Tax Policy Gave Us White Claw
nymag.com
nymag.com
The margins are just stupid good. Apparently Upslope brewing here already makes more profit on their seltzer than all of their beer.
If you love booze, you make beer/whiskey/tequila. If you love money you make vodka.
Edit: see also, wine.
The national brands have to be making an absolutely massive profit on these.
As this articles highlights, these recent "hard seltzers" actually use a brewing process, apparently for tax purposes.
From the article, it doesn't sound like White Claw, et al, are skipping their own brewing and buying from those "commercial scale providers".
Important takeaway from the article. This also answers my own question as to why drinks like Mike's Hard, Smirnoff Ice, etc are malt beverages. Hopefully the sugar base instead of a grain base catches on for new drinks.
It wouldn’t be much like rum unless it were brewed with dark sugar.
Ethanol itself is most of the calories in any alcoholic drink.
A 12 oz can of 5% abv is .6 fluid ounces of ethanol. That's 14 grams, or 98 calories.
A Budweiser has 145 calories, White Claw has 100, Old Chub Scottish ale has 264.
Basically I see the benefit over most craft beer, but over macros it's not that big of a difference.
https://drinks.seriouseats.com/2013/10/cocktail-science-do-a...
https://www.quora.com/Do-calories-in-alcohol-really-exist-If...
I cant find an exact answer, but combining the ideas that: the metabolic pathways for ethanol take precedence over the metabolism of other food components, leading to fat conversion and storage of higher-kcal foods than would be expected if the energy for metabolism was not diverted to the alcohol; the extra energy needed to metabolize alcohol should become a net drain on energy reserves; and alcohol is almost never fully metabolized, but rather excreted as acetic acid - I think it is safe to assume that an ethanol calorie actually provides the body very little energy AND if youre not eating while you are drinking there isnt a way for the body to store the energy as fat for later.
The bigger difference between White Claw and rum, i would say, is that rum is distilled, whereas White Claw is only fermented. I'm not sure there are any traditional non-distilled drinks made from sugar, and Wikipedia is down so i basically have no way to fake being well-informed as i usually do.
One thing that seems to be often overlooked is that yeast do not simply convert sugar into ethanol. They require nutrients and will produce different compounds(Google tryptophol) if a nutrient runs out and prevents complete metabolism.
Nice! Our tax laws encourage companies to make less palatable goods that then require more added sugar to compensate thus upping everyone's carbohydrate intake without it actually tasting as good as those carbs would be in a cake or some such. How wonderful! /s
From a brewery ( https://www.allagash.com/blog/calories-in-beer/?ao_confirm ):
> A 5% ABV BEER WILL HAVE AROUND 100 CALORIES FROM ALCOHOL ALONE.
From White Claw's FAQ ( https://www.whiteclaw.com/faq/faq-4/ ):
> Our White Claw® Hard Seltzer 12oz fruit flavors have 100 Calories, 2 grams of Carbohydrates/Sugars per serving size (355 ml can), and 5% ABV.
So basically they are close to the minimum number of calories necessary to include that much alcohol.
If we were talking about California compliant semi-auto rifles everyone here would be all happy that the law makes them suck. I'm sure some "religion enthusiast" in North Carolina is happy that the law makes malt beverages suck.
https://charleston.eater.com/2015/10/16/9553903/mini-bottles...
Someone eventually pointed out that they were the last state in the Union serving drinks this way (other than the airlines) and all those tiny glass bottles ended up in the landfill. So in 2010 the state went free-pour.
If you were making laws from scratch now, it would likely make sense to define categories strictly by ABV, not by brewing/distillation method.
That's probably solvable-ish by fining companies found to have an ABV off by more than 1% or so, but that's a lot more work to monitor, especially with the number of different products on the market.
The accuracy requirements are very strict on this. It's already not a problem; intentionally lying about ABV on the label would be a foolish thing to do that would get you in lots of trouble.
If improperly ABV-labeled alcohol is detected, it will be immediately recalled from all shelves nationwide, no court involvement necessary.
VA has quite a few distilleries you can visit. You can purchase bottles at these distilleries but the distillery is acting as an agent for the state. Bottles are sold at the same price state stores sell them at, the distillery deposits all sales in a state bank account each night and the distillery is later paid by the state their negotiated wholesale price.
