all expenses paid.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: Those two since 2017 have been paid $4 million from the brewery in salary.
That was their salary since 2017 was $4 million.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: Again, I'm impressed that that money came out of a brewery. I guess there you got the Hayes Bros. Like, standing in line for like 20 hours willing to pay $10 per can while sipping on a cooler full of Hazes, going, man, this is going to be the best Hazy. It's going to be all like it's going to be like tropical and shit. It's going to taste like fucking mud and milk and pineapple. It's going to be great, man.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: Between 2016 and 2021, the two real estate LLCs collected nearly $10 million in payments from the company, the lawsuit claims.
[00:46:29] Speaker B: Again, that's amazing to me.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: There was a further spat where Granger threatened a lawsuit when he found out about the existence of these holdings.
He also then in this lawsuit alleges a spat of additional infractions where he brings up that treehouse was applying for a pouring permit in Deerfield, and the company unilaterally and without permission, changed the location address on his old background check and submitted an altered document where the Alcohol Beverage Control Commission then issued them a written warning for tampering with the document.
He also then states that the two majority shareholders withheld tax information, so it made it difficult to assess the value of his shares and delayed his ability to file taxes, incurring tax penalties on him.
So he is requesting a jury trial. A pretrial hearing has not been scheduled. Treehouse has not issued any statements or filed any other legal responses.
So hays Bros. There may be a battle for who owns your favorite Hazy.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: There are many breweries. They will line up around in that vicinity if Tree house shuts down. They'd be like, man, that sucked. The Hazys were the best. They tasted like orange juice and milk and the fucking remote, sad life. You want a Hazy, we're going to go to Brooklyn Brewing.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: Now I don't know if they transition to Brooklyn brewing.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: They're known for their hazy's to a certain extent, are they not?
[00:48:37] Speaker A: No, I'd say like, Trillium more than like, okay, fine.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: Fair.
Don't know. I don't know what goes on over there, man. We're in Idaho where we don't have any beer that's worth standing in line for.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: Even ironically, I've had treehouse. I don't think it's worth standing in line for.
[00:49:01] Speaker B: That's fair.
I've had beer. That's probably as good as you're going to get over there.
But there's a whole thing happening on that front that I do not understand, but I was not meant to understand it.
[00:49:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So moral of the story, never invest in a brewery or you're going to get mean.
[00:49:27] Speaker B: Now, if you're looking to just lose a shit ton of money, me and Tyler have recently started up a legal advice firm.
[00:49:38] Speaker A: If you want to piss away, like, you might actually get some good advice.
[00:49:43] Speaker B: From us, it'll be completely accidental. I want to stress this. If we give you anything useful, it's going to be by sheer shit luck. But if you do, I mean, a.
[00:49:55] Speaker A: Broken clock is right twice a day.
[00:49:58] Speaker B: But if you are just looking to flush money down the toilet. Yeah.
Zimmerman and Jones, attorneys at the bar.
[00:50:14] Speaker A: But it's not spelled like actual attorneys. It's a turn.
[00:50:18] Speaker B: And then the word turn e at the yeah.
Oh, I'm going to make that sign.
Oh, christmas present for each of us. Just put that above our respective offices.
[00:50:39] Speaker A: Should we hop into the last article?
[00:50:42] Speaker B: Lost booze news. Now, every once in a while so the way a little peek behind the curtain. What happens is that we do a podcast, right, that me and Tyler run off to our respective lives. At some point in time, probably on like a Wednesday night, each of us says, fuck, fuck, fuck. I got to do the podcast. Tomorrow, we start frantically searching through news sites to figure out what we're going to talk about on the podcast. And every once in a while, I.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: Let the algorithm bring the stories to me.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: Every once in a while.
It's probably amazing that we don't come with the same story all the time, like, it's actually a pretty rare occurrence.
But every once in a while.
And this time, we both came with the finishing story. And the thing was that I had a whole thing about it, but Tyler was far more excited about it than I ever was. This was kind of a throwaway piece for me. I wasn't even sure I wanted to do it. But Tyler was all about it. Tyler, you take it away. What do you have to tell us?
