New Jersey Breweries delivery date

I just heard from my editor at Stackpole Books: New Jersey Breweries arrives in their warehouses on July 25th. Mark and I will have it shortly after that, as will book stores. I've contacted Mark, and we're going to be deciding where to have launch parties at New Jersey breweries, brewpubs, and beer bars the following weekend, August 1-3. I'll keep you apprised on where you can find us. (If you're a New Jersey brewery, brewpub, or beer bar, and you're interested, drop me a line!)

Memphis Again

Cathy's away at an all-day meeting, and the first hot day of the summer's upon us. Thomas mowed the lawn yesterday, and we're pretty well caught up on chores, so I took the kids down to Memphis Taproom for lunch. We went there because Spanky was tapping a firkin of Sprecher Black Bavarian at noon. The food -- we all got cheeseburgers -- was good as always, the beer was excellent (perfect condition/carbonation, deeply malty, but with that roasty/dark malt edge, and eminently drinkable), and I ran into an old colleague and friend, Craig Sheffler-Collins, who I have not seen since 1994. Great to cross paths.

Spanky waxed philosophical. He's not simply trying to have different beers than other folks in the city, he said, he's following his passion for beer. That is not, as a look at past tappings will show, the same ExTRemE! beer passion so many others have hared off after. He told me he's looking for brewers that are making good beer that don't market it that well. Penn Kaiser Pils would be an excellent example, he noted, and he'd have it if the supply were steady. I like the way he thinks. I get really bored seeing the same great beers everywhere I go.

Top Ten: breakfast places

As I told you, I forced Uncle Jack to go to the Miss Albany Diner on the way up to Montreal -- which he admitted was a damned fine place, quite an admission for a guy who's an avowed "two over easy, sausage, and dry toast" breakfast eater -- and then I mentioned, as we drove past the Keene Valley exit on the way back through the Adirondacks, that there was another of my "top ten breakfast places" just up that road. Jack made fun -- as he's wont to do -- and then said I should do a top ten list every month, my favorite places for everything. He was jerking my chain, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like fun. So, for as long as it's fun, I'm going to do it. I make no claims for completeness, I do this in the sense of sharing, and if you've got suggestions, well, make them: because it struck me that one of the best reasons to do this is that folks may come up with new places for me to go. Yum. Thanks, Jack.

Lew's Top Ten Places for Breakfast (unranked)

1. The Roadhouse, Belchertown, MA. We found the Roadhouse early one morning back in 1989, just cruising around New England, and there was this place: rustic, kind of hand-made in appearance, and promising. We went in, and since then I've been detouring 50 miles out of my way to have breakfast here. Why? I've already said.

2. Moody's Diner, Damariscotta, ME. Plenty of folks have told me that Moody's is not really that great, or not what it used to be, or has lousy service. I'm sorry they feel that way. I haven't been going forever, just since 1986, but it's certainly held up over that time. Moody's is solid, real, and serves breakfast the way I like it: well-made, with both traditional and special breakfasts. I'll be stopping in every time I'm nearby.

3. Noon Mark Diner, Keene Valley, NY. Pleasantly eccentric, but in an old-fashioned, genuine way, not an art-school working-at-it way. This is one of the few places I'll eat pie for breakfast, because the pies (and the coffee) are so good. Worth the trip just for the scenery...but eat.

4. Miss Albany Diner, Albany, NY. Yum. Very creative breakfast specials -- when was the last time you had duck sausage with your diner breakfast? -- genuine Rhode Island coffee milk, some of the very best service you'll ever get, a pleasantly curmudgeonly owner, all in a beautifully-maintained Silk City diner, and only 5 minutes off the I-787 expressway (and only a 5 minute walk from the Pump House brewpub!).

5. Blue Moon Cafe, Baltimore, MD. The coffee alone is worth the trip, but the food I've had here has been top-notch, and the service is personal and friendly, if occasionally quirky. A great place after a long Fells Point night.

