Ban of home brew ingredients in rural Alaska?

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2ndstage

2ndstage

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Just came across this news story about some villages banning and arresting people making alcohol.

http://www.adn.com/2011/07/18/1973815/home-brew-ingredients-catch-the.html

I understand in certain areas alcoholism can get out of control but this is off the charts.

Didn't know if we had any alaska brewers to give us a little feedback about this or if it affects them getting supplies.
 
There have been dry villages in AK for years. They all have different levels of bans. Alcoholism is a big problem in small remote communites and while I disagree with the methods tribal governments are trying to combat it.

The larger populations centers do not have these restrictions, it again applies in most cases to very remote villages.
 
from the article:

" . . . home-brew, a cloudy, intoxicating liquid often mixed with fruit juice."

Sounds like they're just mixing sugar, water, and baker's yeast and going for it. Someone should tell them to get hold of a decent dry ale or wine yeast and ferment the juice. Maybe I'll quit my job and start running yeast and fermenters to the villages.
 
The article and/or comments points to the fact that the creators of brew in these communities are going for intoxication, not flavor.

I hope to never live in a community where residents vote to have this or similar "moral" control over others.
 
RichBenn said:
The article and/or comments points to the fact that the creators of brew in these communities are going for intoxication, not flavor.
Click to expand...

Yea, I picked up on that. Much humor dies when it hits the web.
 
As a former resident I can tell you this is nothing new. As mentioned above, in many of the native villages the elders have banned alcohol of any kind. The State Troopers and the Native Police enforce the ban.
You can be fined and imprisoned for bringing alcohol in to the villages. So for years the natives have been making 'homebrew.' This is little more than prison hooch. It's made in trash bags hung under floor, old fuel cans, yes in a least one case in the toilet. All they want is the alcohol.
This is not even close to what we call homebrew.
 
TotemWolf said:
As a former resident I can tell you this is nothing new. As mentioned above, in many of the native villages the elders have banned alcohol of any kind. The State Troopers and the Native Police enforce the ban.
You can be fined and imprisoned for bringing alcohol in to the villages. So for years the natives have been making 'homebrew.' This is little more than prison hooch. It's made in trash bags hung under floor, old fuel cans, yes in a least one case in the toilet. All they want is the alcohol.
This is not even close to what we call homebrew.
Click to expand...

THIS. And it is a problem that people contributing to this thread are likely going to be unable to relate to in any significant way. This is Native American tribal governments attempting to control what amounts to a cultural plague. It's of no relevance to our culture, and tribal governments are completely empowered by treaty with the U.S. to exercise control in these matters. Discussions by us are both moot and futile.
 
I've seen show's about this for years on the res,as they call them. My G-G-G grandfather was a Chiracaua Apache chief. I'm proud to be able to say one side of my family has been here for some 35,000 years. But their treatment has been horrid.
I realize this is a plague in their culture,but being decedents of a stone age culture that gave us beer to start with,seems weird. Beer is what caused man to settle down from hunting/gathering. It's history as they're finding it in newly discovered artifacts & their processing/testing. Micro biology has it's merits.
They just need some self control,I guess. Beer is now known to have pre-dated bread by about 3,000 years!
 
"There's only ONE thing to do with 7 pounds of yeast."

I use a tablespoon of active dry yeast for 2 loaves of bread. Pretty sure that's more, or at least close to, what it takes of US-05 to ferment 5 gallons of high quality "home-brewed" "hooch".

stupid
 
day_trippr said:
@Abc Sd just joined and added their thoughts to a couple of threads.
Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke :)

Cheers!
Click to expand...

Agreed. I wasn't trying to imply anything negative toward Abc in my previous post. Just thought, since it was a specific topic that was this old, that maybe that person is an Alaskan or has some ties to that state.

Just an observation. FWIW, I did read from the beginning. Interesting. Didn't realize the ban in the remotes places would be that harsh.
 
DuncB said:
Could this recent message to a long dead thread be AI generated? Sender recently joined and only two posts.
The answer looks stylised.
Click to expand...
This member is under "observation."
In cases like this, I apply baseball rules, and he's got 2 strikes.

