Our state legislature actually did something useful last week. Lawmakers voted to end the discrimination that has plagued Ohio microbreweries while favoring local wineries.
What’s most important about this according to the Akron Beacon Journal, is that Westlake’s Black Box Brewery and Cleveland’s Indigo Imp are planning to build tasting rooms where locals, and tourists alike, can try out all the craft brew varieties on offer.
Akron’s Ohio Brewing Company will also build a tasting room.
“It’s a great day for Ohio microbreweries and the Ohio craft brewing industry because it allows microbreweries to showcase their products in a relaxed setting and put us on par with the wineries,” Chris Verich, Ohio Brewing’s owner told the paper.
A new law will take effect in March, eliminating the $3,906 state license fee required for any local brewery not attached to a brewpub wanting to offer beer tastings. For most small operations this cost was prohibitive and not only that, only three such tasting licenses were issued each year. The law also greatly increases the number of breweries in the state that will be permitted to have tasting rooms.
The finally elevates craft brewers to the level of Ohio wineries, which have enjoyed the ability to offer wine tastings for a tiny $76 annual state license fee.
Stay tuned for more on the tasting room plans.
This article appears in Dec 21-27, 2011.
Do you really want to help the world and the country? Quit educating lawyers and MbA’s on how to corner markets and create empty returns on investment at the expense of we the people.
Thirty years of foolishness should be enough to bring us back to reality.
Yet the beat goes on. Drums keep pounding snare traps which keep us from freedom. We want to be free, yet we do not really. We like our shackles and our jails and our hand-cuffs and our prick-boss. Remove the bonds and we are afraid. Afraid to think or take action. Still wanting to see the straw boss as truth and the spirit as insane….it is the opposite. Truth is spirit and ego is wrong.
I am used to being hated. It is part of my lessons. I still love all seven billion of us, bipeds. We have giant brains and no sense yet we are the answer and the problem and the solution. The universe seeks to right us and make us float, yet we say we would rather drown.
When I was young I made many mistakes and paid for most of them. I drank soup through a straw for months for saying things to men who wanted to silence me. I still drink some sort of metaphorical soup and I am still shut up by men who are much less than I.
Are you ok Kenny? You seem to be a little disoriented.