REBOTTLED BEER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 447, 31 August 1928, Page 1

REBOTTLED BEER

£2O FINE FOR HOTEL LICENSEE LABELLED BOTTLES USED Found guilty on four charges of using labelled bottles for bottling other liquor, Alexander Burr, licensee of the Huapai Hotel, was fined £2O, with costs, on each charge in the Police Court this morning. Mr. V. N. Hubble, representing the medical officer of health, who brought the charges under the Licensing Act. said the offences had been admitted. In July, inspectors visited the hotel and took samples. The tops on three represented brands of beer and one of stout were of different brands. Rebottling had obviously been going on for some time. It could be said for the licensee that the three brands of beer were true to label —he had apparently bought the beer In bulk and had bottled it. The stout, however was not what it was represented to be. “In the circumstances, the minimum penalty should teach Burr a lesson,” Mr. W. R. McKean, S.M.. said. The offences have been committed and that is all there is to it.” EMPLOYEES BLAMED S.M. RESERVES DECISION Judgment was reserved by Mr. W. R. McKean, S.M., in a similar case when J. G. McGregor, licensee of the Rising Sun Hotel, faced four charges of using labelled bottles for bottling other liquor. Mr. V. N. Hubble, for the Health Department, said that inspectors had taken samples of well-known brand* of gin, brandy and schnapps, which the analysis had shown to be not true to label. The schnapps sample was of the same standard that it purported to be, with 10.3 per cent, of water added. I Mr. R. A. Singer stressed the excellent reputation borne by defendant a* 1 an hotel proprietor, and suggested that j any adulteration had been the work of j employees, who had been in the habit ! of helping themselves.