[00:51:53] Speaker A: If I would have had more time, I was going to order the can of just, like, normal Gatorade, because Gatorade does cans. And I'm like, dude, that would be the perfect thing. Hungover just shotgun a fucking Gatorade and hydration straight to the dome.
But we both found this vine pair article talking about the rise in demise of Hoffengator, the Gatorade beer hybrid of the when I saw that article title, I was like, holy fuck.
The better for you. Electrolyte infused beers that were trendy like a year or two ago were basically just some shitty remake, kind of like most movies are nowadays.
[00:52:38] Speaker B: There's nothing new, Tyler. We've been doing the same shit over and over and over again for at least a hundred years.
Anybody who says that things were better back then is suffering from a mild case of delusion or at best, dementia.
At this point in time, nostalgia is a medical condition, and you should be taken away where someone can treat you for that.
[00:53:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So 1969, Gatorade launches hopping Gator, an electrolyte enriched alcohol top, basically.
[00:53:21] Speaker B: Now, what it actually was, was a bit of contention. So what I picked up from it was all right. So there was rumors that Dr. Robert Cade, who first who created Gatorade, he was the person who short version of the story.
There was this, how do we get our players in the Florida Heat to perform better? Dr. Cade went to his laboratory, combined water and electrolytes came out and said, I don't know, feed those monsters this shit. See if it helps.
[00:53:59] Speaker A: And it works.
[00:54:00] Speaker B: And Gatorade was born.
But what's lesser known was the fact that Dr. Cade was a bit of a booze aficionado, as evidenced by a 2001 Sports Illustrated article that referred to him as the absinthe minded professor and.
[00:54:17] Speaker A: Would make cocktails in class. I was like, where the fuck was this professor when I was in college?
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Now, the stories were that he fermented Gatorade, which I can't even okay, there are people listening to the podcast, maybe newly listening to the podcast right now that are listening to this, going fermented Gatorade and having a minor existential crisis.
But that's one idea of what he was just toying with, what new booze he could create. So he pitched some yeast into Gatorade to see what happens. The other idea is they just literally took Gatorade and beer and mixed them together.
[00:54:59] Speaker A: Nobody like summer. Sandy yeah.
[00:55:02] Speaker B: Nobody's sure what the fuck this thing was.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: Or did they just drop fucking grain alcohol in Gatorade?
[00:55:12] Speaker B: Exactly. So there's no specimens, I guess you could call it, that exist. There is no recipe that we could follow. All we have is the rumors and ideas from a time long past, and they are spotty at best. So we don't know what this shit was, which is although fascinating to me.
[00:55:40] Speaker A: So Pittsburgh Brewery did brew a one off 10,000 barrel nostalgia batch in 2004 of the product. So, I mean, the closest thing we really have is what Pittsburgh Brewing did in 2004 because they do have the rights to the beer, kind of.
[00:56:05] Speaker B: But do they have the recipe?
I think we both looked at the same article from Vine Pair by Sarah Pinnasalt, but I guess either the recipe doesn't exist or Pittsburgh Brewing has it and they ain't sharing it.
[00:56:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So give you a little backstory if you're trying to figure out what the fuck is going like Jeremy was saying, he created Gatorade, then created this boozy Gatorade that he called hopping Gator.
He then sold the Hopping Gator recipe, according to the article, to Pittsburgh Brewing Company, formerly Iron City, in 1969, which wasn't a huge shock to a lot of people because Pittsburgh Brewing Company was the first people to put beer into cans and snap tops on cans. So they were kind of known as the innovative, like, crazy guys. So when they bought it, it was not super out of character.
A few months after they put the first brand batch on the market, the company Gatorade sued them.
[00:57:33] Speaker B: Why? Tyler? Why did they sue them?
[00:57:35] Speaker A: Well, turns out when Kate sold the recipe to them, he was in the middle of a lawsuit with the University of Florida Board of Regents.
[00:57:47] Speaker B: Whom amongst us hasn't tried to sell a piece of intellectual property to one entity while at the same time being embroiled in a legal dispute with another?
Tale as old as time.
[00:58:01] Speaker A: They said since they provided the grant for his research, that they deserved a share of his profits or a share of the company of the product that he created.
The dispute lasted three years and resulted in the university obtaining 20% ownership of Cade's company, Gatorade.
