Florida Breweries Should Shift

Stop banging your heads against self-distribution.

In nearly every state brewers will have a list of issues, longer than a receipt from Walgreens, they have with laws. Minnesota brewers only recently could start to sell package beer to-go out of their premise. New Jersey has…well, a lot of issues. I can’t get into those. Florida has it’s fair share of issues with laws that hinder growth too.

It feels like a lifetime ago that we were fighting for the legalization of 64 ounce growlers while simultaneously trying to keep our taprooms open because we utilized a loophole in the law in order to have them. It’s kind of funny that not long after we got 64 ounce growlers legal that the Crowler (a canned 32 ounce growler) took off and hasn’t looked back. I would not be surprised at all if someone told me that close to 100 breweries in Florida still had excess 64 ounce growlers because no one buys them now. I know where I work we do.

These battles with Florida state legislature are long, tiresome and oftentimes without resolution. Members of the Florida Brewers Guild (FBG) have put a lot of time and money into these battles that are frustrating and probably destroy one’s will. The wholesaler lobbies—those that represent distributors—in Florida are strong. They have the ears and pockets of many in Florida’s congress and I bet you can guess what color and animal most of them represent. One more hint. It’s the party that claims to be pro business but then is going to war with the state’s largest employer. Got it?

For years now the FBG has laid out their list of actions they would be working towards. Top of the list is always self-distribution. Legal in many other states, self-distribution would allow breweries to sell their products directly to retailers (bars, restaurants, stores, etc). There are some loopholes right now that can allow self-distro to a certain extent but it’s complicated and a burden and I’m not even going to explain it. Essentially if you want to sell your beer outside of your walls you need to sell it to a distributor who then sells it to those retailers. It’s called the three tier system. Breweries love the idea of self-distro because it allows them to grow how they want to and service retailers how they want to. When they get big enough then maybe they can go with a 3rd party distributor. But you know who doesn’t like this? Distributors.

I’m really wasting a lot of time talking about self-distribution when the very top of this article says it’s something I don’t think Florida beer businesses need to focus on right now. This is because I think the FBG is wasting a lot of time continually trying to push this so hard. Like I said, the wholesaler lobbies are strong. And this is a super majority red state congress. You aren’t getting self-distribution. Not until the gerrymandered districts are fixed and people fucking vote for their best interests or vote at all. This is why I butt heads with the FBG’s agenda every year. Right on the top of the list is self-distribution. Why are we walking this out again? I can understand wanting to keep things fresh in the minds of certain congresspeople but maybe at a lower priority than number one?

I give the Guild credit this year a bit though. They outlined some items that I believe would be smaller, more achievable goals that don’t go directly against the wholesalers. Some would even make a wholesaler’s job easier. Changing our ridiculous method of reporting beer sales with three different categories dependent on package size into one category would be better for everyone! This would be a huge burden lifted off all breweries and wholesalers.

Right now Florida taxes based off of three categories for beer: bulk gallons, pints and quarts. Beer in kegs are bulk gallons. Beer in package (cans or bottles) fall into either pints or quarts. If the package is 16 ounces or smaller it goes into pints. If it’s larger than 16 ounces it goes into quarts. Those have to be counted individually. As someone that did taxes at two different breweries for a number of years this is painstaking work and is a huge contributor to my grey hairs.

Want to know how the federal government taxes you? Barrels. That’s it. The measurement of 1 US Barrel is 31 gallons. So all you have to do is convert all your sales to one unit of measurement and you’re done. Florida should be doing the same thing.

Additionally the guild is fighting to change the law for brand registration fees to only include distributed beers. This would not impact wholesalers at all. They don’t pay these fees. The lose of income to the state for these fees could be made up by bringing the previously mentioned tax amounts in line.

I have a few other items I would love to see the FBG bring up in the near future too. Many of these will probably grab the ire of the wholesalers but it’s a new battle. It’s not beating the same drum of self-distribution year after year. Maybe they could even be thrown out as alternatives to the self-distro fights. “You won’t give us the ability to do self-distro? How about this?”

Many of these ideas come from my time working in Pennsylvania. Many outside of PA tend to call their alcohol laws archaic. You wouldn’t be totally wrong on that when looking at the PA Liquor Control Board but their laws when it comes to production breweries are totally advanced!

First up is the Farmers Market Permit. This is an extension of the brewery license and is an additional fee paid each year. Look, money for the state! It allows a brewery to sell their packaged beer to-go directly to customers at a farmers market. No draft beer. No consumption. Just to-go cans or bottles. The vendors even are required to ID all customers. One of my joys of going to the farmers markets in Philly was being able to walk home with some beer, cider, wine or spirits. Oh yeah, the same thing goes for all those other alcohol industries in PA. I would love to be able to do the same down here. I would love even more for a brewery to be able to sell their beer at their local farmers market. It allows increases in sales and growth for the business while also becoming more intertwined with your community.

