Strong European Craft Beers exported to US, except Hemp Beer

I’m sure NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre – a connoisseur of the “craft” beer – caught this in his Washington Post today:

European Brews Steeped in Tradition – washingtonpost.com
Like many European specialty breweries, Het Anker relies heavily on the export market. Of its 12,000-barrel annual output, U.S. importer Martin Wetten of Sterling will receive about 3,000 barrels.

Wetten also has exclusive rights to import the beers of Castle Eggenberg in the Austrian Alps near Salzburg. Brewing has taken place there since at least the 14th century; managing partner Karl Stohr says his great-great-great-grandfather acquired the business in 1804.

Eggenberg makes a refreshingly dry, herbal pilsner called Hopfen Koenig, but the brewery is most famous for its bock beers. In ascending order of strength, they are Doppelbock Dunkel (8.5 percent alcohol by volume), Urbock 23° (9.6 percent) and Samichlaus (14 percent).

Half of all the Samichlaus produced goes to the United States, Stohr estimates. “Austrians are very conservative beer drinkers,” preferring normal-strength lagers, he says. But even America has its limits: You’ll have to travel abroad to find Eggenberg’s cannabis- flavored Spirit of Hemp lager.

Is there a prohibition on the importation of hemp-flavored beer? Or are there just no distributors importing it to the States? The website for Spirit of Hemp makes no mention. I doubt that the lager has any detectable traces of THC that would prevent its import into the US. Worries about testing positive on THC drug screens after drinking hemp beer aren’t an issue:

Olde Bongwater is a porter beer that substitutes hemp seed for barley and hops at certain stages of the brewing process. But post-drinking urine tests were negative for THC.

Their concerns were unfounded because the maker of that brew and Hempen Ale must brew their beer with no-THC hempseed, according to cannabisbeer.com:

Hempen Ale, a new release from the Frederick Brewing Company in Frederick, MD, contains between 10 and 30% hemp seeds in the mash. The seeds are laboratory certified to be THC­free, assures Steve Nordahl, VP of brewery operations. But they’re rich in proteins and fatty acids, lending this brown ale an oily mouth feel and creamy white head, as well as a mild herbal/spicy aftertaste. By this fall, estimates Nordahl, the brewery will be running through about 45,000 pounds of hemp seeds a month…about 75% of the total entering this country.