Try as I might to resist coming back to this topic again and again, it's all around me. I talked about the hoops the event organizers had to go through when I went to The May Day Cask Fest, and that had a lot to do with that the organizers were homebrewers, and therefore could not sell beer. They went through great pains to make it clear this was a private event and that the ticket price bought you entrance, a glass, and a right to vote. What I didn't know until after the fest was that they were still hampered in how much of a sample they could "give away" (since, by the letter of the law, that's what they were doing) at any one time. That amount? 2 ounces.
2 ounces of anything, much less something as nuanced as beer, makes it really hard to get a handle on taste. Often, you don't even begin to properly taste something until your 2nd bite or sip, so with 2 ounce samples, you had better get your palette ready. There may be an additional Massachusetts law that states how much you can sample over a period of time, but that did not seem to be enforced that day. Good thing, because I don't have the greatest taste buds ever, and since no one was stopping me from getting a 2nd taste of any of the beers, that's exactly what I (and I'm SURE many others) did. Knowing what I know about beer laws, I'm sure there must be some kind of sample limit, and this situation was probably a "blind eye" kind of thing.
So why bring this up now? Well, this past weekend was "The Festival" in Portland, Maine, a Shelton Brothers event that drew brewers and drinkers from all over the world... so kind of a big deal. Now, when I covered beer law in previous blogs, I focused on Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but who would have thought that it would be Maine that would offer fodder for what might be one of the most inane beer laws I've covered yet?
Brought to my attention by this article, there are two beer laws that put one of the sessions of The Festival in imminent danger of not being able to open its doors. One, in Maine, brewers can not pour their own samples. That means that every single booth there needed multiple volunteers ready at the station in order to be able to serve people. When you look at that over multiple sessions of a beer fest, that... that is just a metric buttload of volunteers required by the state. Don't ask me how it's protecting anyone to have someone less experienced with the beer being served being the one to draw the sample, because I'm probably too intelligent to be a legislator.
The second law that almost sunk the ship was... you guessed it because you understand foreshadowing: sample limits! Specifically, 48 oz over the course of 4 hours. Just let that wash over you for a second. Some simple math reveals that to be the equivalent of 12 ounces per hour, meaning that you can go to a bar (which I'll point out once again, harkening back to the hypocrisy of how these laws are applied against brewers, has parking spots around it and, if it has a kitchen, doesn't have to stay open until the bar closes) and order quite a bit more beer, then get up and leave (and possibly drive away) than you can in a closed, controlled environment that, by it's very nature, requires supervision and police presence. ...Yup. Nevermind what a logistical nightmare it must have been to track exactly how much each individual amongst thousands must have had.
Now, obviously, there's going to be some blowback from this and pressure to change these laws. And if Maine wants to draw in dollars that big-deal worldwide-drawing festivals like this bring along, they'll be smart to update the legalities of beer festivals to something that makes some dang sense.
And I didn't even get in to the stuff I've been mulling over this week about growler fill laws.
I think we should all go to our fridges right now and hug our beer. And if you see a brewer, shake their hand and thank them for making beer AND for putting up with a legal system that drools all over itself and just makes their lives harder.
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