Does anyone know if Noble ale works has any distribution in Nor Cal? I've seen a few different beers from them on the shelf (No showers) at a particular beer store (bay area) and was curious if they were selling it legally.
There is at least one beer store in the Bay Area that has sold it legally. That doesn't mean that the place where you saw it was doing so.
Hi, troll. I looked there and nowhere in NorCal is listed unless I'm blind. Not everyone keeps their website up to date, hence my thread.
Well I don't want to get the place I saw it in trouble, so how do you know the place you know of is doing it legally? If they don't have a distributor up here...
Can confirm that multiple legitimate distro locations in Orange County are not listed on Noble's site.
You'd have to ask the owner and hope for a truthful answer. The beer doesn't have to be distributed to the shop you speak of. The store owner or rep can go to the brewery to pick up and sell the beer back at their place as long as the brewery has posted for sale in that county. Where it becomes illegal is when the brewery does not wholesale directly to the store so they buy the beer retail at some place in So Cal and then resell it back home in their shop.
They could also distribute to a store in OC and conveniently have a sister store up in SF. I think this was how some Modern Times cans/bottles made it to SF before they began actual distro up there.
Thanks guys, really appreciate the answers. I had mistakenly thought you could only go to the brewery and buy wholesale if it it was a self-distributed brewery.
Meh...There is the guy that owns a bottle shop in Livermore that sells stuff illegally. I don't want to mention his name but it rhymes with Larry and starts with a "P". I know he's sold Bruery, Alpine, and Noble illegally.
That is correct. If a business has more than one location, one of them needs to be picking up wholesale.
I basically don't want to support a store doing shady practices. The store in question doesn't have another location, but in theory they could've bought wholesale at the brewery and driven it back up so I'll ask them.
That's not illegal. As long as the brewery is posted in the county it's being sold in. Now if we're talking about an out of state brewery, then things are different.