The text of the bill to raise the 10,000 barrel cap for on-premise sales at brewery tap rooms is now available. You’ll find the text of the bill, currently known as LC2093, at this link. (Or click on the bill itself below.) The bill will receive a new designation once it is introduced in the…
At long last, the text of the Montana Tavern Association’s and Montana Brewers Association’s collaborative bill was released late Friday. Industry members in all tiers (and craft beer fans) can finally judge the potential effect of the bill, something not previously possible despite months of press releases and other media correspondence touting broad based support.…
The game of politics is one filed with points and counterpoints. For 2013, the Montana Tavern Association stayed under the radar before launching an all out offensive against the craft brewing industry. When that effort was defeated, the various alcohol industry groups spent the next 1.5 years searching for common ground in Montana’s alcohol licensing…
The Montana Beer and Wine Distributors Association (MBWDA) announced today it has withdrawn from a coalition of alcohol industry groups over a disagreement with the Montana Tavern Association’s and Montana Brewers Association’s plans to seek changes to alcohol licensing requirements during the 2015 Montana Legislative Session. For background on the proposed “license stacking” bill, see…
An “historic coalition,” as its being billed, took center stage at the Montana Brewers Association Fall Conference in October in Missoula to discuss a proposed bill to allow license stacking in the alcohol industry. The bill, expected to be introduced at the 2015 Montana Legislative Session, would effectively allow breweries to directly purchase a retail…
In this week’s Flathead Beacon, the Flathead Valley’s weekly newspaper, staff writer Dillon Tabish takes an important look at the effects of Montana’s alcohol licensing quota system. In Liquor License Lockdown Tabish traces the dashed dreams of a restaurateur hoping to help revive downtown Kalispell, explains the difficulty in making changes to Montana’s alcohol licensing…
News broke this week that the Motley Fool deemed Montana the most “beer friendly state.” Predictably, beer centric blogs, trade associations and your average Montana beer lover tweeted the news or posted it on facebook with giddy abandon. Even local news outlets picked up the story. Factors used to rank the states for their beer…
We like to complain about our brewery laws here in Montana (often for good reason), but it is easy to forget Montana does have it better that some. Montana breweries have long been allowed to fill growlers of any size and type for off-premise consumption. Even the sale of beer for on-premise consumption has been…
It is safe to say Montana’s beer fans don’t care much for our state’s on-premise limitations at our local breweries (48 ounces/person/day; only open between 10:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.; only breweries between 100 and 10,000 barrels). Attempts to add additional restrictions during the 2013 Montana Legislature created one of the most watched and most…
A recent op/ed at Forbes.com touted North Carolina for becoming a hub for the craft beer industry. The title of the article said it all: Politicians Foster A Craft Beer Renaissance By Not Acting Like Politicians. Now there’s an idea. As noted in the article, North Carolina now has 70 breweries, representing a 33 percent…