6. Dottie's True Blue Cafe, San Francisco, CA. Cathy and I found Dottie's on the last day of San Francisco WhiskyFest. It's small, busy, dedicated to local, hand-made food, and serves delicious breakfasts. A must-stop; we'll be there in October again.

7. Lawrence Park Dinor, Lawrence Park, PA. Long may it wave. I've pretty much said it all here; don't know if George has found a buyer yet.






8. Littleton Diner, Littleton, NH. I stumbled on this place during "The Beerhunt of the Last Free Man," a short rip through beery New England the weekend before I got married. I'd go just for the house-made corned beef hash, but everything else -- including the grilled blueberry muffins -- is great, too. They've got a wonderful attitude about small-town business; bless 'em.


9. Lynn's Paradise Cafe, Louisville, KY. Lynn's has booze, Lynn's has...stuff all over (and you can buy a lot of it in the gift shop, including the spark-spitting, wind-up nun seen at the top of this post), Lynn's is artsy and colorful and fun...but you know what? That's all well and good, but it's the excellent, outstanding food that brings me back every time I go to Louisville (and I might just squeeze in a trip when I go to Bardstown in a couple weeks). Delicious, on both the traditional and the innovative. Go out of your way to get here.

10. Hot Metal Diner, West Mifflin, PA. I've actually never been to the Hot Metal Diner...yet. I'm planning on correcting that in about 10 days. But I've been to Wendy Betten's previous diner, BOBS, a number of times, and I have no doubts that the breakfasts at the HMD are the equal of the fantastic breakfasts I've had (and led people to) at BOBS. Looking forward to making this official. (Ahhh...no longer true, I have been to the HMD, and things are just fine: attitude? Check. Woman power? Check. Great value for excellent food? Check. Massive breakfasts? Check. Go hungry, and with tongue in cheek.)

Whiskey Dinner

We had some friends over for a whiskey dinner last night. Two couples, friends of ours, came over to have some drinks and dinner, and learn something about this wonderful booze. I ran around getting goodies at the local farmers' market and grocery store, the kids and I cleaned the house, and when Cathy got home, she made up a delicious salad from the bounty of lettuce we got from our CSA last Saturday. I had just showered and dressed when the guests arrived, and offered them a drink; two of them (and myself) started with rye presbyterians (generous pour of Pikesville Rye in a lowball glass full of ice, top with ginger ale, add slice of fresh lemon).

We set out smoked salmon with capers and onions, olives and cornichons with wheat crackers, and two nice cheese plates one couple had brought (which included the delicious fig preserves that have been showing up around here lately), and got started. I poured samples of Powers Irish whiskey and passed them around, and explained what a blended whiskey was, then explained how Midleton makes their whiskey (that David Quinn interview is coming, I promise).

To back that up, I then poured Jameson 18 Year Old, a balanced beauty that is simply one of my favorite whiskeys of any type. To my delight, Doug picked it up right away: "There's something different here, some note towards the end that's really nice." That's the potstilled Irish, with the lovely floral notes, and the 18's got plenty of it. I was going to get the Redbreast out and expand on that, but...it was almost 8:00 and I hadn't even started the pork chops yet.

We moved on to bourbon. I poured a little tot of white dog for folks to pass around and sip, then poured Jim Beam, the standard white label bottling. While folks were tasting, I got the pork chops going on the grill -- fresh-cut, 1" thick, brushed with olive oil, coarse salt, fresh-cracked pepper, and some Penzey's Pork Chop Seasoning, on medium flame. Just as they were done, I offered up a prayer to Booker Noe and doused them with Basil Hayden: flames shot up as I slammed down the cover, held it for five seconds, then pulled the whiskey-scented chops off the fire.

We served the chops with a couple mustards; sweet potatoes whipped with bourbon (more Basil Hayden's), brown sugar, and pumpkin pie spices; and the three-lettuce salad Cathy'd made, alongside Jim Beam Black, the 8 year old version that I think is one of the best deals out there. The chops were delicious, and Eileen liked the sweet potatoes so much we let her take the leftovers home.

