Fakes and Frauds by Joe Camponella Hello Bob and readers. I recently helped a friend brew a clone of Founders IPA and began thinking how much fun it might have been to have been making bootleg booze during Prohibition. That got me to look up the topic and found that the practice is still going on. Thought you all might be interested in the story. The first think I discovered is that bootlegging liquor is nothing new. There’s always been moonshine and mead; in more recent history, there’s been bootlegging of scotch, rum, rye, and vodka. Like watches, handbags, and jewelry, higher-end brand names of liquor have attracted scammers looking to make a few extra bucks off of an inferior product in a fancy (albeit egregiously mislabeled) bottle. But fake liquor isn’t just a nuisance to the market—it can be lethal. In 2007, Russia went as far as to ban online sales of alcohol because the prior year, it was estimated that 42,000 Russians died as a result of drinking counterfeit booze. Russian officials decided to relax the ban only recently, permitting sales of alcohol online but only through approved stores and with some other restrictions. Just this past year 14 Russians were lethally poisoned in a single incident due to fake liquor likely purchased from nearby China. And in 2012, 26 people in the Czech Republic died after consuming methanol-laced counterfeit vodka and rum, with at least a dozen others sickened, blinded, and brain damaged. Counterfeit liquors are often laced with methanol (wood alcohol), isopropyl alcohol (as in the industrial stuff that you use to disinfect cuts and clean medical instruments with), cleaning fluids, and even nail polish remover or antifreeze, and because they’re unregulated, can be well over 50 percent alcohol. Most recently, the United Kingdom seems to be experiencing a particularly nasty epidemic of the stuff. Between 2010 and 2014, an alarming report showed that seizures of illegal counterfeit alcohol increased 500 percent, and not just because of general black market activity—during the same period, seizures of consumer electronics and fake luxury goods (such as handbag and clothing) fell considerably. In the past two years since, there have continued to be numerous high- profile incidents of hundreds or even thousands of bottles of fake booze uncovered in shops all over the UK. In the past few month there were several notable crimes of the fake- booze persuasion. In the US, many places received warnings after a several people purchased what they thought was Glen’s vodka, only to realize upon sipping it that it had the strong aroma of nail polish remover. After notifying the authorities, the “vodka” was tested and found to contain ter-butanol, a common ingredient in paint thinner and other solvents. Although, they probably should have been tipped off by the bottle’s label—which had numerous spelling errors, such as “botteled” and “D-rink.” It probably would have been safe to assume that these mistakes weren’t just a couple of lazy typos at the factory. However, some counterfeit liquor is poured into empty bottles that were legitimately produced by brand names, making them even more difficult to detect and creating an even greater risk for the public. Almost all the articles I read suggested using the “4 P’s” to identify and avoid the dangers of fake alcohol: place, price, packaging, and product. That means, “place”-wise, shopping at a legit supermarket instead of the downtrodden place that always seems to have suspicious deals and shelves full of dust; recognizing, in terms of “price,” that there is such a thing as a deal that’s too good to be true; exercising a reasonable degree of doubt if the “packaging” has spelling errors, lacks duty stamps, has a broken seal, or a sketchy-looking bar code; and avoiding “products” that have unrecognizable names, suspicious sediment, or an off taste or smell. All of this was a surprise to me. The good news is that the beer industry has not been hit by bogus brews. Whew. ----------- Really interesting article, Joe. Thanks for sending. I guess it only goes to verify that consumer beware is still our best defense against fraud. I'd like to invite everyone to send me their own columns about anything related to beer/drinking/booze just as Joe did. I select the best and publish them here. So join in and get writing! Cheers! Bob |
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