No, he's definitely not in Alaska.
 
day_trippr said:
This "enhanced AI Content Detector" says that's human-originated text...

Cheers!
Click to expand...
To me, it feels like the domain name (copyleaks.com) was looking for a purpose.

LLMs (and LLM detection) is about statistical probabilities.

I "played" with a couple LLM generated content detection sites back in spring 2023. The good sites included both a result and a confidence factor.

As always, YMMV.
 
day_trippr said:
BrewnWKopperKat said:
To me, it feels like the domain name (copyleaks.com) was looking for a purpose.

LLMs (and LLM detection) is about statistical probabilities.

I "played" with a couple LLM generated content detection sites back in spring 2023. The good sites included both a result and a confidence factor.

As always, YMMV.
Click to expand...

Ok, so does your AI have a different opinion? 🤔
Click to expand...
Let's set the context for the question

day_trippr said:
does your AI have a different opinion? 🤔
Click to expand...
First, It's not "my AI".

Second, both LLMs and LLM detection require a certain amount text. The number of words in #12 appears to be below that "a certain amount of text" word count.


@day_trippr : you and I were here before LLM generated content was posted here. You are human. I am human.

Perhaps new personas are suspect until (resonably) proven human? 🤔 🤷‍♀️
 
DuncB said:
Could this recent message to a long dead thread be AI generated? Sender recently joined and only two posts.
The answer looks stylised.
Click to expand...
I live in Anchorage. Some villages ( a fair number of them ) are dry. As these communities are almost entirely autonomous, it is possible that they have banned people from bring home brewing equipment and/or supplies in. All that being said, I can't confirm or deny
Yesfan said:
Agreed. I wasn't trying to imply anything negative toward Abc in my previous post. Just thought, since it was a specific topic that was this old, that maybe that person is an Alaskan or has some ties to that state.

Just an observation. FWIW, I did read from the beginning. Interesting. Didn't realize the ban in the remotes places would be that harsh.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. I'm in Anchorage where I can buy or order in just about anything but most of the remote villages are mostly autonomous & can make any rules the village council wants. Give the havoc the booze and drugs can cause, they often opt for dry villages --- violate the rule often enough and they will banish the offender ( usually means sending them to Anchorage so that we have to deal with the problem here)
 
madgardener said:
I live in Anchorage. Some villages ( a fair number of them ) are dry. As these communities are almost entirely autonomous, it is possible that they have banned people from bring home brewing equipment and/or supplies in. All that being said, I can't confirm or deny

Absolutely. I'm in Anchorage where I can buy or order in just about anything but most of the remote villages are mostly autonomous & can make any rules the village council wants. Give the havoc the booze and drugs can cause, they often opt for dry villages --- violate the rule often enough and they will banish the offender ( usually means sending them to Anchorage so that we have to deal with the problem here)
Click to expand...

Same story with many dry Native American reservations in the lower 48. I lived in South Dakota many years ago and remember the problems with some people drinking Sterno or Lysol because the reservation was dry. Law of unintended consequences.

It also created a cottage industry of bars and liquor stores just outside the reservation borders.
 
For anyone interested in the topic of homebrewing in extremely remote (and cold) parts of the world, you'll find no better than the following article:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/brewing-on-the-edge-of-the-world-canadas-arctic-part-i.678870/
1699798953476.png
 
MaxStout said:
Same story with many dry Native American reservations in the lower 48. I lived in South Dakota many years ago and remember the problems with some people drinking Sterno or Lysol because the reservation was dry. Law of unintended consequences.

It also created a cottage industry of bars and liquor stores just outside the reservation borders.
Click to expand...
I lived just outsides the Four Corners area in NM for a while, so I hear ya. That's one way it is different up here...get outside a village and there's nothing but miles & miles of nothing but landscape.
 
That was really cool! And it reminds me of why I made some of the choices I did when I got into wine making. So it was kinda of a stroll down memory lane for me, although I never faced his level of challenges. Hope he made it to Ottawa and got to brew whatever he could imagine!
 

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