Posted on 03/31/2011 9:24:18 AM PDT by Publician
The National Beer Wholesalers Association is pushing hard for something they claim is "states rights" but will take away my right to drink the beer I want!
Make your own. Do as you will. The law has lost its legitimacy until we restore it.
I know most people aren’t the beer snob that I am, but this will just mean more money in my pocket because I simply will not drink the mass produced garbage. For instance, I won’t start drinking Budweiser because I cannot get Dogfish Head anymore. I simply will quit drinking beer. I enjoy quality craft beer and some Belgian imports, but I am not going to drink beer I don’t enjoy just to drink beer. The mass producers have zero chance of tapping into my market unless they can find a way to mass produce a quality beer, which I have yet to see.
“Beer and socialism”. I haven’t heard such a terrifying combination of words on this site since Helen Thomas was mentioned in the same title as Playboy.
¨I have respect for beer!¨ —A Beautiful Mind
” I simply will quit drinking beer.”
You need to read the article, and not judge just by the headline. This has nothing to do with restricting your choices of beer. It has to do with wholesale distributers, and direct ordering. Do you order Dogbreath Head beer over the net, and have it shipped directly from the brewery to your house? Direct sales are only about 1 % of the business, but wholesalers want to have that 1%! States, on the other hand, wish to make “direct sales” decisions on their own.
Make your own
Most of the beer that goes into the niche stores are direct ordered. This would greatly reduce my selection. You have to produce and sell a large amount of your product to need a wholesaler. Regardless of how my current selection of beer enters the store I buy it from, this raises barriers to entry into the market and prevents small local breweries from selling their product dircetly to the customer. Dogfish Head was just an example, and a bad one as they already use wholesale distribution for the most part, but they would have never gotten to where they are today without being able to sell their product directly to the customer.
Ha! I’m no beer snob just because I know the difference between lawnmower beer (like Bud) that you drink when the weather’s hot and the beer’s cold and dinner beer like Dogfish Head or (my favorite) Great Lakes.
I just get so mad when I see big business lobbyists and mob thugs steal the language of real patriots to make things harder for the little guy! I learned the hard way that you’ve always got to be careful when some big group gets together and says that they’re doing something for you, even if they say the right words like states rights and stuff.
My dad used to run a bar in Illinois, and state control means Al Capone.
County level control, maybe. But most beer laws are just middle men taking extra dollars to drive trucks that anyone could drive in order to buy more politicians. I swear, sometimes states are dirtier than the feds!
Good points. I hadn’t considered small companies direct selling to stores, only to individual customers. Here in Ohio, it’s a mess, as all the stores are “State” stores. Varieties are really limited. Only two types of Mount Gay Rum, etc..
Same with Pennsylvania, I lived in Philly for 4 years. Here in Virginia, most gourmet shops, delis, and wine places have a nice little section of unique beer that can be bought in singles. There are several local breweries that are very small that can get their products to these types of stores.
Then you can drink all the Great Lakes you want!
I tend to like beers with a bit of “skunk” to them. I do like Moose! But that’s all I’ll pay, unless I’m out and about.
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