CO growler laws

Listen to @spoony, guy knows what he's talking about.

 

Sack up and just buy a sixtel

 

tl;dr: entrenched interests will always fight to protect their arbitrary govt dictated advantages

 

What might be interesting is, what would the Colorado Brewers Guild have to say? This stuff can be counterintuitive, for example IIRC this craft brewer organization did not support the beer-in-grocery-stores bill, fearing it would put all the small (and mega) liquor stores who have furnished so much shelf space to so many local craft brewers, out of business, and that the grocers wouldn't be as amenable to stocking the plethora of SKUs that the liquor stores do.

On this one, who knows, there might be a split between different sorts of CBG member breweries.

 

Exactly right. I see this all the time with legislation, strange alliances form with this stuff and people support/oppose legislation for the strangest reasons.

 

Agreed.

I can see some brewers saying, "I make money selling growlers and if other outlets can sell growlers, I'll lose sales."

I can see other brewers saying, "If Argo can sell my beer on tap and in the bottle, I'll sell more kegs and bottles."

Seems like it might favor the smaller breweries who could get their beer to a wider audience without having to resort to mobile canning and the like.

 

Pretty much this. I have a hard time imagining growler reform without 1st opening up beer retail across the board. And personally, I prefer it the way it is.

 

Exactly - true breweries are in a special class where they don't need a liquor license and all allowed to serve their beers on site as a special exemption. So you can't have guest taps without moving into the brewpub licensure classification.

 

Et tu, Colorado? I can't believe two of the biggest craft beer states in the union—CA and CO—don't allow growler fills/sales in retail establishments (bottle shops, supermarkets, bars, etc.) but conservative states like Mississippi and North Carolina do! (yes, you read that right: Mississippi, the state that only just legalized homebrewing last summer—I learned this today, when a Facebook friend posted a photo of a growler she had just bought at the new Whole Foods in Jackson) Why are we so backward here in CA, and apparently there in CO?

 

Up until a few years ago, we couldn't even buy booze on Sundays so....yeah, I can't explain the laws.

 

Any traction ever get made on this? With the increased popularity of "Growler Stations", it's a shame CO is missing out.

Does anyone have a contact for the CO Brewers Guild or Brewers Association.

 

I kinda doubt anything changed. And as someone else has said, I don't dislike the way things work now - the biggest thing for me personally was the Sunday no-sales, and once that went away I realized I actually like the fact that grocery stores can't sell full-strength beer - means places like Grapevine, close to me, gets to make more $ and gets the awesome allocation beers that, say, Kings Soopers wouldn't give a flying f*** about.

 

I was in Alabama and visited a bottle shop that had bottles for sale, a bar where you could order a pint and drink in the store, or fill a growler and take it home. I was in heaven. It made me pissed that we don't have something like that in Colorado. It would be awesome (just not for my wallet).

 

Alright that does sound pretty awesome.

I'm gonna say something I've definitely never said in my life: good work, Alabama.

 

Golf courses are pretty sweet down there too

It was Hop City in Birmingham. I'm sure there are others down there like that but that was most recommended and close to where I was staying. It was truly amazing.

 

Other than the Pliny, this is also the deal at all/most of the Whole Foods in the Virginia suburbs of DC. You can sit at the bar there, or you can get a growler to go.

I have seen, like, bodegas in the Lower East Side/Chinatown neighborhood where my daughter used to live, with 2-3 taps for growler fills behind the counter, sort of next to the ciggies.

We'll never get the latter, may never get full strength beer in grocery stores, but growler fills in the bottle stores would be cool.

 

Truth, in other states that allow growler fills at retail liquor stores, they are also states where grocery stores can sell full strength beer. I'm afraid it's an old entrenched problem here in CO since all our liquor stores are independent and likely any legislation will be killed that hurts the independent business owners...

 

Just moved to Kentucky and can go to the local liquor store, buy a pint, walk around and shop and leave with a filled up growler. Miss all the great Colorado beer but enjoying this perk (and lower alcohol tax).