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THINK YOU DON'T like IPAs? Too bitter, too intense? Many are. Tongue-numbingly resinous and paint-thinner strong, today's double and triple India Pale Ales have a few devoted, if masochistic, fans. But to those of us more interested in grace than grandeur, IPAs can be hard beers to love. Or even swallow. No longer. Showcasing new and experimental breeds of hops, the latest pale ales offer a welcome change of pace: nuanced flavor.So get them while you can: a fleeting, flickering burst of tropical sun in a northern winter. 1. Great Lakes Chillwave Double IPA (9.4% ABV): Hop-of-the-moment Mosaic bursts through...

The First Lady wants you to drink more water. On a call announcing Michelle Obama‘s newest healthy living initiative Wednesday, Let’s Move Executive Director Sam Kass explained that the White House is working with cities, private companies and public taps to promote the message to “drink up.” Participating companies include Brita, Poland Spring, Evian, Dasani, Voss and others, which will carry a “Drink Up” logo on their bottles, and participating cities include Chicago, Los Angeles county, Houston and, appropriately, Watertown, Wis., where the First Lady is visiting Thursday to kick off the initiative.

**SNIP** “We have a fiscal problem in this country. We’ve got to deal with it or we don’t have a country, so to kind of help make that point, just a little bit, I charge liberals just a little bit more. Really what I’m focused on is the fiscal differences between big government/small government and liberal ways, as far as entitlements and spending,” said Burnett, in a KSL.com report. Burnett says the extra money will go to support the conservative Washngton-based think tank, The Heritage Foundation. Burnett, also a pro-oil and gas activist, plainly lists prices for his drinks, with...

The sprawling Kentucky mansion built by the liquor mogul behind Jack Daniel's whiskey is now up for sale for $6 million in Harrods Creek, an exclusive neighborhood of Louisville. 'The Avish,' the stately, columned 20,000 square foot manor, was developed in 1910 by Owsley Brown and his wife, Laura Lyons. Construction on the home was completed in 1925. The name translates to 'Rocky Hill' in Gaelic, which was the name of the family's ancestral home in Ireland.

WEDNESDAY, July 11 (HealthDay News) -- Drinking one or two alcoholic beverages several times a week may improve the bone health of older women and reduce their risk for osteoporosis, a small study suggests. Bones are living tissue with old bone continually removed and replaced in a process called remodeling. In people with the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, more bone is lost than replaced. Postmenopausal women are at particular risk because of reduced estrogen, a hormone essential for bone strength, the researchers explained. "This study clearly demonstrates that even small amounts of alcohol have potent actions and can rapidly impact bone...

In his book “New Ideas from Dead Economists,” economist Todd Buchholz quoted bank robber Willie Sutton to explain why so many businesses lobby government for special favors including tariffs, subsidies and monopoly privileges: “That’s where the money is,” Sutton once said when asked why he robbed banks. In Michigan, the “bank” is the state Capitol in Lansing, and some of the favor-seekers have not only been spectacularly successful, but have preserved special privileges gained at the expense of their fellow citizens for literally decades, amassing fortunes in the process. How large are those fortunes? The house (above) is one such...

Michigan farmers are on the cutting edge of the buy local trend, a movement that could provide a great boon for businesses and the state’s overall economy. To give them a bigger boost, lawmakers should allow Michigan businesses to sell more of their products at more locations. One way lawmakers can accomplish this is by legalizing the sale of beer and wine at farmers markets. As the nation’s 13th biggest producer of wine, Michigan wineries make more than a million gallons annually, generating around $300 million in sales, and reportedly drawing 800,000 tourists each year. Additionally, Michigan’s craft beer scene...

ATLANTA - College-age drinkers average nine drinks when they get drunk, government health officials said Tuesday. That surprising statistic is part of a new report highlighting the dangers of binge drinking, which usually means four to five drinks at a time. Overall, about 1 in 6 U.S. adults surveyed said they had binged on alcohol at least once in the previous month, though it was more than 1 in 4 for those ages 18 to 34. And that's likely an underestimate: Alcohol sales figures suggest people are buying a lot more alcohol than they say they are consuming. Health officials...

The recent release of Ken Burns’ “Prohibition” documentary has raised many good questions about the subject of alcohol control. For Michigan, the questions are timely. Gov. Rick Snyder’s 21-member Liquor Control Advisory Rules Committee will soon present its ideas for alcohol control reform, and would be wise to think and reform boldly. Michigan’s laws and rules governing alcohol control have been treated like the play things of politicians and powerful special interests for decades. They are not as protective of public safety as neo-prohibitionists want people to believe, and are actually protectionist in many ways, treating different businesses and people...

Few people will argue against preventing underage drinking. Michigan’s new keg registration law, however, an attempt to trace the buyers of kegs that end up serving underage drinkers, will not accomplish that goal. In fact, keg registration is an invasion of consumers’ privacy and has proven repeatedly to be a waste of time and money. Moreover, it will do nothing to reduce underage drinking and could even make the problem worse. As of Nov. 1, Michigan joined with the nearly 30 other states that have a keg registration law of some type, requiring businesses to affix a sticker or a...