I'd planned to serve Elijah Craig 12 Year Old during clean-up, but it was getting late and we hadn't even got to Scotch whisky yet. So we all jumped in, cleared the table and stuffed the dishwasher full for a quick run, and put the leftovers in the fridge. Eileen set out the very nice assortment of locally-made chocolates she'd bought, we brought the cheeses back for another appearance, and I poured The Glenlivet 15 Year Old French Oak Reserve, a very nice, soft and malty whisky with added wood/spice complexity.

That got some oohs and ahhs, and went well with the chocolates. But the surprise hit of the night was a bottle of Ardbeg 17 Year Old that Cathy agreed to pour -- that one is her bottle, and unfortunately no longer available, so hats off to my generous wife. Peat filled the air as I opened the bottle and poured, and people smiled and eyebrows raised. "Now," I said... "Try that with the chocolate." I wish I'd thought to pop out some straight-up 70% cacao dark, because that's the kind of thing that really sings with a peaty whisky, but the truffles were plenty good enough. Dark chocolate and peaty whisky works really well, surprisingly well.

A great conclusion to a good night of whiskey, and we all agreed we should do it again. I'm looking forward to that, and I'm already thinking about new choices...

My Last Portfolio Column is Up

As you likely know, I've been writing a bi-weekly beer column for Portfolio.com, the content website for Conde Nast Portfolio. It's been fun, I've learned a lot about business writing, and I made some good coin.

But, all good things come to an end. I had a year contract, and it's up, and it wasn't renewed. Not because of me, they assured me, but they're re-focusing the magazine. Well, "Beer" always seemed a weird fit anyway, and I figured it was there mostly because senior editor (and good beer convert) Ken Wells wanted it there.

So I've got an open-ended freelancer contract they sent me, and an encouragement to do some features, which I'll probably take advantage of. Meantime, here's my last column, a piece on the politics of "energy beers." And in the only real complaint I've had all year...they did take out my sharpest bit of politics. But we'll let it stand.

Brewers Deserve to Get Paid -- and they are

I posted this back in January, complaining that brewers should be paid for beer at festivals. I won't repeat the reasons, go read them.

Apparently, it's working. I got an e-mail from a local fest organizer recently, telling me that they were getting a poor brewer response for their fest, and asking me if I could help. Yeah, I said, I can help: pay for the beer. You should, it's the right thing to do. Then tell the brewers you're paying for beer; I'll bet you get some immediate responses when they find out you're showing them some respect.

I figured I'd never hear from them again, but lo and behold, I get an e-mail the next day: the guy took my e-mail to a committee meeting that night, read it to them, explained the problem, and they voted to raise the ticket price $5 and pay the brewers a "beer honorarium" that should cover their wholesale cost. All right!

Then I just found out Wednesday that another local fest is now paying for beer. And I got two e-mails from brewers thanking me for talking the first fest into paying for beer. As Hannibal Smith (George Peppard) used to say on The A-Team, "I love it when a plan comes together."

The Session #16 -- Beer Festivals

It's The Session, beer blogging on a common topic, and this month it's "beer festivals." See all the links soon here.

I just told someone last week that beer festivals are pretty much work for me anymore. I was at the Mondial in Montreal, and while it was enjoyable, and the weather was great, and there were plenty of good beers -- new beers! -- and brewers -- new brewers, to me, anyway -- and pretty girls and grilled and smoked meat and all dat... I left before the session was over, and I only went back for an hour or so the next day. I would never have done that in the past. What happened? What stole my fun?

