One good result of a pandemic which brought the brewing industry to its knees, was that state legislators got serious about changing archaic beer laws to benefit small businesses….change that was long overdue…

Here’s what New Hampshire just did…

On August 9, members of the New Hampshire Brewers Association gathered at Deciduous Brewing Company in Newmarket for Governor Chris Sununu’s official signing of Senate Bill 125 which addresses several sales and operational issues for the state’s brewers.

The new law, which was actively championed by New Hampshire Brewers Association and passed in the state legislature with bipartisan support, lifts a number of decades-old restrictions on beer producers, allows brewers to operate a stand-alone retail outlet to sell their brews and allows them (and wineries) to ship their products directly to customers.

“New Hampshire brewers are innovators, inventors, and entrepreneurs,” Sununu said in a statement. “They built their businesses – our job is to get out of the way to let them thrive and grow.”

The recently signed bill also lifts a cap on how many cases of beer a brewer who operates a pub can sell to a single customer. Under the old law, most craft brewers were prohibited from selling the equivalent of more than one case of 12 ounce beers directly to a customer.

According to KPVI, “microbrewers and pro-business groups such as the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy have lobbied for years to repeal the laws.

In a recent statement, the free market organization criticized the previous rules as “protectionist” and said they’ve held back growth of the micro-brewing industry in the state…

“Legislators deliberately handicapped craft breweries to protect restaurants, retailers and beer distributors. Those protections have made it harder than necessary for New Hampshire brewers to grow and to reach consumers.”

But now thankfully, some of those handicaps have been removed…

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And while we’re focusing on long overdue beer law changes there’s also this…

NEW STATE BEER LAWS SUPPORT CRAFT BREWERS

And this….

NEW MAINE BEER LAW LETS BREWERS DETERMINE THEIR FUTURE