Utah destroys thousands of gallons of beer


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Oh, take off!

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Wouldn’t it work out to 274.91666666666 in that instance?

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I like the idea with the brooms, I assume they’re there to prevent shards of glass from escaping?

Still a massive waste of beer.

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In a good and just world, the state of Texas should be brimming with sea otter/microbrewery spite house attractions.

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Can’t you feed beer to cattle as feed? They don’t get drunk but they get calories from it. I remember that happening with a bad batch of beer somewhere (and its weird enough that I am sure I read it on this very website long ago).

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Why? Surely Busch could have set up a couple of wholly-owned shell subsidiaries as a wholesaler and retailer to get round the law? Or does one have to be a tech/intellectual property corporation to afford the lawyers who figure that stuff out?

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Fuck that. Give it to ME!

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Props for the Niven ref; made my day =).

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This makes me very unhoppy.

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Yes. Typo. :slight_smile:

Great example of how laws are written for (and often by) the affected industry.

Reminds me of the world-famous Jack Daniels distillery, located in a “dry county” (no alcohol sales allowed) in Tennessee. The only exception is that Jack Daniels can sell commemorative (and full-sized) bottles of different varieties of whiskey to its guests. It’s not subtle. “They’re ‘commemorative’! :wink:

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Beer is God’s way of telling us He loves us, so is this a denial of the existence of God?
Asking for a friend… :wink:

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That’s a lot of horse piss down the drain.

Since the state liquor stores can’t sell anything with less than (now) 5% alcohol, it’s weird. There’s no food, no sodas, no mixers, etc. Just booze. Actually they’ll sell mixers but it’s “pre-mixed” and already 20 proof or so.

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He looks far too happy for the job he is doing. That man is Evil!

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It’s common to run cases over with a fork lift, then use basically a snow plow to push everything into a dumpster.

Destroying beer is surprisingly common. When beer expires, wholesalers take it back. Send it back to the producer and the producer destroys it to prevent it from making it out to market. Intentionally or by mistake. Its also common for wholesalers to destroy product when contract rights to a brand change hands. You can buy the old wholesaler’s stock, and its often a good idea. You end up with inventory on hand to begin selling immediately, and the previous wholesaler is not out the cost of any unsold product (which they can’t legally sell once they don’t have the contract rights).

Unfortunately there’s a lot of fuckery, especially out of the Budweiser and Coors associated distributors. People will change the sell buy dates to get expired product mixed in during the hand off, negatively impact the brand. Ship over only expired product. ETC. So it’s common to just refuse to negotiate forcing the former distributor or brewery to destroy product.

This end I do not get. Provided it’s in code the producers and wholesalers can take it back, refund the state. Then just resell the beer to those grocery stores. That can paradoxically be more wasteful, in the environmental sense. As you’re trucking stuff around, and there’s some amount of damage and repackaging that’s involved. But that’s down to how far the wholesaler’s warehouse is from the point of sale.

I don’t see why you’d require the product to be destroyed as a matter of course.

It’s every state, it’s not technically a federal law so far as I know. But it’s designed to prevent the sort of alcohol monopolies that exist in Europe. One of the Spanish breweries my company distributes owns an entire town. Typically in Europe bars are whole sale owned by the producer and can not sell product from brand not owned by that producer.

There are also exceptions in almost every state for smaller producers. Up to a certain production level you can distribute yourself. And on site retail sales. So you can buy beer at the brewery. But the brewery can not open a store to sell you just their beer regardless of size. There are more exceptions for small independant companies then there are for the likes of InBev and Diagio. The system exists to prevent massive companies from monopolizing the market.

There’s issues with the three tier system but it isn’t in and of itself stupid. In particular consolidation in the liquor and wine distribution, and control of larger regional beer wholesalers by Inbev and Miller/Coors. But functionally the 3 tier system is why the US has developed strong craft beer and small scale spirits production when most other countries have not.

Why would they not get drunk? Alcohol effects most animals the same way it does humans.

They can’t. Can’t even own a distributor through subsidiaries. I think they can invest in wholesalers, but they can’t have an ownership stake. They do pretty much control distributors in many states though. Basically boils down to consolidating contracts into a single company. If 80% of a wholesaler’s catalog is AB, well then AB pretty much controls that wholesaler. Then using money and shitty (often illegal) sales tactics you can make sure that wholesaler controls a significant portion of retail spots, locking others out.

There’s an intense, complex series of laws preventing a lot of stuff that’s loosened their control through this pathway. And with macro beer sales cratering you basically get the space that’s allowed craft to flourish.

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Back in the day, they used to print the production information on the bottle side of the label: date/time, plant, line, etc. Harder to change that, but who’s going to check every bottle?

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It’s more common now that it was in the past. But there’s no standard, many breweries don’t. And many use a code rather than a simple date.

But in terms of rat fucking the other guy it doesn’t much matter. Having beer come back once its already been shipped and sold, or finding it’s unsellable after money has already changed hands is exactly the goal.