For brewers, beer lovers, politicians and alcohol regulators it has been an interesting two weeks in Massachusetts.\u00a0 For those who don’t know the Massachusetts ABCC, which regulates all manner of alcohol-related businesses, released a decision several weeks ago with wide-ranging impact.\u00a0 There have been many articles, blogs, tv and radio spots, as well as internet rants regarding the decision.\u00a0 I’m not going to rehash all of them here, if you want the background info go google it!<\/p>\n
The gist of the situation is that for years there have been two classes of licenses in Massachusetts for breweries, a manufacturers license and a farmer-brewer’s license.\u00a0 The farmer-brewer license allows you to do all sorts of fun things like distribute your own beer, and sell your beer at retail, and have a tasting room, etc.<\/p>\n
The manufacturers license allows you to make beer.\u00a0 That’s it.<\/p>\n
Oh, did I mention that farmer-brewer licenses start at $22 and manufacturers licenses are over $4,000 annually?<\/p>\n
So you must have to be a farm to get the cheaper license, right?\u00a0 This is where things get a bit murky.\u00a0 For years breweries have been receiving farmer-brewer licenses without having to demonstrate that they are actually engaged in farming.\u00a0 The law isn’t exactly clear on how much farming a brewer has to do to qualify.\u00a0 Maybe one hop plant in a pot is good enough?\u00a0 In point of fact, many brewers did choose to grow or source local ingredients when possible.<\/p>\n
In a move that was probably long overdue, the ABCC decided that they needed to provide a more strict interpretation of this law.\u00a0 In a decision that sent jaws dropping to the floor in breweries around the state, they declared that a farmer-brewer must produce 50% of the aggregate grain and hops used for brewing.\u00a0 This is a staggering number, and by my informal calculations, to supply all of the breweries in the state would require more farmland than currently exists in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
The implications of the ruling would have had significant impact on most of the breweries in the state, would have put some out of business, and may have driven start-ups like us over the border into New Hampshire.\u00a0 After some swift action by the Mass. Brewer’s Guild and the office of the Treasurer, the ruling was rolled back last week.\u00a0 Existing breweries will be able to renew their licenses, new breweries will be able to get new licenses, and work will begin on creating a new class of small brewer license.<\/p>\n
So where does this leave us now?<\/p>\n
I believe that we can learn a few lessons from this whole situation.<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 Clear, appropriate regulation is important to our business!<\/strong>\u00a0 We could have avoided this whole issue if licensing standards were updated to reflect the reality of the current time.\u00a0 Creating a separate small brewer license would have been helpful before this decision came down.\u00a0 This type of license is now being debated, after the fact.\u00a0 If you want to see more new, creative small breweries this is important to you.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 We need to do a better job of communicating with our politicians and bureaucrats.<\/strong>\u00a0 Again we may have avoided this issue if we had been able to educated the ABCC and the Treasurer’s office about the business of brewing and farming.\u00a0 Had the implications of this decision been fully understood and explained, I doubt that it would have been enacted.<\/p>\n 3. Beer lovers and brewers in Massachusetts have a voice and can make a difference!<\/strong>\u00a0 We have all received so many encouraging words from beer fans during this saga.\u00a0 Some wrote letters to their elected officials, others to local papers and some local farmers even offered land and crops to various brewers.\u00a0 This is democracy at its best.\u00a0 Within two weeks we were able to get a bad decision reversed thanks to fans, brewers and the Mass. Brewer’s Guild.<\/p>\n We at RiverWalk Brewing have been in the process of getting our Federal licensing for the past 5 months.\u00a0 All of our plans were predicated on our ability to receive the farmer-brewer’s license.\u00a0 I honestly don’t know how we would have moved forward without getting this type of license.\u00a0 There were some tense moments a few weeks ago, but we are grateful to be part of such a wonderful community.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n -Steve Sanderson<\/p>\n RiverWalk Brewing Co.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For brewers, beer lovers, politicians and alcohol regulators it has been an interesting two weeks in Massachusetts.\u00a0 For those who don’t know the Massachusetts ABCC, which regulates all manner of alcohol-related businesses, released a decision several weeks ago with wide-ranging impact.\u00a0 There have been many articles, blogs, tv and radio spots, as well as internet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5122"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5122"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5127,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5122\/revisions\/5127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}