Stampede Brewing Company down in Texas has released a beer that is enhanced with vitamins. (Seems like a perfect spot to insert a "vitamin B" joke here.) The Brookston Beer Blog wastes no time in debunking it:

It seems to play on the perception that most people hold, which is that beer is unhealthful. While it may be that the product churned out by the big breweries — which is loaded with many of the several dozen chemicals approved by the FDA for use in beer production — is not as healthy as beer ought to be, most craft beer is made using all-natural ingredients and in very few, if any, chemical additives. Beer made in this traditional way returns beer to a time when it was considered "liquid bread" and preferable to water, since it had more nutritional value and avoided any problems with sanitation that were common in centuries past. But the perception of beer as unhealthy is a very recent phenomenon, fueled by prohibitionists, neo-prohibitionists like MADD and others, and ironically by the big breweries themselves with their questionable propaganda techniques that show their type of beer in a less than flattering light.

Ironically though, the guy can’t list the vitamins on the label because the federal government told him "it would be an implied health claim." I suppose that doesn’t matter so much when us bloggers spread the news for him. :)

Slashfood correctly points out that beer already has vitamins A, B, D and E, and niacin, without any supplementing. So, take your Stampede Beer with a grain of salt.