Free the Hops, which claims 750 dues-paying members, has introduced two bills in Alabama: one to legalize home-brewing and the other to permit sales of beer with alcohol content of up to 13.9% by volume. Last week the state House approved the measure raising the alcohol limit in beer; the Senate is expected to take it up soon. The home-brew bill has not been scheduled for debate.
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In Bible Belt, brewing is a battle
Alabama beer lovers want to end curbs on making and drinking their beverage of choice. But Southern Baptists are having their say.
COLUMN ONE
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Arguing that alcohol can corrupt body, mind and soul, Alabama's Southern Baptists, a politically powerful group, are fighting to derail the 13.9% bill in the Senate.
The Bible contains many references to drinking; Jesus himself famously turned water into wine. But Joe Bob Mizzell, director of Christian ethics for the Alabama Baptist State Convention, prefers to quote from the Apostle Paul: "Be not drunk with wine but filled with the spirit."
Abusing alcohol, Mizzell concludes, "inhibits communion with God."
The Rev. Dan Ireland, a former preacher who leads an advocacy group billed as "Alabama's Moral Compass," has spent considerable time in the Capitol lobbying against the bill on practical as well as theological grounds. He says legislators seem responsive to his warnings that high-alcohol beer will endanger teenagers, making it easier for them to get drunk.
"We're losing too many kids now on the road because of drinking and driving. Why aggravate that?" says state Rep. DuWayne Bridges.
Stuart Carter, the president of Free the Hops, counters that most of the higher-alcohol beers do not appeal to teens. They're thicker, more complex, often more bitter. They're also considerably more expensive. To him, craft beers have nothing to do with getting drunk. They're all about flavor. To prove his point, Carter has been known to offer lawmakers an illicit taste of a Yeti Russian Imperial Stout, with 9.5% alcohol content.
"It looks like used engine oil -- black, thick, sticky. It will glue your lips to the glass," he says.
"The first taste you get is the bitterness. Then you taste coffee. Then dark chocolate. Then caramel, with a hint of plums or raisins. The aftertaste is pancake syrup," Carter says. "You give it to these legislators and the look on their face is priceless."
Back at the home-brew club in Harvest, a suburb outside the northern Alabama city of Huntsville, Free the Hops members are talking about the first time they experienced such a revelation.
