New Brew Pub in Logan

The past couple of weeks, Logan has been a buzz with talk of a new brewpub opening downtown. Mikey at Utah Beer summed up it up in his blog. The biggest concern at present is whether or not the brew pub will smell. Sounds minor and sounds like Logan will have a brew pub soon.

I believe the current issue before the city council is a an ordinance change that will allow a brew pub. Then individual proprietors will have to go through the process of opening a new business under the ordinance terms.

*edit*
The proposal passed. And Mikey's summary of the history of brew eastablishments and prohibition in Logan is pretty interesting.

Local Drinking Song

So unexpected. Particularly for a school that hosts root beer pong.

More beer for old Utah State

Bring on the whiskey, we drink it straight

Send somebody after gin don’t let a sober person in

We may stagger, but we never fall

We sober up on wood alcohol

And when we’re through we’ll burn the hall

For the glory of Utah

StateRaw, raw, raw.

White Owl Closed

Some TNT mates and I gave some thought to hosting a New Years Eve party to raise money, but we thought we might have too much competition. If only we'd known!!!

I heard on NPR this AM that the White Owl is getting shutdown from Dec 31 to Jan 4 for serving a minor. According the Herald Journal, the White Owl has an incredibly strict underage drinking policy and the minor was let in by mistake.

Sunday Beer

The big story this week in Cache Valley is the sale of beer at the Nibley Maverick on Sundays. It turns out that Nibley (town south of Logan) just doesn't have a law against it. There is discussion of expanding beer sales to other cities in the Valley and Nibley may decide to write an ordinance prohibiting Sunday beer. So, get it while it's hot.

BTW, Mickey did a post on the liquor laws. Seems to be consistent with what I've learned. I think he left out the bit about 1oz of liquor limit in cocktails. Or maybe that's myth.

The next challenge, the skinny on how drinks change by venue. E.g. the Corona at Chili's is standard. At Et Toro, it's 3.2, but the Negro Modelo is standard. Everything at the White Owl is under 4%. I'm not sure I got that right, but I'm coming to understand that it's a little more complicated than I thought at first.

Malt Beverages

I was half listening to NPR this morning and heard something about a vote to change the status of malt beverages in Utah. I interpretted it as the 3.2 rule being overturned. This rule limits the beverage that can be sold in grocery/convenience stores/some restaurants to 3.2 percent alcohol by volume. This means that there is a whole class of low alcohol content beer and malt beverages marketed in Utah. Restaurants with hard liquor lisences and package stores (State stores) may sell normal content beer and other alcoholic beverages. I've been trying to untangle Utah liquor laws from the mythology. There are further rules about how alcohol can be served in restarurants and different classifications of restaurants (private clubs).

Anyways, the 3.2 rule is not being overturned as I had hoped. Nope, the State liquor regulators have voted to pull flavored malt beverages of the shelves of grocery and convenience stores (they were already less than 3.2 percent) because they are marketed to appeal to minors. There was some talk of taking this to the legislature, but that would have opened up the issue to unfortunate debate, so the requlators are just going to go forward based on the Alcoholic Beverage Control Comission vote.

Correction: "Also you refer to the alcohol limit in beer as 3.2% by volume. That's incorrect. The alcohol measurment your thinking of is by weight. Utah beer available in grocer/convenient stores maxes out at 4.0% by volume. Or 3.2% by weight. those are two different types of measurment." That's according to Mikey. I'll have to ask him what the impact is on the beer. Mikey seems to keep abreast of state/local liqour laws. He scooped NPR here. He also has some information on local beer related events.