I used to enjoy beer festivals, and I'd stay till the last minute. I'd taste everything new that I could safely hold (I used dump buckets, I drank water, I'd eat, anything to try more beers), I'd talk beer, I had a great time. I met John Hansell at a beer festival, which led indirectly to my current position as managing editor for his magazine, Malt Advocate (which in those days was a beer 'magazine,' about 8 pages stapled in the corner). I met any number of brewers, including David Geary, who recently showed me the "business card" I gave him at a Stoudt's festival back in...1994? "I figured you'd be back," he said, "and you were."

It wasn't the working that was the buzzkill, though. I worked fests and still enjoyed them; hell, I even worked taps for brewers on some and had a fun time. I think what killed it for me was the Falling Rock Syndrome. People who go to GABF often enough, serious types (serious about beer, anyway), quickly learn that the Friday and Saturday night sessions are crazy, often given over to drunks. They head out to other, smaller venues, like Denver's beer bar supreme, Falling Rock, or a brewpub, or someone's hotel room.

That's what festivals have become for me: the meeting-up place for the after-party, and it seems like the "after" part gets earlier and earlier. I LIKE going to the after-parties, they're a lot of fun, they're usually people I know or people who know people I know, and it's all very convivial.

And they're not wall-to-wall people, packed in so tight they can't move. Some of the problem is like Yogi Berra said: "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." Blame the festival promoters: stop selling so many tickets. I'd happily pay $10 more if I could move. Turn down the band's amps; I can't tell you how many times I've yelled to someone at a festival "If I'd wanted to hear blues, I'd go to a blues festival: I'm here to talk to brewers and I can't even hear myself think!" Better programs would be great: give me the brewery names, their websites, their addresses, what beers they have, and a little room for notes. Give me food options, give me some education options, give me no smoking and good ventilation, give me a beer garden to sit for a bit. Give me shuttle-to-lodgings/transit options.

I think beer festivals need to be re-worked. For our benefit, the fest-goers, and for the benefit of the brewers. Some of them are better, but craft beer -- and let's be honest, that's really the only kind that generates festival-going interest -- is hot, and people are interested. Give them a good experience. Maybe I'm just a crotchety old bastard. But if I don't think it's that fun anymore, maybe I'm not the only one.

New poll at PLCB blog

I've finally got a new poll up at "Why the PLCB Should Be Abolished." (Talked to a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter recently about the blog, and at the end he asked, "And what's the actual name of the blog?" Why the PLCB Should Be Abolished, I said. Silence. "That's the name?" Yup, figured I might as well be blunt!) It's a poll for the wine lovers in the state. Tell your grape-loving friends!

Fun in Montreal: me and Jack at the Mondial

I took an opportunity to visit the Mondial de la Biere last week, and I traveled there with Uncle Jack Curtin (as Uncle Jack has been recounting -- more or less truthfully -- recently). Credit to UJ, actually, because it was his idea. I called him to see if he wanted to go to Pittsburgh to check out the wonderful new places that have opened there recently (the Rivertowne Pourhouse, Point Brugge (new to me; I keep trying to get in, and keep hitting it when it's closed, terribly frustrating), Bocktown Grill, a new D's, Marzoni's West, the new beer engine at Piper's Pub, and a new breakfast joint run by an old friend of ours, the Hot Metal Diner (most of which I do intend to visit in about 10 days on the way to Kentucky...)). There was a bit of malice in the invite, since Jack was apparently traumatized by our last road trip to Pittsburgh (page down, it's there, and worth a couple chuckles), the great weenie, but I did want to go.

But Jack said, no, what he really wanted to do was go to the Mondial. Good idea! Even better, I had a lecture lined up for Wednesday of that week in New Paltz, with a room and a fee that would easily cover my costs for the trip to Mondial. Perfect became perfecter when Jack found lodgings in Montreal that were a 15 minute walk from the fest, clean, secure, and only $45 a night. (Nice work, Jack.) We were on.

