Reason.com: Craft Brewers Face Regulatory Challenges

From Baylen Linnekin at Reason.com:

Craft Brewers Face Regulatory Challenges
As the annual Craft Beer Conference converged this year in Washington, DC, changing regulations are both helping and hampering the growing industry.

This week I attended the annual Craft Brewers Conference. This year’s conference, held in Washington, DC, occupied much of the District's Convention Center, a massive space that reflects the continued growth of the craft beer movement in America.

In addition to sampling many excellent beers from around the country over several days, I sat in on a few educational sessions and spoke with several well-known brewers from around the country to gauge the state of the industry.

While demand for craft beer is growing across the country, it appears many small brewers are also bumping up against outdated federal and state regulations.

State laws regulating breweries vary greatly. The trend, as I’ve noted previously, appears largely—though not universally—to be toward deregulation.

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