LOCAL STUFF
As all GABSers know, Maryland law restricts supermarkets to selling beer and wine at one outlet per county. According to the June 26th Rockville Gazette, the three largest area supermarkets (Giant, Safeway and Shoppers Food Warehouse) are lobbying to change that law, but concerns about "mom-and-pop" retail outlets make changes uncertain.
Most of the local newz is about new micros and pubs.
According to the June 28th Wash Post Weekend, Alexandria s well-known folk bar the Birchmere is planning on brewing and selling Birchmere Beer in about nine months.
According to the June 4th Wilmington Newz-Urinal (contributed by First State s Betsy Perse), Fordham Brewing of Annapolis wants to build a 100,000-barrel capacity brewery in Middletown DE.
According to the June 28th Newz-Urinal (again from Betsy), DE s contract brewery Blue Hen wants to expand and build a brewpub in New Castle county, and Greenville brewpub Brandywine Brewing is looking for a second location.
And according to Wash Post of June 5th, the expanded Wash National Airport will include two brewpubs; Alexandria s Virginia Beverage Company is interested in operating one of them (Cap City is not).
NEWZ IN FULL
(From July 1st Newzweek): Don t do dairy, and the taste of Tums turns your stomach? Belly up to the bar instead. Come August, calcium-deficient folks in the San Francisco area can order Sophie McCall - a golden lager enriched with 10 times the calcium of Bud. Local arts maven Sydney Goldstein dreamed up "The Queen of Beers" for ladies sick to death of Chardonnay lunches, with a share of profits to go to women s sports. Guys can quaff the brew, too. Says Goldstein, "We re not excluding anyone who likes delicious beer with extra calcium." Bottoms up.
(From May 23rd Wash Post letters to the editor, contributed by GABSer Pat Lawrence): Having just returned from a fourteen-year assignment in Egypt, I read the Post s May 8th news story "Egypt s Economy Fights to Junk Socialist Legacy" with great interest, especially the part about the efforts to privatize state-owned Stella Beer. The article accurately depicted the sorry state of the Egyptian brewery. Not only did each beer taste different, but the beer was preserved with formaldehyde. If more than half a bottle of Stella was drunk, a nasty headache was guaranteed. It was not uncommon to have to pour out every other beer because of foreign matter floating in the bottle. A joke that has floated around Cairo for years goes: Nine out of ten people who try Stella prefer beer. Scott Nichols, Fairfax [Okay, I ll stop complaining about Lousy Big American Beer Companies for a while]
MARKETING BEER IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE
According to a June 3rd Phily Inquirer story by Kent D. Steinriede, contributed by Betsy: When Gene Muller of Cherry Hill NJ decided he wanted to start his Flying Fish Beer micro, he put his proposal out on the Web, asking for good ideas and promising T-shirts to anyone who supplied them. As a consequence, although he has yet to build his brewery, he secured a loan from a Web- surfing homebrewer/banker, and several restaurants and bars have promised to sell Flying Fish when it is available. To return the favor, his Web site includes a description of his learning experiences to help to others wanting to follow in his footsteps.
BEER BIZ
According to Dave McIntyre in the May 15th Wash Post, many states with the traditional three-tiered producer/wholesaler/retailer system (including Maryland and I think Delaware) are trying to get BATF to enforce post-prohibition laws prohibiting producers from shipping alcohol into a state when that shipment is in violation of that state s laws. Direct-to-consumer operations (beer of the month clubs, mail-order retailers) are thus illegal in states enforcing the three-tiered system, which can seize such shipments if they find them but are otherwise powerless without help from the operator s home state. Often they get that help, but wineries have been found shipping in boxes labeled "glassware," "printing supplies," and even "motorcycle parts." Of course, the producer and consumer win, but the wholesaler and state (read here tax revenue) lose. Given the anti-regulatory mood of the day, the author implies that BATF will probably turn a deaf ear to the states.