We are over a lifetime from the temperance movement but we are still affected by it for who knows why.
I've never been so hard up for a drink that I need to buy liquor and beer in the same store. And if I was, I hope that I'd have the sense to check myself into rehab.
Then of course you find out the reconstitution tastes nothing like the original wine, and you also may discover that leaving it in the wooden casks makes a pleasant drink on its own...
I sometimes drink Four Roses cask-strength straight, because I'm lazy, but also cask-strength Four Roses is not all that high-proof. But I wouldn't drink Thomas Handy straight; it would be a waste.
I believe it is common practice for masters blenders, such as when selecting casks for blending, actually dilute things down quite a bit, so their taste buds don't become "exhausted" and they can pick out more nuance.
meh. As a gay man in a midwestern rust belt town with a used fridge that makes exorcist noises, I am used to my friends assuming I drink vodka soda. I got a six pack of "white claws" from a female friend and couldnt choke down more than a few sips.
If youre going to drink a vodka soda, for god sake avoid this landfill fodder and pour one yourself. vodka comes everything from cotton candy to bacon, so theres really no excuse.
TL;DR: White Claw is the Keurig of mixed drinks.
Non-Midwesterners may mistake it for hostility, in the same way that non-New Yorkers might mistake an offhanded cultural observation--or anything the New Yorker says, really--for being a rude, arrogant prick.
(Edit: Not you. The author of the article is the New Yorker.)
(Edit 2: If you are a Midwesterner, then you're not a non-Midwesterner, by definition.)
(Edit 3: Let's not even go into how someone with a used Exorcist fridge is snooty for dumping on Keurigs. That's some Midwestern humor right there.)
Psst, your implication about where I'm from is wrong.
> (Edit: Not you. The author of the article is the New Yorker.)
Edit: I'm not talking about that. I mean the implication that I'm not a Midwesterner, which is causing me to "mistake it for hostility".
Yeah, I know.
I'm the one that called it hostile.
You said that it wasn't hostile, it's humor that non-midwesteners mistake for hostility.
You said that in reply to my post.
By any reasonable interpretation, that post is calling me a non-midwesterner.
So I'm letting you know that that's wrong, and I'm not somehow unqualified to call the post hostile.
Fermented beverages there are taxed like beer so these long drinks are made as such.
These are on tap in all the bars. It seems to have less of a stigma there than drinking malt beverages in the states.
The law was changed like a year ago and now only the alcohol content matters, anything with less than 5.5% vol can be sold in stores. Fermented beverages used to enjoy strong sales, but it seems like tastes are rapidly shifting towards distilled ones. IMO they generally taste better.
In Western countries outwith the Nordics, this may sound awful, but I've come to appreciate it. Vinmonopolet stores sell a curated stock of high quality alcohol drinks, and their staff are invariably both passionate and highly knowledgeable. In short, the ethos is "quality over quantity" - and I like it.
For some context, I live in the UK, but work for the Norwegian division of a megacorp, and have travelled to Norway frequently for decades.
Depending on where you live, you might find niche shops if you look hard enough, but they are far from ubiquitous. It seems the market has decided, and they want the cheapest swill they can buy.
This is a roundabout way of saying it's undistilled vodka. All spirits are fermented before distillation (or else what is there to distill?), and some vodkas already start with pure sugar instead of grains, potatoes, or fruit.
Not really. Since you can make vodka from the same cereal grains that beer is made from, you could also describe beer as undistilled vodka, but that wouldn't make a ton of sense. Its major similarity to vodka is its neutral taste, not its base ingredients.
* poof! - Constitutional amendments are passed in every state requiring sales tax to apply to all items at an equal rate. Politicians suddenly have less power to punish or privilege individual sectors and industries, and so there is less reason to lobby and corrupt them. Sin taxes go away, so constituents are nudged and nannied and pandered to less. Much labor to track and charge differential taxes is disappeared. *
* wakes up *
Damn.
But generally speaking it has been recognized that broad based sales taxes across all products is more stable when it comes to various economic downturns and etc. Same goes for just say property taxes that cover X, but not Y property.
Some sin taxes that get tagged to be used for "good things" often have bad results if usage drops and the "good things" that we previously wanted to fun suddenly have no (or a dramatic drop) in funding.