Getting over to the Beer Yard to pick up Jack was a traffic horror, getting through NJ was almost as bad, and when I found myself happy to be paying $4.69 a gallon for diesel, I knew things were screwed. As it turned out, I was wrong. The lecture went smoothly, and we also fit in a quick visit to the Gilded Otter brewpub in New Paltz (excellent alt, as always; a bit overly chocolatey to be classic, but not a problem when it comes to good drinking), the Tuthilltown Spirits distillery (more on that in another post...maybe, because I might be able to sell that one -- meanwhile, that's a picture of the stillhouse on the right.), and an excellent -- huge -- German dinner at the Mountain Brauhaus (highly recommended, great German fare and beers). Things got even better when I forced a visit to the Miss Albany Diner for breakfast, one of my top ten breakfast spots, a classic Silk City diner with house-made sausage and a MAD assortment of specialty omelettes and waffles (the Irish whiskey waffle is just nuts).

Okay, enough prelim. We slid up through the Adirondacks (sedately; I've discovered the zen of mileage, and got 43 mpg over the whole trip (I think Jack was somewhat chagrined by the calmness of my driving)), smoothed down onto the flats outside of Plattsburgh, and just before the border, yes, I did realize that my cell plan was stupid expensive in Canada, and called my family and asked them to only call me for emergencies (something Jack would twist cruelly at every occasion into "He told his family to stop calling him."). Onward to the border, only...

Jack and I got stopped at Customs. We were detained. After a long chat with the woman in the booth, who seemed quite pleasant, she suddenly started asking questions. Did we have any firearms? Did we have any firearms at home? (I do, one antique shotgun that was my grandfather's, but why that's a concern of Canadians -- or any of their business -- is beyond me.) Where else have you lived? (A fairly long list of different states for me.) Do you have any alcohol? (A flask of whiskey for personal use only.) Jack wisely said "No" to most of these questions, but I just couldn't help being truthful.

And she gave us a yellow card and told us to go park in the detainee lot and give our passports to Immigration. This didn't sound good. But it was just hand over the passports, watch the woman we gave them to stand around doing nothing while holding them, and then her calling Jack -- I'm sorry, John Curtin, and who the hell is that? -- up, and giving the passports back, along with a secret code number (*4050, and I'll probably never get into Canada again now) to get out of the parking lot. Stupid silliness; I can't imagine what 'profile' me and Jack Curtin headed to Montreal for two days would fit. It really pisses me off when government folks pull this screwing with you and never saying why crap. Ah, me.

So we headed up the AUT 15 with me in a somewhat foul mood, but the beautiful day soon got me over it. Things are pretty flat in this part of Quebec, which only makes the rearing backdrop of the Mont Royal all the more striking. My GPS was practically useless in Canada, so I'd fired up the laptop with Streets & Trips, and Jack was balancing it on his knee as we tried to figure out where to go.

The expressway part was easy, but once we got onto the surface grid, things were moving too quickly, and the street names on the screen were too small to read fast in the bright sunlight. I beat the directions into some kind of usable thing and found our lodgings...and then took about 10 minutes trying to get pulled over in front of the building so Jack could go in and find out where we were supposed to park (at least Canadians drive on the right side of the road...mostly). We did that, checked in, and headed down the Boulevard René-Lévesque to the Mondial.


It was a breezy mile and a quarter walk, and we bobbled around a bit finding it, but it was quite the thing once we did. It's an indoor-outdoor fest in a large restored train station and the outdoor courtyard. It's big, and fun, and free admission/pay for beer (which got expensive at times and stupid cheap at others: $2 for a big 12 oz. pour of St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout -- yum -- but $3 for a niggardly 4 oz. pour of La Route des Indes IPA from Au Maître-Brasseur that tasted nasty and off). It was a thoroughly enjoyable festival, with cider and cheese and spirits to boot, which of course would be illegal as hell in most of the U.S., God help me.

