USA, MS: Mississippi craft brewers want to sell beer to customers without distributors

Mississippi’s burgeoning craft brewing industry and beer distributors are at odds over brewers wanting to sell direct to customers who visit them, Jackson Clarion Ledger reported on January 23.

The state’s temperance laws, dating to the post-Prohibition 1930s, create a “three-tiered” system, requiring beer manufacturers to use a distributor to sell to stores and restaurants. “Brewpub” restaurants are allowed to sell beer they make for on-premises drinking, and breweries can provide free samples. But they cannot sell beer for off-site consumption.

Craft breweries, of which the state has eight, say they don’t want to disrupt this system, but would like to sell a limited amount, as 46 states allow.

“We are not trying to break new ground here,” said Quinby Chunn, owner of Southern Prohibition Brewing in Hattiesburg. “I don’t want a handout. I don’t want a tax break and I don’t want to disrupt the three-tiered system … This would be a win for us, and a win for the distributors. The people who try it will buy it at a grocery store or restaurant next time.”

The craft brewers, and distributors who have opposed such a change in law, testified before the House Temperance Subcommittee of Ways and Means on January 23.

Distributors say they already work to help the craft brewers sell their beer, and that changing the law could have “unintended consequences.” The U.S. Supreme Court has already shot down a state law that tried to allow only in-state brewers to sell, and there is now a court challenge to a Massachusetts law that places a barrel limit on beer sold. They said a change would also be unfair to the companies that have invested millions of dollars and decades of work setting up the current government-proscribed beer distribution system.

Subcomittee Chairman Hank Zuber III, R-Ocean Springs, said the hearing was informational, and he’s uncertain whether legislation will be tackled.

24 January, 2014