Here’s a fun video about craft beer’s struggles to get to market. With a hat tip to Brian Stechschulte at Bay Area Craft Beer, it’s a student film by a Michael Jolly, done for his “Motion Graphics class. It’s an animated info graphic concerning American Craft Beer. I created all artwork, narration, and animation myself. Hope you enjoy it…And drink craft beer!” He’s titled it: Craft Beer: A True Underdog Story.
Well, except one of the main points (at approx. 0:46) where he says “…under current distribution laws small brewers… are required to hire a middle man…” isn’t the case in California or, according to the Brewers Association page on “Self-Distribution” http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/government-affairs/self-distribution-laws , in more than half of the other states.
The US Three Tier laws are no doubt old and out-dated (altho’ many have been revised to allow S/D, brewpubs, etc, since the Repeal era) but calling them “Stupid” without apparently understanding the background history of them might not be particularly “academic”.