I'll leave Jack to give the blow-by-blow (except to add my admiration for the drop-dead beauty and friendliness of the Unibroue serving women and their cute as hell lace-up vests) and move on to overall impressions. There were some absolutely outstanding beers at the Mondial, Canadian, French, and the usual American suspects (the "Petit Pub" had a wide assortment of non-represented beers, including some Sly Fox that Jack was quite exercised about). I had my first Unibroue Eau Benite in way too long, and it was exquisite, as were pretty much every beer I had from Dieu du Ciel, (where Jack and I would retire for a long, very enjoyable session that evening), Ferme Brasserie Schoune (where we were led by Tony Forder to meet the brewer and Tom Peters, who was already arranging for them to do a beer dinner at Monk's), and Benelux-Brasserie.

But I was struck by the number of inferior beers I also got. We've pretty much gotten used to the idea that beer festivals in the U.S., craft brewers in the U.S., have reached a certain level of competence. I remember ten years ago sampling beers at fests and remarking to friends that the brewers must not be sampling them, because they were all too obviously flawed and often infected. That's gone away, and I have not had a flawed beer in quite a while at a U.S. fest. I had at least three dumpers at Mondial.

I don't really think this is attributable to anything but the atmosphere and culture. Canadian brewing/drinking seems even more dominated by big breweries -- MolBatt, the Canadian equivalent of American beer geeks' BMC -- than America, and the impediments to cross-provincial beer sales haven't helped. It's not chance that the very best Canadian breweries seem to be either brewpubs, breweries with strong export sales, or new. There is acceptance of craft beer in Canada, but it seems to be behind the curve a bit.

I'd say it's rapidly catching up, though, and the experimental stuff, like the hibiscus amber at Dieu de Ciel, is equivalent to the stuff American brewers are doing, with its own direction. Canadian brewers, and particularly Quebecois brewers, explore things with less fear of having the results labeled as "girly beers," and I think that's a very good thing. There seemed to be less of the embrace of the EXtrEme beer, which I also think is a good thing.

That was about it, except, yes, I did go to Hard Rock Cafe Montreal. I'd never ever been to one, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. To be honest, I still don't know. It was perfunctory service, all MolsonCoors beers (the Molson Export I was served almost brought me to tears: I drank a lot of Ex in the 1980s, and this was a pale, sweet shadow of that beer), and stiff prices ($6.50 for a shaker pint of mass-market beer seemed extreme (please note my stupidity...I've since realized that this was NOT a shaker pint, it was actually a larger beer; my apologies)...especially since Jack and I both left 2/3 of our beers sitting on the bar (he'd got a Rickard's Red, which he repeatedly said was the worst non-infected beer he'd ever had). I guess I just don't understand what most people want from an evening out. Which is okay with me; I know what I want, and usually see that I get it.

David Shipula is bugging me

David Shipula is the current president of the Malt Beverage Distributors Association of Pennsylvania. (Disclosure: I was compensated to travel to Pittsburgh and address the MBDAPA several years ago; I do freelance consulting for some members of the Association.) He is also the owner of Beer Super in Wilkes-Barre. He seems to be a good guy, working for the Association.

But he's saying some stuff in the papers lately that bugs me.

In the May 19 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer, he writes in a piece titled "Keep Beer in Beer Stores," "Now, I can't be the only person who sees a problem with making it easy to buy beer and gasoline in one convenient location."

No, you're not, but just because two people think french-kissing makes girls pregnant doesn't mean we're going to be overrun with babies. People drive to gas stations to buy gas, sure, but they also drive to Beer Super to buy beer. Are the gasoline fumes going to drive them to drink to excess on the way home? There's nothing about buying gas that makes people more likely to drink. Is it the "ice-cold sixpack" "waved in their face" that Shipula brings up that's the problem at the gas station? Funny, because he also lauds people buying six-packs at Pennsylvania's restaurants and bars, most of which they're driving away with, judging by the parking lots at so many of them. I know there's no bar within walking distance of my house. Beer at gas stations driving people to drink is a bogeyman. It makes no sense in the light of day, or reason.

