WTF? A GC gets a patent for trucking in wort? There are only dozens of other places doing that. McCoy’s Public House in St. Louis Park does the same thing. They truck it in from their other location in Kansas City.
Given that it’s a patent, I’m sure the language is a little more specific than that. Love them or hate them, it seems like an interesting way to avoid the issue of shipping alcohol across state lines.
McCoy’s ships their finished beer to Minnesota. They don’t ferment here.
Oh yeah, that law recently changed. It’s what NOW allows Rock Bottom to send their beer to their new airport locacion. You have to sell it to your other location. Todd and I were talking to Bryon at the Gitchee Gumee last year and he told us that Rock Bottom had started on the brewpub at the airport before checking into the laws. At the time they couldn’t send finished beer there. You’d think they’d look into that kinda thing before getting started.
Ok, we have about 3 different topics going on here.
#1 GCs patent. I haven’t looked at what they actually patented, but as Ryan stated, by shipping wort instead of alcohol, you get around individual state’s laws. Alcohol laws are set on the state level, rather than the Federal level, and every state is different. By the way, it’s also probably illegal for you guys to go to Hudson and pick up a bunch of beer and bring it back to MN.
#2 Once again, Ryan is correct–McCoys ships beer here. They go through a distributor (I assume).
#3 There is a new law to allow distribution of beer between companies that have common ownership. This is a MN law. That’s how RB can distribute their beer to MSP. They can self-distribute the beer.
And just to pick at nits, if RB is sending finished beer, it’s not really a brewpub at the airport, but a taproom.
Are you asking me? OK, I’ll bite. Many of the large breweries tried it years ago with little success. I remember a place in Toronto , Cest La Vie, that brought in wort from Wellington. It’s actually not a very new or novel idea.
January 22, 2007, 11:21pm :: Posted by ryan in bars, brewpubs 
content rss
WTF? A GC gets a patent for trucking in wort? There are only dozens of other places doing that. McCoy’s Public House in St. Louis Park does the same thing. They truck it in from their other location in Kansas City.
Given that it’s a patent, I’m sure the language is a little more specific than that. Love them or hate them, it seems like an interesting way to avoid the issue of shipping alcohol across state lines.
McCoy’s ships their finished beer to Minnesota. They don’t ferment here.
Oh yeah, that law recently changed. It’s what NOW allows Rock Bottom to send their beer to their new airport locacion. You have to sell it to your other location. Todd and I were talking to Bryon at the Gitchee Gumee last year and he told us that Rock Bottom had started on the brewpub at the airport before checking into the laws. At the time they couldn’t send finished beer there. You’d think they’d look into that kinda thing before getting started.
Ok, we have about 3 different topics going on here.
#1 GCs patent. I haven’t looked at what they actually patented, but as Ryan stated, by shipping wort instead of alcohol, you get around individual state’s laws. Alcohol laws are set on the state level, rather than the Federal level, and every state is different. By the way, it’s also probably illegal for you guys to go to Hudson and pick up a bunch of beer and bring it back to MN.
#2 Once again, Ryan is correct–McCoys ships beer here. They go through a distributor (I assume).
#3 There is a new law to allow distribution of beer between companies that have common ownership. This is a MN law. That’s how RB can distribute their beer to MSP. They can self-distribute the beer.
And just to pick at nits, if RB is sending finished beer, it’s not really a brewpub at the airport, but a taproom.
Who else ships wort?
Are you asking me? OK, I’ll bite. Many of the large breweries tried it years ago with little success. I remember a place in Toronto , Cest La Vie, that brought in wort from Wellington. It’s actually not a very new or novel idea.
Nah, I was just curious about the dozens that Ben referred to.
I should have said C’est What in Toronto. The wort is from Duram Brewery now.