Beer Laws And Beer Business

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Montgomery bars are spending big bucks on keg coolers and draft lines and learning about line maintenance and cleaning glassware. South Carolina stores need a lot more shelf space for the hundreds of new beers that are now legal, and the state’s craft brewers are scrambling to learn how to brew big beers to compete with out-of-state double IPA’s and barley wines. Restaurants in formerly dry towns have to compete with chain restaurants drawn by the new ­opportunity.

It’s easy to brush this off as part of doing business, as a lot of beer bloggers are doing. The tavern owners in Pennsylvania have had a 72-year monopoly on six-pack sales, and we’re supposed to feel sorry for them? Beer-store owners had the luxury of never having to open up a case and stack sixers in the cooler. Hey, get to work!

That’s cold, almost a bit Stalinesque. Some of those business­people worked hard within the system to bring Pennsylvania a variety of beer that is second to none. The six-pack-shop guys went deep in pocket for a more expensive bar license so they could sell us the single bottles we craved. The laws were ridiculous, and I’m glad to see them disappearing. But these guys were our beer comrades, they fought the revolution with us, and now we’re going to send them into exile, saying essentially, work harder or starve.

I’d feel worse, but I suspect they’re going to land on their feet. They were, after all, the men and women who were beating the hell out of the system already. The beer-store owner I talked to was one of them. “I’ll have to put in shelves, and I maybe won’t be able to carry as many beers,” he said. “But I’ll do it.”

Faced with consumer demand and a change in the law, what else would you do? Beer is a highly regulated product, and changes in those regulations are part of the risk of business. Looking at the accelerated pace of regulatory change affecting alcoholic-beverage sales over the past 15 years—increased taxes, labeling and advertising guidelines, keg registration, and stiffer D.U.I. laws—it’s only going to get riskier.

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