Next is the expo permit. This one would get a lot of push back from distributors. Maybe not as much as my last option but we’ll get to that. Essentially the expo permit allows a brewery to go to a third party location and serve their beer. This could be a pop-up beer garden or business event. The brewery brings the beers, sells the beer and serves it. They are responsible for 100% of the beer operations. They again have to ID everyone, regardless of age.

There is a daily fee that is paid to the state for the expo permit (yay, more money to the state), must be registered with enough time in advance and there is a limit on how many a brewery can use per year and how many days in a row. This allows the brewery to make money and grow while the state makes money as well. It also can not be over used with the hard limit on the amount of usage.

But distributors would fight this hard. They want their cut. In normal scenarios for these sorts of things the business would have to get a temporary alcohol license and then order the beer from a distributor, or multiple ones. This would cut them out and that wouldn’t make them happy I know.

Last item is what I would consider the biggest that can contribute to growth and would be the biggest fight from distributors. We need to be allowed to open additional taprooms without distributors needing to be involved.

Right now a brewery in Florida can open up additional breweries and can transfer beer between locations without going through distribution. The caveat is that the additional location must have a brewery in it and you can not transfer more beer to a location than the receiving location made the previous month. This is to prevent a brewery from opening a second spot, putting in a really small and cheap system, getting licensed and just moving however much beer from their first location to the second and not really make any at the second. So how it works is if your second location has only made 10 barrels in the last month the first location can only send 10 barrels to it. That’s 20 half barrel kegs by the way. Not a lot.

In PA, and really a lot of other states, a brewery can open up additional taprooms that have no brewery in them at all and transfer beer over to those taprooms without any distributor being involved. There really is nothing to stop a Florida brewery from opening another taproom right now but they would have to sell their beer to a distributor and that distributor then sells it back to them at the new taproom. Convoluted bullshit.

Again, you will see where the distributors will hate this but this can be fought. If these congresspeople want to be so pro business they should look at how this would help small business growth. The brewery would get an alternate means to sell their products and grow without the high overhead of building another brewery in the location. The new location would pay for licenses. It’s additional sales would give more tax dollars to the state. The state could even decide to tax beer moved between locations at a higher rate. Wow, look at all this money I keep finding for this state. But keep on fighting the mouse Pudding Fingers.

This stuff isn’t going to be easy. Rarely anything worth fighting for is. And with how gerrymandered to hell this state is it will make it even harder but that’s why you pay dues to the guild right? To fucking fight.

I would love to see self-distribution become a thing in Florida some day but we need to bring different angles in these fights at these congresspeople. Keeping up with the self-distribution jabs aren’t changing any minds over there. They’ve built a tough chin to those. We need to throw hooks and uppercuts in there too.

Jesus christ, I just used a boxing analogy. It’s time for a fucking beer.

I’d Have a Beer

Let me start by saying this. The style name “Cold IPA” is dumb as shit but I don’t know anything better to call it so fuck me.

The reason that I think the name is dumb is because the A in IPA stands for Ale. A Cold IPA is not an ale. It’s a lager. But IPL, an actual style, has never sold well so change up a little bit about process and ingredients and just come up with a new IPA name. Instant win!

Okay, now that I got that out of the way, I really like Cold IPAs. They take the flavors and body of a hazy IPA but the use of the lager yeast typically allows for a much clearer looking beer.

Over at my current job, Copperpoint Brewing, we released a Cold IPA called Catatonic Iguana that has become my go to for shift beers. It’s so flavorful and easy drinking. I get big notes of pineapple candy slices, tangerines and a touch of lemongrass.

If you’re in the Boynton Beach, FL area you should stop in and have one. Then buy a 4 pack to take home. We actually don’t have a terrible lot of this beer left at the taproom. I probably am to blame for a good portion of that. So, sorry?

Fun fact. I designed the label too.

This is a Photo

West Palm Beach, FL

There are some pretty awesome trails in Palm Beach County. The Solid Waste Authority Greenway Trail butts up against the Grass Waters Conservancy and this is a shot looking out into the vast wetlands. It’s a beautiful area that is going to become nearly unbearable to be out in soon with the return of oppressive (we have a lot of oppression in Florida) heat and humidity. Mosquitos too. Fuck loads of mosquitos.

If you live in an area that you can go enjoy your local trails right now please know I am envious. Go hike them. Smile at their beauty. Then go have a beer and think of me. Please?

If you dig my photography you can buy a print. I have a number of different photo options available on my store.

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You’ve reach the end of another edition of this newsletter/blog/thing. Thank you! This space has really given my a reinvigoration towards writing. You can follow me on Twitter or Instagram. Listen to me talk about beer on my podcast, United We Drink.