(Woodinville, WA) – Redhook Brewery got label approval for the next beer in its Limited Series: Eisbock 28. On the surface, this looks like an interesting beer that will come out in the fall but when it comes to eisbocks, it is always a bit more tricky than that.

The label reads, “Aged for months at temperatures well below freezing, Eisbock 28 is extraordinarily smooth and malt with a bittersweet complexity achieved by ice processing.”

Yup, that sounds like an eisbock to me.

Who better than Joe Sixpack himself, Don Russell, to give us the lowdown on this forbidden style?

“[…] That’s ice bock, and that’s illegal [in the U.S.], because the process is actually a form of distillation, not conventional brewing. In other words, the final product – in the eyes of the law – is not beer, it’s hard liquor.

This hairsplitting is an offshoot of post-Prohibition laws that require distilleries to be separately licensed and their products taxed at a higher rate than beer. Even home brewers are forbidden to make ice bock, lest Uncle Sam’s revenuers string ’em up like moonshiners.”

What’s most intriguing about this is to see such a large brewery make this style. Up until now, only small breweries that are a fraction of the size of Redhook, like Capital Brewery, have been producing these beers. These breweries have flown under the radar and I don’t know of a single case where the TTB enforced the law against any of them.

That said, the TTB has shown that it is not afraid to go after big breweries. Last year, the TTB announced a $3.5 million settlement (pdf) with Boston Beer Co. after it improperly registered products and underpaid its taxes as a result. Taxes on distilled spirits are much higher than taxes on beer so it is very possible, even after a tax reduction for lower alcohol content, that registering this beer as a malt beverage, as Redhook has done, could pose an issue. Considering Anheuser-Busch/InBev, a company that would probably want to play things safe, has a 35.8% stake in the Craft Brewers Alliance (of which Redhook is a part), that thickens the plot even more.

Will anything come of it? Probably (and hopefully) not as I doubt that Redhook is making enough of this stuff for the TTB/IRS to consider action.

Look for this one in 22’s later this fall. 11% ABV. The 28 in “Eisbock 28” is a tribute to 28 years of brewing at Redhook.

Kudos to the Widmer Brothers and Redhook for making two styles that are generally an afterthought widely available for the first time from U.S. breweries. [Widmer Prickly Pear Braggot, the other, is now available.]