I work at a small public relations firm, and my employer has expressed interest in my homebrewing. They would like me to brew a batch of beer to send out to clients. Obviously I'm thrilled at the idea, but I want to make sure everything is above board. Does anyone know the legality of this? There is no money changing hands. They will pay for the ingredients, but I won't we paid for my effort, and the beer will be given out as a gift to customers.
Giving gifts to customers can be a gray area. If I give you beer, you give me business. It get's sort of sketchy. If you keep the gift cheap it might work out. Sesson beer, yes. Barleywine, no.
I wouldn't think there would be an issue with it. You aren't selling it, and you aren't benefiting monetarily from making it directly. Check your local laws yourself. Canada might be different.
Excuse me guys, why are you so corncerned about such an infantile thing like that, do you think american inspectors are going to go after you because you sell 5 gals of homebrewed beer?.I know I live in a disrupted country but I think you are exaggerating things.Am I wrong?
If you are gifting the beer to a specific person there shouldn't be any issues. In other words, the "businesses" shouldn't be involved. Just one person giving the gift of beer to another. Ideally, some kind soul would be gifting you the ingredients, rather than you being reimbursed for them. Maybe they would even accidentally gift you more grain & hops than necessary (for your your brewing & bottling efforts).
I work in the health care industry (as a vendor rep) and in most institutions there are restrictions that prohibit things like this. It's a really cool idea but I think you're better off talking to legal counsel if you want to be sure, not the BA community. On the lighter side, you better make darn sure you brew something that will appeal to your customers, if one prefer white wines you wouldn't want to gift a red. - I don't know what the laws are in Canada, I can only speak from experience here in the U.S.
I think you are probably right. However, there have been a few cases in the last few years where the local laws were interpretted as restricting certain kinds of homebrew activities, such as public tasting events and competitions. It did cause some business to reconsider hosting these activities until laws were changed. No one will go after individual homebrewers for breaking the law, but some businesses will not want to take this kind of risk.
In the US it would vary state by state based on the laws governing home brewing. As far as business gift there are laws that establish a de minimis amount of value that the gift can't exceed. I highly doubt a bottle or two of home brew would exceed that limit. As far as Canada goes I have no idea.
I was listening to a professional brewer on a podcast and he suggested that if you ever want to start your own brewery it is a bad idea to sell homebrew on any level. If you get caught it will probably be a slap on the wrist. However the charge on your record might keep you from getting licenses you need to legally sell alcohol.
Distributors can be a touchy bunch and tend to wield a very powerful political stick. I would be disinclined to cross them and invite them to make an example of me. Government entities may look the other way with an infraction like this, but when a major campaign contributor says "Jump", they tend to jump.
I agree with this. Alcohol laws are odd, and vary by state, so first off you need to know those. But beyond that there are federal and state laws about "gifts" between private contractors and businesses that patronize them. And also laws about whether these gifts have to be reported at tax time. (You can see why such laws exist. In the old days, it was fairly common practice for contractors to buy off whoever was awarding the contracts with friendly gifts of various kinds that more or less amounted to bribes. And then very often the giftee wouldn't report those plane tickets to Hawaii or that new cadillac when tax time came around.) If you're giving the gift as an individual, it probably wouldn't be worth worrying about, but doing it as a representative of a business... I wouldn't risk it without consulting an attorney.
It's no different in my mind to doing a batch for a party or wedding or something like that..no money changes hands..etc..I have had people want to contract brew from me..for an event or something..my payment is an invite.
