The Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission has closed an investigation into complaints against a local brewer related to alcohol-by-volume calculations listed on some of its product labels.
The commission had received several complaints against 450 North Brewing Company, 8111 E. County Road 450N, regarding incorrect alcohol-by-volume (ABV) calculations on its products, said commission spokeswoman and counsel Lindsay Hyer. She declined to provide more information about the investigation or copies of the complaints.
“We’ve had four complaints regarding this issue,” Hyer said. After assigning the case to an excise officer, Hyer said Monday afternoon the investigation was closed, but had no further details.
An officer, identified as Corbin Smith from the excise police in the Seymour district, had a friendly five-minute chat with owners at the restaurant and found no violations, 450 North owner David Simmons said in a telephone interview Monday afternoon.
“They found no violations and that was it,” Simmons said.
Recently, 450 North caused some commotion on social media after acknowledging in a statement posted on its Facebook page that its calculation process for alcohol-by-volume for its Slushy line of beers was “critically flawed.”
ABV is a measure of how much alcohol is in a given volume of an alcoholic beverage and is typically expressed as percentage.
“After being made aware of possible inconsistencies in the ABV levels of our Slushy line of beers, we sent samples to be tested by an independent lab,” 450 North’s social media posts said. “The findings were unexpected. The independent testing of multiple Slushys has determined that our calculation process was ‘critically flawed.’ ”
Simmons said the “the problem has been corrected.”
“From now on, everything will be correct,” he said of the ABV labels.
For more on this story, see Tuesday’s Republic.
