What do you mean? Illogical alcohol laws are a pretty common topic in libertarian circles and publications. Hint: they’re against them. But libertarians don’t really have fat lobbying dollars to give out, not compared to the alcohol wholesalers and large breweries who like having these barriers to competition.
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Seconded. Was wondering if that was caught by many.
Though on the bright side: every single beer pictured there is crap.
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Further to the previous reply (and far more facetious), it’s hard to get all romantic about the guv’mint defying moonshiner when there are no restrictions on alcohol.
The spent grain left over from brewing is used as livestock feed. But the beer itself as feed? Cattle can get tipsy, and it would mean filling drinking troughs with beer instead of water. Not really a good idea.
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FTFY, 'cuz low alcohol content.
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Seems UK which also has a strong craft beer and small scale spirits production has approached this from the other direction. Breweries still own a lot of the pubs but freepubs are becoming more common and you see many more small production beers alongside the main breweries. And there is a lot of microbrewery pubs now.
So the 3 tier system is one way to develop the independents but not the only way.
Of course not. But the three tier system is not a pointless complication. Neither is it an example of puritanical blue laws put in place after prohibition. It’s an anti trust policy.
It’s goal wasn’t to foster independent producers. It’s designed to prevent regional monopolies and certain kinds of anticompetative vertical integration. It’s done the latter quite well. The former happened through other means and an on going set of reforms to alcohol laws since the 1970’s has helped stall then reverse the regional monopolies (which started shifting towards the national) that had developed by that point. Most of those policies wouldn’t have had much impact if our retailers weren’t wholy independent all along.
Meanwhile in the UK (and much of Europe), the rise of craft has been a response to similar consolidation in the pub business.
It still seems odd to me that the UK and Ireland have craft beer at all. Since the early goal of American home brew and craft was to bring the quality and variety of beer available in Belgium, Germany and the UK to the US at a time where we basically had 3 companies selling identical beer under 12 brand names and nothing else.
What happened in the UK and Ireland during the mass consolidation of beer. Is that dozens, if not hundreds, of local and regional breweries were bought up by big beer. And were subsequently shuttered, with the pubs they owned or controlled converted to cookie cutter venues. Same tap lists, menus, and even internal floor plan as all the other pubs owned by that company.
Through the 90’s there was a straight up collapse in the variety and number of breweries in the UK and Ireland. And through the 00’s consolidation in pubs continued, causing additional pressure on remaining independent brands.
That spawned CAMRA. A massively influential group in craft beer globally. Largely the reason cask beer is a thing at all in the US, and very much the origin point for craft in the UK and Ireland. And probably the first European craft movement of any influence.
So while other policies (along with consumer interest driven by the American craft scene) are letting the UK fix the issue. The lack of legal blocks like the 3 tier system is a big reason you need to fix anything at all. A lot of those small independent breweries were snapped up exclusively to get access to the bars they owned.
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I think it had something to do with cows and their weird 4 stomach digestive system.
I think I’ve only hard something similar in regard to Kobe beef, where the cows don’t get drunk cause they only give them one beer a day.
Innerwebs doesn’t seem to have much info about drunk cows. But there’s some accounts out there and you tube videos.
Fermentation happens naturally in ruminant’s stomachs.
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