No one knows who at Gatorade decided to enact legal action against Pittsburgh Brewing Company, but the case was settled in early 1970.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: The article seemed perplexed by this, but my response to that, have you met a lawyer?
[00:58:45] Speaker A: True.
[00:58:47] Speaker B: If you're pursuing a lawsuit and they're like, oh, by the way, there's this other brewery that's making basically a boozy version of this. They're like, and we're going to sue them, too.
[00:58:55] Speaker A: Fuck it has the word Gator in it. Fucking sue them. Fuck it.
[00:59:01] Speaker B: Sue them, too.
[00:59:02] Speaker A: They have a name that has something to do with a stone or a rock. Yeah, sue them.
[00:59:08] Speaker B: So they were perplexed. But this made complete sense to me. I was like, well, yeah, why not? Let's squeeze that rock for whatever comes out of it.
[00:59:18] Speaker A: So the brewery settled in 1970 and continued pumping up their electrolyte pack alcohol soda.
But hopping Gator struggled with their branding. The can art was clean and simple, but was branded as a lemon lime lager. And I'm sure in the 1970s, lemon lime beer went over like a fucking fart in a Baptist church.
[00:59:50] Speaker B: Well, except for the article does mention that this was a time of some strange experimentation.
It mentioned that Lone Star rolled out a lime lager around the same time National Brewing had a beer with Concord Grape Juice.
[01:00:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:00:12] Speaker B: Now, these are both the thing was that these were both pretty easy to explain. In the case of Lone Star, they're like, yeah, we took our beer. We added lime juice.
It makes it not taste like our beer, which is better and even more so. Something about National Brewery just makes me go, oh, that's got to be shit.
We mix it with Concord grape juice.
[01:00:39] Speaker A: Well.
[01:00:42] Speaker B: The point is that what they were doing was pretty much a straight line. We took our beer. We added this thing. Part of the problem with the boozy Gatorade, the hopping Gator, was that even the people selling it weren't sure what it was.
[01:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah, well, they decided to rebrand it and call it tropical flavored malt liquor. And apparently sales took off, especially in black communities in Georgia, South Carolina, and Detroit.
What I immediately thought of was the purple Monaco.
[01:01:25] Speaker B: The purple monaco.
[01:01:27] Speaker A: So Monaco has basically like a purple drink. Fucking really?
[01:01:33] Speaker B: Are you fucking serious? Shit, I did not know this.
That's another episode right there.
[01:01:41] Speaker A: And apparently the sales for it in urban and heavily populated African American communities are through the fucking roof.
Yep.
But Pittsburgh Brewing was not so fortunate just to have people be like, oh, that's off. Because some Pittsburgh locals began to take notice of the fact that Pittsburgh brewing company didn't have a single black employee on staff.
[01:02:20] Speaker B: Well, them and the NAACP stepped in.
[01:02:25] Speaker A: And started really trying to get people to boycot hoppingator and the brewery and suspicions of racism.
The boycott was short lived, but they got the brewery to vow to rectify its biases. Wow.
[01:02:47] Speaker B: It never didn't explain what the hell that meant.
[01:02:51] Speaker A: It meant about the same as founders going, we're going to try better not to be racist. I was like.
[01:02:58] Speaker B: Only printer.
[01:03:00] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm like, man, it is just a giant circle of life, man.
Steal something, buy something that someone shouldn't have sold you, and then target it to a minority group, then get yelled at for not employing any minorities. Be like, we're sorry, I guess. And everyone sweeps it under the rug to their defense.
[01:03:23] Speaker B: I'm not sure they targeted that group. That just happened to be the group that responded, and they just leaned into it, but with a bit of awkwardness that says, hey, you know what it looks like when a bunch of rich white people are just sending some stuff down to a black community?
Smallpox blankets. Smallpox blankets. Yeah, actually, it kind of looks like that. You want to maybe, I don't know, diversify? Maybe a little bit?
We'll say we will. Is that enough? It's a 1970s. That's what we're going to get.
[01:04:05] Speaker A: But with the trend of non alcoholic beverages making alcoholic versions with Hard Mountain Dew, hard Monster Vodka, Sunny D, we may see the rise of the alcoholic gatorade. Come back.
