Drunken Crayfish

Bar adapts to smoking ban by adding beer garden

Brian Hughes calls Iowa’s looming smoking ban a disaster — but the bar owner says it’s one he can avoid.

Not by some legal remedy, mind you. Hughes who owns Volume, a bar-nightclub in Cedar Rapids, will blast a 12-foot-wide, 9-foot-tall hole in his club’s back wall, which will lead out to what he said will be downtown’s first outdoor beer garden.

He hopes to have his new creation in place by the time the ban takes effect on July 1.

“It will be the only place (bar-nightclub) in downtown where you will be able to stand with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other,” he said.

Without his proposed 900-square-foot beer garden, which will have a metal roof, 8-foot fencing and the nightclub feel, Hughes said, his smoking patrons would have to flee out front along downtown streets to smoke.

“Come July 1, I guarantee you there will be crowds of smokers out front of every bar,” he said. “And that’s just not a very safe place for people to be after they’ve been drinking.”

“It’s going to be a big problem for the police,” he said. “It’s going to be a disaster.”

Hughes’ beer garden will have security people and bartenders in place to look out for smoking customers. Bouncers are in bars to care for people, not just to break up fights, he said.

Hughes owns another bar, in nearby Marion, called Wrigleyville, which he says long has had an outdoor deck where patrons can drink and smoke.

Other taverns in the metro area are similarly situated, he said, but he knows of no other such bars or clubs in downtown Cedar Rapids.

Creating a beer garden will require conditional use approval from City Hall, but it has cleared a key hurdle after the City Planning Commission recommended approval this week.

The Board of Adjustment will have the final say later this month.

Hughes said his beer garden will have its own bar, speakers to deliver music being played inside and a venting system to keep smoke out of the club.

Hughes said he has read about gimmicks by others who have talked about turning bars into private clubs to try to get around the ban.

“I’m not trying to pull anything over on anybody,” he said. “I’m just trying to give somebody who wants to smoke a safe place to be.”

Do you know that? Toernichoise Fume is a beer brewed by Millevertus sprl Brasserie Artisanale de Toernich.

Toernichoise fume is the beer with the village brewery?s name and is exceptional. The first production of the Smoked Toernichoise has many nicknames (ham juice, horrible thing,, the second and third ones, lighter with smoke taste only met a lukewarm success, the next evolution has just been ordered by a café in Roma, and the last production is in refermentation.

Millevertus is the only brewery in Belgium to do it and in fact this taste does not please yet the average belgian drinker. For your guide, Rauch bier in the Bamberg area (Germany) has the equivalent success there than Orval in our region. Their smoked malt is quite different from our belgian one (lighter) but we are confident that the recipe evolution will soon give us a unique beverage good enough to drink too and which will assume Toernich (cradle of Mllevertus) as a name in beer world.

Japanese plan to brew ‘space beer’

Researchers said the project was part of efforts to prepare for a future in which humans spend extended periods of time in space — and might like a cold beer after a space walk.

Japanese brewery Sapporo Holdings said it would make beer using the third generation of barley grains that had spent five months on the International Space Station in 2006.

“We want to finish the beer by November. It will be the first space beer,” Sapporo executive Junichi Ichikawa told reporters.

The company will have enough space grain to produce about 100 bottles of beer but has no immediate plan to make it a commercial venture, Sapporo officials said.

The company teamed up on the project with Okayama University biologist Manabu Sugimoto, who has been part of a Russian space project to explore ways to grow edible plants in space.

Barley can grow in relatively tough environments, such as high and low temperatures, and is rich in fibre and nutrients, making it ideal for space agriculture, the associate professor said.

“In the future, we may reach a point where humans will spend an extended period of time in space and must grow food to sustain ourselves,” Sugimoto said.

As of now, scientists have not detected any differences between Earth-grown and space barley, said Sugimoto, who will present DNA analysis of his findings before a conference in Canada in July.

“In the long run, we hope our space research will be not just about producing food, but about enjoying food and relaxing,” Sugimoto said.

It was the latest space experiment with food.

South Korea’s first astronaut, Yi So-Yeon, brought kimchi into space last month, while Japan has previously sent noodles into orbit.

Survey claims heavy drinkers prefer beer

A new survey shows beer is the alcoholic drink of choice for heavy drinkers.

The study says beer accounts for three-quarters of the alcoholic drinks consumed by people who have more than 100 drinks per month.

The survey has been released by the Distilled Spirits Industry Council, which is using the figures to argue against the need for higher taxes on pre-mixed spirit-based drinks.

The Federal Government recently increased taxes in an attempt to reduce binge drinking, especially amongst teenage girls.

First ‘carbon neutral’ beer available on draught

Adnams’ environmentally friendly beer East Green is available in cask form in pubs.

This move follows the launch of bottles of the drink in the off-trade in April.

Rob Flanagan, Adnams sales director, said: ?This is undoubtedly our most successful beer launch to date. The draught version is even more environmentally efficient because it is packed in casks rather than bottles.

?We know that there is a growing demand for ethical products and we believe that our commitment to reducing our environmental impact and in particular, East Green is exactly what our customers are looking for.?

The beer is brewed in Adnams? eco brewery, designed to recycle 100 per cent of the steam created during brewing which is then used it to heat 90 per cent of the next brew.

It is made with Suffolk-grown high-yielding barley to keep food miles down and Boadicea hops, which are naturally aphid-resistant so reduce the pesticide use.

Adnams collaborated with the University of East Anglia?s carbon reduction CRed team to make the brew.

Dr Simon Gerrard, manager of the CRed programme, said: “The carbon lifecycle assessment from farm to delivery helps Adnams target key elements in the process and reduce the emissions of the overall product. As consumers become more carbon literate, so the requirement for authoritative and independent information becomes more important.”

Chocolate’s secret health benefits

Remember that scene in the Woody Allen movie Sleeper in which Woody, who has been frozen for 200 years, wakes up to find that chocolate and banana cream pie are now health foods? Well, it’s not so far-fetched.

Chocolate is chock full of potent antioxidants called phenols, the same as those found in wine. In fact, a 1.5-ounce chocolate bar has as much antioxidant power as a 5-ounce glass of red wine. (White chocolate, which doesn’t contain any cocoa solids, doesn’t count.) And contrary to popular belief, chocolate contains only a very small amount of caffeine.

More good news: One-third of the fat in chocolate is a cholesterol-friendly fat called stearic acid, and another third is an unsaturated fat called oleic acid. When Pennsylvania researchers (including some from the Mars candy company) had 23 people follow either the average American diet or the same diet supplemented with 22 grams of cocoa powder and 16 grams of dark chocolate, they found that the chocolate diet reduced LDL oxidation. If you’re going to indulge:

Choose dark. Dark chocolate contains more phenols than other forms of chocolate. Milk chocolate contains milk fat (palmitic acid) that is highly saturated. Semi-sweet chocolate has less fat than milk chocolate.

Kill two birds. Dip strawberries into melted chocolate for a high-antioxidant snack that can easily satisfy one or two fruit servings. An easy way to get melted chocolate is to simply microwave semi-sweet chocolate chips on medium for about 30 seconds. Be sure the strawberries are complete dry before you dip.

Go for quality. Buy the richest, creamiest chocolate you can afford. You’ll be more satisfied with one piece of the good stuff than five pieces of the mediocre stuff.