Dangerous Beer Rule Proposal

When is a beer a beer and not ale, stout or malted liquor? Distinctions of this sort may sound trivial, but if some in the Legislature get their way, Sacramento will obliterate the lines and label all malted beverages sold in California as “beers,” even those with an alcoholic content as high as 17%.

Beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage. It’s unwise and dangerous to allow brewers to reclassify all malted beverages as beers without requiring them to inform consumers of the higher alcohol content. The bill calling for the change--legislation that has heavy support in the Legislature--should be rejected.

Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) is carrying SB 1796 on behalf of the beer industry. He maintains that his bill is needed to conform California’s antiquated labeling laws with federal standards used by 38 states. Problem is, there really are no federal standards on malted beverages. As a result, a number of states such as California have set their own standards for malted beverages, which generally have much higher alcohol content than beer.

In California, existing law specifies that a malted beverage can be called beer only if its alcoholic content is 5% or less by volume, 4% by weight. Malted beverages with higher alcoholic content must be labeled with other names such as ale, stout or malt liquor.

SB 1796 would eliminate these rules and allow establishments now licensed to sell only beer to sell the higher-content brews as beer. If the current distinctions are eliminated, the consumer would have no way of knowing the alcohol content of a brew because beers are not required to disclose that. At the least, proponents of SB 1796 should be willing to require disclosure on labels of the actual alcoholic contents of all varieties of malted beverages.

Downgrading California’s standards is not the answer. If beer makers want to eliminate the name distinctions of malted brews they should have to list the alcohol content of their products and accept sales restriction on some of the higher-octane brews.