Last month, when two Tampa Bay lawmakers filed bills that would make the sale of 64-ounce beer growlers legal in Florida the state's craft beer purveyors and fans thought their fight was finally over. With more and more lawmakers starting to get that the whole craft beer thing is about more than just delicious beer, and the big beer distributors announcing they're not going to fight it, the bill has a degree of promise.
Then, earlier this month, the Florida Retail Federation and the state's Department of Business and Professional Regulation filed a lawsuit targeting craft beer tasting rooms. Those behind the effort say they're just "seeking clarification" on whether craft beer tasting rooms should be able to operate under the laws by which they currently do, the same ones that made it legal for Busch Gardens to serve the Anheuser-Busch products brewed on site way back when.
Florida Brewers Guild president Mike Halker, owner of Due South Brewing, offered some insightful perspective on the craft beer fight on Due South's Web site, and why there's any opposition to growlers and tasting rooms at all.
He writes that it's the job of a big beer lobbyist like Mitch Rubin to convince distributors that if smaller brewers, which make up a tiny fraction of the industry, can legally sell beer brewed on site, so too can the big guys.
"Mitch has convinced the distributors that Bud and Miller are going to come into Florida and open up a brewery on every corner to bypass the three-tier system if they don’t protect themselves against it with new laws," Halker writes."He contends, 'What’s good for the craft brewers is also good for Bud so you better watch yourself.'"
That translates to pressure on lawmakers, which last year the FBG was finally able to fight.
"The reason the growler law hasn’t passed is simply, they didn’t want it to," he writes. "And the reason it’s going to pass this year is not because we’re so much stronger, it’s that we’ve successfully painted them as the bastards they are."
Brewers have a minuscule budget to fight for their right to sell their products their own way compared to the industry giants who want to crush them. So, the challenge for them will be dividing their attention and resources between getting brewer-friendly laws passed in the upcoming legislative session and fighting the state's lawsuit against them.
Read Halker's post in its entirety here.
This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2015.