Then he says, "They also want the supermarket shopping experience to remain something the entire family can enjoy without giving children - from toddlers to teenagers - the idea that beer is as harmless as, say, a calorie-laden, high-fructose corn syrup-laced soft drink."

Yet it's okay for beer to be sold at a restaurant or deli or pizzeria where the family's getting dinner? What, it's raw food that makes beer scary? Besides, when was the last time you saw "the entire family" enjoy "the supermarket shopping experience"? On an Ozzie & Harriet re-run? This paragraph is so ridiculous it's embarrassing.

In the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat on June 2, he wrote a letter that said "Sheetz has its gas pumps on one property deed and its convenience store on another to skirt the law prohibiting beer sales at gas stations."

What law would that be? I searched the entire PA Liquor Code, and the only mention I saw of gas stations, service stations, or gasoline sales is here, under the rules for who has standing to petition licenses being granted (standing to petition, i.e., those who have half a leg to stand on as opposed to total loonies), where it's noted that the MBDA had standing to petition an "application for a double transfer of an eating place malt beverage license to premises on which a restaurant, convenience store, and gas station would operate", that is, the Sheetz case. There is no such law. Period.

In the Scranton Times-Tribune on April 8, he wrote another letter that said "In fact, the buying power of large supermarket chains like Wegmans makes it very difficult for small food and beverage producers to compete profitably. Shelf space is at such a premium in supermarkets that manufacturers and distributors are forced to pay “slotting allowances” to even get their products displayed on supermarket shelves."

Manufacturers and distributors do pay "slotting allowances," also known as "slotting fees," to get their products on supermarket shelves...except for alcohol beverages. That's illegal, slotting fees for alcohol beverages having been banned by the then-Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in 1995, a federal ban. Once again, a bogeyman: grocery wholesalers have to pay slotting fees, beer wholesalers do not. As it happens, Wegmans loves small producers; it gives their stores a competitive advantage. I've been in Wegmans in New York: the beer selection's quite nice.

That's also where he says this: "Individual beer distributors can own one and only one license for retail, off-premises consumption — and then only in quantities of one case or more of beer. Already, Wegmans has been granted six licenses by the Liquor Control Board."

True, but they're not the same kind of license! Wegman's licenses are so-called "deli licenses," which allow only sixpack sales. That's how chains of bars own more than one license, something Shipula doesn't mind. Why doesn't he care that Appleby's, for example, owns multiple licenses that allow retail, off-premises consumption (as all tavern licenses do in PA)? Because Appleby's doesn't sell sixpacks to go. If they aren't competition, he doesn't care. This is all about money and competition.

Shipula admits that, finally, after throwing smoke. He says all he wants is a level playing field. But that's not going to happen with the maze-like provisions of the Pennsylvania Liquor Code, where the MBDAPA apparently found reason to argue that if Sheetz doesn't want to sell on-premise, they can't sell off-premise. This ignores Appleby's, of course, which does sell on-premise but chooses not to sell off-premise, as do many, if not the majority of Pennsylvania's restaurants with liquor licenses.

These arguments play on fears -- Beer is dangerous! People will use it irresponsibly at the slightest provocation! -- that it is stunning to hear coming from the head of a beer industry association. They are full of statements and implications that are simply not true. They are worrisome.

I understand that the distributors see supermarket sales as the single greatest threat to their livelihood, and this looks like the wedge to open that up. I think that instead of spending their time and money fighting against something that is simply, clearly legal under the Code as it stands, they should be putting their efforts into changing the laws that govern how all booze is sold in PA. Get rid of the case law and allow six-pack and single sales for distributors ASAP. Get rid of the State Store system and let distributors sell wine and spirits. Get normal.

I am on the side of the beer business. I support them, I work with them, I'm grateful to them. But I am a consumer. I want to buy beer where and how everyone else in the Union does, and I don't see any good reasons why I should not be able to. All I see above are bad reasons. Let's fix this. All of it.