Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Georgia Action Alert

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I almost missed posting this before it’s too late. According to the new grassroots organization, Support Your Local Brewery, there’s legislation in Georgia that will be bad for small brewers and their ability to offer samples of their beer at their brewery during tours. The vote is on Tuesday, June 19 so if you’re in Georgia contact your Congressperson as soon as possible, and no later than the end of the business day on Monday.

Here’s the press release from SYLB:

Georgia’s beer consumers and brewers are facing a threat that could adversely impact the business operations of in-state breweries and consequently your access to Georgia’s craft-brewed beer.

The Georgia Department of Revenue is proposing to adopt a new rule that would severely restrict beer tasting for attendees of brewery tours (please refer to the Synopsis for the actual rule language). The Department will consider adoption of this rule on Tuesday, June 19 – now is the time to make your voice heard in opposition to this rule.

Please read the following information which includes a message from Terrapin Beer Co.’s John Cochran who has been working with Georgia’s small production breweries to oppose this measure. You will find all the information you need for contacting the Commissioner of the Department of Revenue.

John has also included a suggested message to send, and Support Your Local Brewery suggests you visit the Beer Serves America web site for detailed information on the economic contribution of Georgia’s beer community to state coffers. Please consider including some of this information in your message to underscore the valuable economic contribution being made, which in no way should be jeopardized.

Thanks for your support in protecting Georgia’s brewers and beer consumers.

If you want to read the a synopsis of the bill itself, you can view it at the SYLB website.

From John Cochran of Terrapin Beer Co.:

All Georgia breweries need your help. We recently received notice that the Georgia Department of Revenue has decided to change the rules that apply to tours at breweries in Georgia. The new proposal calls for a limit of a 2oz pour of each beer style on the tour with a maximum limit of only 16oz. The 16oz pour is only possible if we have eight different styles of beer to offer on the tour. If a brewery only has four beers available to taste, then only 8oz can be poured at the tour.

It is the belief of the Georgia breweries, and our wholesalers, that the proposed rule change would effectively kill the tours. Since the breweries have spent significant sums of money on tasting rooms for the purposes of conducting tours this investment would be lost. In addition it would cause the layoff of employees who now operate as tour guides and could cause serious harm to the bottom line of all breweries. The tours are our main marketing tool and by losing the ability to continue tours as they are currently structured, we would lose customers, lose sales, and find it much more difficult to continue in business.

If you have enjoyed tours at Sweetwater and Atlanta Brewing in the past and you would like to continue to enjoy tours at those locations and at Terrapin Beer Company (tours starting this fall if these proposed changes do not take effect) then please take the time to help fight for our rights.

Atlanta Brewing, Sweetwater and Terrapin have worked together to craft a response to the proposed rule changes. If you agree with us that the proposed rule change is egregious and will harm the brewery tours and thereby harm our businesses, please take the time to send the attached response to the Department of Revenue, as indicated below.

E-mail your comments to regcomments@dor.ga.gov and be sure to include a reference to “NOTICE NUMBER AT-2007-1” on any correspondence you send.

The SYLB also helpfully has a template of a short letter you can use to send, which I reprinted below:

To: Commissioner Graham

Re: Notice Number AT-2007-1
560-2-2-.61

The Georgia Department of Revenue has proposed a significant change in the states’ long standing policy on service limitations for brewery tours. The proposed new rule will adversely affect my decision as a customer of the breweries, to attend the tours. By doing so it will also put at risk the brewer’s investment in facilities designed to attract and accommodate tour attendees such as myself and will severely limit the marketing and sales of the brewery’s products. I oppose adoption of the proposed rule change and respectfully urge the department to withdraw proposed rule 3a.

Sincerely,
YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS HERE

If you can help out, please send in your comments as soon as possible. The craft beer community thanks you for your help.
 

More on Garlic Festival’s Local Faux Pas

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I’m happy to see I’m not the only one bothered by Gilroy’s decision to ignore local brewers in favor of an Anheuser-Busch distributor and their flimsy, unconvincing excuses for the same. Cynthia Walker publishes a weekly column in the Gilroy Dispatch and her most recent one takes on this issue. In addition to simply preferring Coast Range’s beers, she also makes her case based on aesthetics, economics, ethics and a sense of justice.

I think one of her most compelling arguments is that if the food served at the garlic festival is meant to showcase garlic’s uses and its gourmet pedigree, you don’t pair it with an industrial beer, you pair it with a craft beer.

She concludes her passionate obloquy with the following:

At the end of the day, the Chamber of Commerce is in the business of promoting Gilroy businesses. Promotion would be better served by allowing the breweries and wineries to promote themselves by selling their wares openly at the Garlic Festival.

Bust the trust. Open the gates. Let the good times roll.

Amen.
 

Bay Area Brewfest This Weekend

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The second annual Bay Area Brewfest will be taking place this Saturday, from Noon until 6:00 p.m., at the San Mateo Event Center. I went to last year’s event, which was pretty good for a first time festival, well-organized and with a decent turnout. So I have high hopes for their sophomore effort and the music lineup makes it look like it could be a lot of fun. Sponsored by the radio station, “The Bone” 107.7, all five bands are tribute bands. There’s The Unauthorized Rolling Stones, Zepparella (Led Zeppelin), Gator Alley (Lynyrd Skynyrd), Petty Theft (Tom Petty), and Texas Holdem (Stevie Ray Vaughan).

Tickets are @25 at the gate or $20 in advance and can be ordered online. See you there.

Kitsock on Cans

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A colleague of mine, Greg Kitsock, has been published a few times in the Washington Post lately, and that’s great news since so few beer writers break through through the wine glass ceiling of most major newspapers. Kitsock is now doing a biweekly column in the Post. And if that wasn’t terrific enough for him and the beer community at large, his column is also being syndicated, presumably by Post-affiliated papers. For example, I just stumbled on an article he did about canned beers and Oskar Blues in the Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky. The original piece ran in the Washington Post a little over a week ago. That’s great news as far as I’m concerned.

Welcome to the Bulletin’s New Home

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Welcome to the Brookston Beer Bulletin’s new home on the web. Please change your bookmark, rss feed or link to reflect the new address, which is https://brookstonbeerbulletin.com. If you’ve linked to a specific page on the old Bulletin, such as http://www.brookston.org/beer/specific-page/, please simply replace the “”brookston.org/beer” portion of the code with “brookstonbeerbulletin.com” and it should work just fine, since all the old posts have been moved here to the new server unchanged.

There are a few things left to do here to get us back to full strength, so to speak, so please bear with us as I tend to those. All of the links, for example, have not yet been put back due to a change in the way the newest version of WordPress — my blogging software — treats categories. Also, the calendar function needs to be updated so that will take me a few more days to complete, too.