Stupid State Beer/Liquor Laws

FWIW, a vertical license in Missouri is the same design as the standard horizontal license; however, it's given to persons under the age of 21. Essentially it's a quick ID to, "this person is not eligible for alcohol purchase." In our case, it doesn't impact the times with which they can drive, or the number of passengers in their car. So YMMV as to what a vertical license means in your state, if they use that design at all.

 

The silliest one I know of is that in Minnesota, you can't buy cans or bottles of beer to take home at breweries. I think it has something to do with the strength of the distributor and liquor store lobbies there. Funny how distributors and liquor stores in the rest of the country still manage do to just fine without such a ridiculous law to help prop them up.

 

Ah see I got my license at 19 but did not get my horizontal until my vertical expired when I was 23. I could still buy alcohol with it. Normal when u turn 21 you are supposed to apply for a regular license. I never did. I waited.

 

Beer laws in Maryland are a bit ridiculous. They get even more crazy when you break it down by county.

The most annoying for me is the beer shipping laws. Maryland does not allow shipping of beer from outside of the state (but they allow wine shipping). Every state surrounding us allows for beer shipping. For a short time, when COVID first start, some out of state breweries started shipping directly, but then out of no where they ceased. I guess folks caught on. They refunded payments from orders, etc. MD breweries are able to delivery directly to customers, as of right now, but you have to live within a certain mileage because they are self-delivery (no shipping). This is fine except this leads me to my second pet peeve of Maryland beer laws....

I don't live near any of these breweries that are able to deliver. My county's beer laws are so antiquated. The local govt here has made it practically impossible for breweries to open with certain laws and requirements that really limit where and how a brewery can operate. The county next to mine has 5 or 6 breweries. I have to travel about 25-30 miles to go to my "local" brewery. This leads me to support my beer stores more than breweries directly.

 

Wisconsin is the opposite problem. Breweries can ship out of state if the receiving state allows but cannot ship within the state. We have a very strong Tavern League, so the only way this is changing is if the taverns probably get to do to go drinks and grocery stores/liquor stores/breweries can ship gets put in one bill to put them over the top.

 

State law is actually midnight for beer and wine, 9 pm for liquor, but most municipalities just say 9 pm for everything. Kinda annoying but not the worst thing in the world.

 

The good news is that someone at BeerAdvocate 'checked' and accepted your ID, so welcome to the BA forums, Ryan.

Michigan is pretty liberal with its liquor laws (restaurants can sell draft beer, wine, cocktails to-go in sealed containers no larger than 16 oz because of the pandemic, but afterward?), so I don't have much to gripe about.

However, trying to get out of state breweries or wineries to ship to a residence is a problem. I think there is a law that protects our wine industry that limits the collective amount that can be shipped into Michigan by wineries, and that sounds like a paperwork nightmare until that collective threshold is reached, thus many wineries don't even bother. Maybe this law also applies to beer? Whatever the reason, I wish I could get beer shipped here.

 

I never knew this -- I guess I've done all my WI purchases before the deadline... for the past 40 years.

 

The whole California thing where you have to buy food with the beer at breweries is random.

 

They keep trying to change/fight it but in nj i can go to a go go bar and see woman in barely visible bikinis and order a drink.
A strip club where they are completely naked...no alcohol. As if the combination of booze and bare breasts will send me into a wild violent rage(now that I say it out loud, maybe).
Most laws are archaic and just designed to appease certain groups,mostly religious to get their vote at one time

 

The midnight change is within the last 10 years recent, most municipalities never changed their laws.

 

Minnesota BA, here, chiming-in from the state that brought you Prohibition and the Volstead Act.

The Midwest forum is chock-full of posts on Minnesota’s Stoopid Beer Laws. Feel free to drop by the forum and tell us how good we have it, here.

 

As you probably know Utah has some strict laws. Alcohol is sold only in state liquor stores. No beer on tap over 4%. Also at lot of places you have to order something to eat if you want a beer. Even if it's peanuts. However this doesn't seem to apply to breweries which serve on premises

 

You've been able to buy beer up until midnight for a lot longer than 10 years. Or am I reading your post wrong--are you saying that more municipalities are changing to allow beer/wine sales until then?

 

OK was the same when I did my undergrad in Stillwater. Packaged craft beer could only be bought at liquor store (all sold at room temp.), which closed at 9PM. Said stores could not sell ice, mixers, soda, basically anything needed to make cocktails.

 

Hmmm well some of my time with just a passport was pre 2010, but I always suspected that people were just being weird.

 

It's funny/sad that eventually $$ overrides morals, common sense and "tradition" (see ABV rules, cannabis, snowboards ..)

 

Only one here (AFAIK) is that you can't sell beer and liquor in the same store, and grocery stores cannot sell wine or liquor...

Total Wine implements a work-around to this: They have both a liquor/wine store and a beer store sharing the same building and storefront, but they operate as separate businesses within, thereby circumventing the aforementioned restriction...

 

Johnson County, KS required an alcohol serving establishment to make 30% of their income off of food sales, at a minimum.

Breweries would bring in food trucks on weekends to try and hit this minimum. Unfortunately, it costs money to bring a food truck on site, with some breweries citing a net-loss after hosting food trucks in order to meet the legal requirement. Fortunately, the city's voters voted to remove this legal precedence during the last election.

Supposedly this law was rooted in reducing the number of alcohol serving establishments, since it gives the city legal recourse to remove an establishment's licensing if they don't meet the sales requirements.

Either way, good riddance to this prohibition-era law. Glad it has been removed locally. Sorry you're dealing with it out there.

 

I don't want to sound like an insensitive asshole, as drunk driving deaths are through the roof, but .08 seems pretty low for blood-alcohol-content limit of operating a motor vehicle. I'm not saying people should be able to get plastered and then drive. I'm sure there is a long history behind this law. I'd be interested in it.