Free Republic

Obamacare's menu labeling regulation promises to be a disaster for the food and restaurant industries, as its implementation is both costly and extremely onerous. While its deleterious effects on the pizza, restaurant, and grocery industries have been most well known, it also has the potential to shutter an industry near and dear to Americans' hearts: craft beer. Since beer has a few too many calories for bureaucrats, the health law dictates that all brewers include a detailed calorie count on every type of beer produced. Failure to do so, according to Americans for Tax Reform, "means craft brewers will not be able...

CANBERRA (Reuters Life!) - Australians, long regarded as a nation of beer drinkers rivaled only by the Germans, seem to be turning soft, or sober. After 113 years, the country's biggest selling beer, Victoria Bitter, or VB, is to be produced in a mid-strength version to keep pace with the country's fast-changing beer tastes. VB, with its distinctive green label, has since 1894 been a staple of hard-drinking backyard barbecues, student revels and football games, not to mention healthy overseas exports. Now brewer Foster's has decided for the first time to produce the beer in a weaker yellow-label version with...

N.C. brewers taking advantage of law allowing stronger beer CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Scott Maitland isn't exactly expecting a huge payoff from the barleywine brewing in his Top of the Hill Brewery and Restaurant. The beer, about 11 percent alcohol by volume with a taste similar to port, probably won't be a best seller. But he sees another reason to brew it anyway. "It's fun, baby! That's why, it's fun," he said. "It's a big day. We need to celebrate." Like Maitland, local brewers are taking advantage of the "Pop the Cap" legislation signed by Gov. Mike Easley over the...