Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Catching up

I meant to post a link to this on Friday. The Birmingham News had a story on Free the Hops' Birmingham Budweiser boycott. Pretty well well done.

I spoke with Stuart Carter, FTH's president yesterday, and apparently the group is happy with the coverage. They feel the media has often gotten key points of their proposals wrong in the past, but that this story, in providing background on the organization and its goals, got it mostly right. An excerpt:

Beer can be sold in the same stores where wine is sold, but wine can be as much as 14.9 percent alcohol by volume. Robinson's bill would raise the allowable alcohol content of beer to the level of wine.

Hard liquors available at liquor stores can have much higher alcohol content. A pure grain alcohol, such as Everclear, is 95 percent alcohol by volume.

I was talking with Carter for tomorrow's column, by the way. It'll provide an overview of the group's plans for the Legislature this year.