There are some things you can depend on. Go home, and Mom's gotta take you in – even though you may get a lecture on how naughty you are for robbing banks. Floor it and pass the guy you've followed for the last 22 miles of winding two-lane, and you'll see him in your rear-view, turning into his driveway. Put enough cheese on anything, and it tastes better.

 

And you would think that if you opened up a can of beer, you could depend on finding beer in there.

 

That's where fine legal minds disagree. Jeffery K. Sprecher, a county judge in Reading, Pennsylvania, just dismissed charges that Gregg Hartman had furnished liquor to a minor because the prosecutor failed to prove that Miller Genuine Draft is actually beer. Let me say that again: No proof that Miller Genuine Draft is beer.

 

"They did not have any beer cans or tests to prove it was beer," a gleeful defense attorney David R. Eshelman was quoted by the Reading Eagle. "There is no testimony on the record that the beer contained any alcohol." The only thing in the prosecutor's presentation at the pre-trial hearing to "prove" that Miller Genuine Draft is beer is the statement of the 17-year-old minor (Shawn Putnam, why not drag his name in here as well) that Hartman bought him beer.

 

That's not good enough for Judge Sprecher, who is evidently venting on some lazy bastards in the district attorney's office. This man wants proof that what Hartman bought was really beer, and I don't think he's going to be satisfied until prosecutor Joseph Speece brings in a couple cold sixers and they check them out thoroughly in chambers.

 

I'm not a big fan of MGD, so I wonder if Sprecher will really be satisfied with proof like that. (Hey...Sprecher, I wonder if he's any relation to Randy Sprecher, the guy with the big microbrewery in Milwaukee that makes the great dark lager? Maybe that's why he's so down on MGD.

 

This kind of legal buffoonery goes on all the time, dragging beer's good name through the dirt. Five years ago an Anheuser-Busch lobbyist in Ohio argued that beers that were over 6 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) weren't really beers. Beer, according to A-B's man, is "by definition a low-alcohol beverage, something light you drink after you've been out mowing the lawn." Must cut into sales something fierce in the winter.

 

Texas law names beers as they see them. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) recently took a big step into the 19th century by acknowledging that beers such as "porter," "stout," and "lager" existed. However, don't try selling a pale ale in Dallas: I quote from the supplemental guidance issued by TABC to explain this giant change, "Under Texas law, "ale" is used as a synonym for "malt liquor" and, therefore, is by definition not beer." That's right: in Texas, "ale" is not "beer." Won't the British be surprised!

 

Okay, if MGD isn't beer, and ale isn't beer, and malt liquor isn't beer...what is?

Simple. Beer is a grain-based fermented beverage. Period. Is the grain barley, wheat, corn, rye? Don't care. It's beer. Is it hopped, spiced, fruit-flavored? Don't care. It's still beer. Is it 2 percent ABV, 5 percent, 18 percent, 23 percent? Doesn't matter. Is it draft, bottle, can? Doesn't matter. Carbonated, flat, chilled, warm, pale, dark, cloudy, clear...it just doesn't matter, and if your legislators – or judges – try to say it does, they're frickin' idiots! And you can tell 'em I said so.

 

Beer doesn't belong in a courtroom or a statehouse. It belongs in your fridge, in your glass, or at your local bar. What's beer? That's between you and the brewer. Like Justice Potter "Movie-Time" Stewart said about defining porno, I know it when I taste it. No, wait, he actually said "I know it when I see it," but you know what I mean.

 

Final point: all you guys who thought I was going to be doing the geek dance because some backwoods magistrate said MGD wasn't beer ... I'll leave that to the guys at A-B Corporate in St. Louis, where I'll bet they're just laughing their asses off over this. You can be sure it won't be showing up any time soon in a Miller ad.

 

Oh, and I almost forgot the most beautiful thing in that case in Reading. Shawn Putnam, the kid who ratted out the guy who bought him beer? He'd already plead guilty to underage drinking ... drinking the MGD that the judge said wasn't beer. Better get that guy Eshelman's card, kid. Your lawyer sucks. And you can tell him I said so.