Michigan’s beer industry has grown exponentially over the past 15 years – but some small breweries have a big problem.
Michigan beer laws say breweries can distribute their own beer – as long as they stay below one-thousand barrels of yearly production. Go any higher – and they have to sign on with a distributor.
Dayne Bartscht is with Detroit’s Eastern Market Brewing Company. He says that rule can hamstring microbrewers…
“But for small brewers like us we can’t afford like a 30 or 40 percent that some of these small brewers are paying to distributors – so we want to build that route ourselves.
Bartscht explains how ridiculous the regs could get
“There’s a big beer festival in Eastern Market that’s two blocks from our brewery. If we were to hit the one thousand barrel mark we would actually have to sign on with a distributor to deliver our beer two blocks to the beer festival based on the current laws.”
Barstcht has been urging state lawmakers to raise the one thousand barrel cap to 30-thousand to give businesses more wiggle room and put them on par with other states.