If you live in Michigan, you can’t order online from wine retailers in other states, at least not if you want the wine shipped to your door. But action this Election Day far off in Washington State may send tremors across America by cracking open the anti-consumer, anti-competitive alcohol regulations there. Entrenched interests — particularly alcohol wholesalers — appear frightful that they will be the ones to suffer from government withdrawal from the industry. But if enthusiasm for such freedom becomes contagious and spreads to other states, consumers will reap the benefits. Washington state’s initiative strikes at the heart of...

On Oct. 24, the Mackinac Center dispatched letters that made 15 major and explicit recommendations for reform of Michigan’s alcohol control system to Gov. Rick Snyder’s 21-member Liquor Control Advisory Rules Committee. The advisory committee first met in August and is due to make recommendations to the governor for reform as early as mid-December. We suggest that the committee and Gov. Snyder reform boldly. The 15 major ideas presented below are by no means the only reform ideas we intend to make, but they do represent some of the most wide-ranging and beneficial ones. Where appropriate, I've added nuance and...

A damned interesting event occurred recently that has nearly slipped under the radar. "Damned interesting" may seem hyperbole to most of you but to those who gravitate toward the historical, political and regulatorial (that's not really a word), this event is pretty interesting. Not long ago, the good people at the Center for Alcohol Policy (a National Beer Wholesaler of America creation) took it upon themselves to see to the re-printing and re-release of what might be the most influential book on alcohol ever written in United States: "Toward Liquor Control". Written in 1933 and underwritten by John D. Rockefeller,...

If you’ve ever seen a Ken Burns documentary, you’re familiar with their use of faded photos, archival video and interviews with renowned historians. Films like “The Civil War,” “Thomas Jefferson” and “Lewis & Clark” bring the past to life despite the decades of distance between the subject matter and the viewers. No doubt, his newest documentary, “Prohibition,” which premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. PBS, promises to offer a thorough historical examination of American life during the period around the 18th Amendment’s rise and fall. The three-part series focusing on Prohibition’s past, however, may lead the viewers to believe that every...

Just think, in a few hours, you get.......SUN PEE! Cross-posted at UNCOVERAGE.net Isn’t it bad enough Obama is cancelling the space program? Now the astronauts have to drink their own pee on the final trip? CNET: Soon, we will not only be able to drink our recycled urine. We’ll transform into a tastier, more refreshing beverage choice–thanks, in part, to NASA’s final space shuttle mission. The shuttle Atlantis is carrying aloft tests of the Forward Osmosis Bag, which is designed to convert dirty water into a liquid that is safe to drink using a semi-permeable membrane and a concentrated sugar...

Rep. Weiner: 'I just needed a drink' after GOP responseBy Jordan Fabian - 01/26/11 09:41 AM ET One Democratic congressman says he was ready to hit the bottle after hearing the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union Tuesday night. Rep. Anthony Weiner (N.Y.), who is known for his outspokenness, praised Obama's speech as "uplifting," but said that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) response was too dour for his taste. "[Obama] was then followed by a guy who was bumming us out," he said on MSNBC Tuesday night. "I felt like I just needed a drink...

A fascinating study published in the BMJ shows that although the French drink more than the Northern Irish each week, as they drink daily, rather than more on less occasions, the French suffered from considerably less coronary heart disease than the Northern Irish. Ruidavets and colleagues compared groups of middle aged men in France and Northern Ireland, who have very different drinking cultures and rates of heart disease.The authors found that men who "binge" drink (drink =50 g of alcohol once a week) had nearly twice the risk of myocardial infarction or death from coronary disease compared with regular drinkers...

Feds deem Four Loko unsafe drinkRichard Craver Issue date: 11/19/10 The makers of seven alcoholic energy drinks have been given 15 days to show that their beverages are safe for consumers or remove them from the marketplace. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued warning letters yesterday to four beverage manufacturers including the maker of Four Loko saying that the drinks are being marketed in violation of federal law. It determined that caffeine is an "unsafe food additive" when mixed with alcoholic beverages. If a beverage-maker cannot prove that its drink is safe, the FDA can seize the products. The...

Just wondering. I'm off to San Antonio tomorrow, taking wife and in-laws to a great big, wonderful famous Baptist church. I will hopefully have a mild hangover which I'm working on at the moment. Are you gonna be there with me, at least in spirit? Prove it. Whatchya drinkin?

ST. PETERSBURG - Sandie McConnell doesn't know how she'll raise her 4-month-old son, Roy IV, without his father. "This drunk driver didn't just steal the lives from these awesome men but from their friends and family. This world was a better place with them in it, I still can't believe this has happened," said Sandie McConnell, Roy III’s widow. Police say the young man who killed her husband, his two brothers, and their father was drunk and high on marijuana. Investigators say Demetrius Jordan, just 20 years old, told them he'd mixed alcohol with Four Loko -- an energy drink...