[01:04:25] Speaker B: Shut your whore mouth, Tyler. Shut your whore mouth.
I'm praying that the fact that my hope was that because this had already happened and failed, we wouldn't be plagued with it again.
[01:04:41] Speaker A: No, I am, like, doubling down. I want this bitch in a flat top church key style can that I have to fucking use a church key to open. I want to drink that and get hammered like it's 1970.
Yeah.
[01:05:01] Speaker B: I like the fact that I think what you had in your head you had something in your head right there, and it hit that filter, and like, I shouldn't put this out in the world.
And so you just ended with, yeah, your northern Idaho was about to really come out, and all its white tank tops and stained underpants glory. And you're like, no, the filter hit.
[01:05:35] Speaker A: That and was like, motherfucker, you have a filter.
[01:05:39] Speaker B: It's very adorable.
The thing I took away from it, ads at the time referred to it. I mean, again, they didn't know what the hell they were marketing, and they literally called it, quote, a bold new drinking thing, which listen, bold new drinking thing that could accurately describe butt chugging.
If you don't know what that and by the way, if you don't know by now that if you don't know what something is and someone says Google it, you should absolutely not Google it. You should just live in ignorance. Live in ignorance.
[01:06:21] Speaker A: Tennessee chugger man.
[01:06:22] Speaker B: The Tennessee Chugger live in blissful ignorance for the rest of your days. Don't google it.
But now you have no choice but to Google it. The choice is between you and your god. Tyler, do we have anything else tonight?
[01:06:42] Speaker A: That about wraps it up. Unless you are looking to buy a Miller Light branded Nutcracker that is actually a beer bottle opener. They're doing that for their holiday sale.
[01:06:55] Speaker B: But outside of that, Miller Light is doing that.
[01:06:58] Speaker A: Yep. Although I was never able to get the Miller Light beer can fucking Christmas bulb. So anytime they release something cool like that, they never do enough that I can actually buy anything. So fuck that. I'm over it.
[01:07:15] Speaker B: I don't think you are, because you just brought it up. You just demonstrated that you were not over it.
[01:07:20] Speaker A: I'm processing. Okay?
[01:07:24] Speaker B: Tyler processes his past trauma. This has been it's all beer. If you want to get a hold of us, we've got an Instagram and Facebook, where I post the pictures of what we're drinking and some other random shit that I happen to find in my travels. You can find us at it's. All beer.
You can send us an email. It'sallbeer
[email protected] I check that approximately once per quarter. So if you've sent me an email well, I checked yesterday, there was nothing there.
But if you do want to ask Tyler in private what was going through his head when he just stopped and.
[01:08:06] Speaker A: Said, yeah, no taking that to Negra.
[01:08:15] Speaker B: Send us an email at it's
[email protected].
And ratings, I do say those for lack of anything else to say at.
[01:08:28] Speaker A: This point in time.
[01:08:29] Speaker B: You can throw those on itunes, on Facebook, you can listen to us on Spotify, you can listen to us on itunes and Google Play. Other things, I don't know anymore.
I throw this thing out and people listen to it and I don't really pay attention to what happens after that. I'm going to be 100% honest.
[01:08:56] Speaker A: I run into people and they're like, how do I listen to your podcast? I'm like, Wherever you get your podcast.
[01:09:05] Speaker B: I demonstrated earlier tonight that I am terrible at promotion. When we were having a meeting with the officers at our homebrew club, and all of them were both amazed and amazed and rather excited that I had a podcast and were even more amazed that I told them we were on episode 143.
So shout out to my homebrew club who apparently have just discovered this podcast.
Thank you.
[01:09:41] Speaker A: I just made your wife, your Life worse.
[01:09:46] Speaker B: Thank you for tuning in. And thank you for making me your marketing director for all two years. That was a poor decision. I think you are now realizing if.
[01:09:59] Speaker A: They where they are now, it's okay.
[01:10:03] Speaker B: I've taken on a new position there and everything will be fine now. Everything will be fine. It'll be quite enough from us. I'm Jeremy Jones.
[01:10:10] Speaker A: I'm Tyler Zimmerman.
[01:10:11] Speaker B: I'm gonna have a beer, have fun.