I'm not saying anyone shouldn't / can't do such things but there are reasons to avoid tax policies where things are taxes dramatically differently. How much "dramatically" is obviously up for endless debate.
That doesn't mean "tax should be the same for all items" but keeping close to that concept is not a bad idea.
Also even direct sin taxes tied to things might be hard. If we all stop smoking, there still be cancer related to smoking...
Gas tax to fund roads, and increased fuel efficiency is another example.
This is a terrible idea. The outcome would likely be a statistically significant increase in deaths do to drinking and smoking increases.
I don't really think it is the government's role to police private behavior choices.
It would also cause the personally responsible poor to have more money because sales taxes are regressive. God forbid a blue collar worker wants to have a couple of beers after work.
Sales taxes are in some sense fungible, in that vendors could eat the cost to consumers by reducing their prices, in the same sense as a direct tax on those vendors would also be fungible, in that vendors would raise their prices to account for the taxes. Arguably, consumer-facing sin taxes are cheaper and simpler to administrate, and are the superior solution.
Is any government calculating the net cost between tax dollars spent because of cigarette smoking and tax dollars gathered from tobacco products and setting the tax in that manner?
Has any government put a lower or higher tax rate on any tobacco product based on risk or cost profile?
It is not that the arguments you are making aren't viable, I'm just not so sure that anyone is actually doing those things.
You can obviously disagree with the argument, but it's not incoherent and is in keeping with the underlying notion of a Pigovian tax.
Not only that, but cigarette companies target youths with an addictive substance that people eventually want to stop using but have a very difficult time doing so.
If smoking reduced total health expenditure (because those who die early from smoking-related illnesses avoid the costliest years of their lives), would you advocate for the government to encourage smoking?
I considered multiple facets when making this decision: 1) people are harmed by it, 2) even though people willfully start doing it, they can't always willfully stop doing it, 3) it negatively impacts them and their family's health/finances, 4) it negatively impacts society in a variety of ways.
I believe that impacts to society is what gives society (read: government) the right or obligation to intervene. Taxes are an effective mechanism of softly encouraging good behavior and they have much less risk of unintended consequences than total bans do.
Yes. The cost of my health insurance is based off of the cost to hospitals; hospitals need to charge paying customers more if they have to write off their non-paying customers.
> All of our stupid pointless wars cost me money, as well as being deeply evil, but that argument hasn't stopped them yet...
Our stupid pointless wars are indeed one of the biggest breakdowns in democracy. Bush promised to stay out of foreign entanglements and Obama promised to leave Iraq and Afghanistan. As CiC, the president does not need any help from congress to withdraw (or refrain from sending) troops, so these are much easier promises to follow through on those that require congressional approval.
> in the meantime keep your hands off my consumption of beverages.
If you're going to wait for politicians to act with high standards of ethics before they pass any regulations, you are, for all practical purposes, arguing for anarcho-libertarianism.
The thing that the system does, continuously, for decades, is not a "big breakdown". It is obviously the purpose of the system, intended by those who control the system. The system is not waiting for a good person to come along. That candidates lie about everything all the time has been a commonplace assumption throughout my lifetime. Yet still they are elected...
Since I am an anarchist, I often argue against arbitrary authority and its capricious and unjust actions. I contrast my position with those of people like yourself who believe that their own economic decisions entitle them to subvert the autonomy of others.
How do you decide the role of government intervening?
Is the role of government to maximize each individual's contribution/cost ratio by force of law, how do you balance that against personal freedom?
Off the top of my head, I'd say a combination of genetics (studies show political leaning has a genetic component) and input (from social circles and reading).
I believe voluntary association is the only moral form of governance.
We have the product category itself --- alcoholic seltzer --- on its own merits, according to Barro. There's no escaping it.
White Claw is interesting because it's low-carb.
So.... what's the point? Why not just drink Gatorade with seltzer, and save yourself some money?
I would love to try one.
When I was a very young child (six or seven), it was my job at my parent's parties to mix the gin and tonics. If mixing seltzer and vodka at a party is too hard, it's time to stop drinking.
Less alcohol, more refreshing, tastes pretty much like regular Corona, and something about drinking Mexican beer always reminds me of sitting on a beach.
That "something" is affective conditioning from years of exposure to advertising, and exposure to the world that the advertising created.