Ask the members of Georgians for World Class Beer. They've been lobbying state legislators to repeal a 1935 law prohibiting the sale of beer having more than six percent alcohol. This archaic definition of "beer" keeps Belgian dubbels and tripels, German doppelbocks, and American barleywines off the store shelves.
A bill that would have repealed the six-percent limit was defeated once again last year. Opponents of repeal carried the day with the age-old argument: extra-strength beers would end up in the hands of teenagers looking for a quick buzz. Never mind that a high-schooler's beer of choice is more likely to be Molson Ice than Paulaner Salvator.
Georgia's strong-beer prohibition is nothing compared to Utah's 3.2-percent limit on draft beer, which earned the state worldwide notoriety during the recent Winter Olympics. If you've had a pint of bitter in a British pub or a mug of Czech lager in a Prague beer hall, you know it's possible to brew great beer with a relatively low alcohol content. But that isn't the point: Utah's 3.2 law prevents that state's craft brewers from turning out a wide range of styles.
Until recently, Florida, the state that invented Spring Break, had one of the nation's silliest beer laws. Passed in 1965, it required containers to be one of four sizes: eight, 12, 24, or 32 ounces. The law, a by-product of a long-forgotten spat between Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing, posed no problem for the brewing giants. But craft brewers that preferred 22-ounce "bombers," and European brewers using metric-sized bottles, were out of luck.
Lawmakers not only dictate what beers you can drink, but where and when you can buy them. Many states ban the sale of beer in grocery stores. Oklahoma goes one step further, forcing its citizens to go to state liquor stores to buy beer stronger than 3.2 percent. In Connecticut, beer can't be sold after 8 pm, bringing to mind Yogi Berra's line, "It gets late out early." And Sunday remains a hit-or-miss proposition for traveling beer lovers; archaic blue laws ban package sales, and, in some states, force bars to close.
My home state of Michigan has repealed most of its silly laws, but every Yuletide it turns into a Grinch. It's against the law to serve alcohol on Christmas Day, even in restaurants serving holiday buffets. And silliness persists at the local level: one nearby town bars its brewpub from selling beer to go; officials are afraid that customers will share their growlers with underage friends.
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