Craft brewers vent anger over budget provision (WI)

Source: madison.com





Craft brewers vent anger over budget provision

JESSICA VANEGEREN | The Capital Times | jvanegeren@madison.com | (47) Comments | Posted: Tuesday, June 7, 2011 3:00 pm


The number of craft brewers is growing across the state, with beer-brand names like New Glarus, Capital Brewery and Sprecher as recognizable to many Wisconsin beer drinkers as Bud and Miller Lite.

In all, the state’s 60 craft brewers now account for 5 percent — a rising but still slim percentage — of the state’s annual beer sales, according to the Colorado-based Brewers Association, a nonprofit trade group dedicated to promoting the country’s small brewers.

Yet even though sales from the state’s largest craft brewer, New Glarus Brewing Co., trail one of the state’s largest brewers, MillerCoors, by millions of barrels of beer annually — 92,000 compared to more than 5 million — a motion slipped into Gov. Scott Walker’s budget would treat brewers of all sizes equally by preventing them from owning or operating a wholesale distributor.

“Everything in this bill is designed to make it harder for small craft brewers to grow,” says Deb Carey, a co-owner of New Glarus Brewing and a member of the Wisconsin Brewers Guild. “It is a slimy piece of legislation.”...........................

Read more: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/capitol-report/article_1f004302-90ab-11e0-bd83-001cc4c002e0.html

you don't mess with WI's beer...

Now it's serious.

They'd have to get someone else to store and sell the stuff? I don't think this will fly, Lienies is still considered a craft beer.


My favorite:


from: http://www.lakefrontbrewery.com/main.html

:beer:

There's nothing craft about it any more. I'm twelve miles from the brewery and I don't know anyone who drinks it.

I live 20 miles from Leinies and i still drink it.:) Leinies Original is still great and I enjoy some of their other stuff. On the other hand it pains me to purchase it since Miller is in cahoots with Walker. I buy a lot more New Glaurus than Leinies these days...especially since the owners of NG are supporters of single payer.

and Leinenkugel is a repub, so I was thinking he may not like this bit in the bill...but you're right I forgot that Miller bought up Lienies...they already have a separate distributor.

Or a beer distributor intent on getting terratorial with the taxpayer's $$$

And always has been.

If Anheuser Busch want to install a brewery that produces XXX barrels of beer a year, so be it but it must be a free standing brewery at xx miles from any other.

All breweries under xxx barrels can have a retail store on site.

Done.

Here in Michigan we have the EFM Emergency Financial Managers. These guys are goosestepping their way into several cities and school districts with more targeted. It's fascism pure and simple. Once an EFM takes over all of the elected officials are irrelevant and one person answerable only to the Governor make all the decisions. We have a recall effort underway if only the State Party would lend a hand!