Liquor laws. Whats up with that?

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bruteforce said:
So, I've moved around a lot recently and the vastly different laws for alcohol are very strange to me. Now some of these may have changed recently, but as of the last time I was there

TN : No sales on Sunday. Because, you know, you can only drink on Sunday if you bought it on Sunday I guess.
IL: Pretty much like CA, but some weird stuff around happy hours and giving discounts.
MO: Seems pretty normal, but there's probably something weird.
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This must only be true in certain counties in TN because I bought some Yuengling from a gas station while passing through TN on a Sunday this July.

IL legalized happy hour this year.

MO actually allows you to drink in a moving vehicle as long as you aren't the driver which is awesome.
 
treacheroustexan said:
Indiana: All Sunday alcohol sales banned unless you're at a bar or brewery where the beer is brewed. So no liquor stores/gas stations/etc.

Ohio is very relaxed.
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What's crazy about Indiana, we went to a Colts game a couple years ago and you can buy a beer in a bar on a Sunday and carry it out and walk around and drink (the bars will actually give you a to go cup to do this), but you can't go to the gas station and buy a 6 pack. Makes no sense.
 
HCbrewing said:
What's crazy about Indiana, we went to a Colts game a couple years ago and you can buy a beer in a bar on a Sunday and carry it out and walk around and drink (the bars will actually give you a to go cup to do this), but you can't go to the gas station and buy a 6 pack. Makes no sense.
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Right. We drive up to 3 Floyds a few times a year and every time on Sunday when we come home it sucks because we can't go to any bottle shops or anything to take home.
 
In response to the question of "What's up with that?" the answer is that the collective, hydra-headed DOFRA ("Department of Frivolous Restrictions on Alcohol) crawled from the unholy concordance of a medley of cartoonishly narrowminded economic interests and sour grapes among the shambling corpses animated by A Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Happy over Prohibition being sent back to the sewer that spawned it.

...so to speak.
 
Ontario, Canada: Prior to late 2015, alcohol could only be purchased from either government-run liquor stores (LCBO), or "The Beer Store": a retail chain mostly owned by international beer conglomerates (Molson-Coors, InBev, Sapporo, etc). LCBO sells every kind of booze, while TBS just sells beer, and malt-based coolers. You can only buy beer in "bulk" (anything bigger than a 6-pack) from TBS.

As of now, a small number of grocery stores can sell beer and cider in 6-pack quantities or less, and they're planning to start allowing wine sales by the end of the year.

Most other provinces I believe are similar in having government run liquor stores and some form of private beer/wine sales, ie: in Quebec you can buy beer and wine at grocery and convenience stores. Alberta being the notable exception in privatizing liquor sales completely.
 
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Ayerate said:
Ontario, Canada: Prior to late 2015, alcohol could only be purchased from either government-run liquor stores (LCBO), or "The Beer Store": a retail chain mostly owned by international beer conglomerates (Molson-Coors, InBev, Sapporo, etc). LCBO sells every kind of booze, while TBS just sells beer, and malt-based coolers. You can only buy beer in "bulk" (anything bigger than a 6-pack) from TBS.

As of now, a small number of grocery stores can sell beer and cider in 6-pack quantities or less, and they're planning to start allowing wine sales by the end of the year.

Most other provinces I believe are similar in having government run liquor stores and some form of private beer/wine sales, ie: in Quebec you can buy beer and wine at grocery and convenience stores. Alberta being the notable exception in privatizing liquor sales completely.
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Take off, Hoser!

wRgRIl8MCoxm8IWJWKARdxR2vnR.jpg
 
petemoss said:
Alabama: You can buy beer and wine pretty much everywhere except only after Noon on Sundays. Liquor has to be bought from a liquor store.

There are some dry counties left I believe where everything is off limits. I remember as a kid, we lived in Walker county for a while and my folks would have to make runs to the county line. Eventually, they made Jasper (the main city in Walker County) wet, so folks didn't have to do that any longer. Seems odd having a dry county with a wet city inside of it.
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After having grown up in Alabama in the 70's where keg beer was mostly illegal and no Sunday sales were allowed I'm happy to say we've mostly moved into the 20th century wrt alcohol laws and regulations. Perhaps before I leave this world we'll make it into the 21st.

Right now we're in that odd period where regulations are being relaxed or removed such as homebrewing being legalized in 2013 and brewery taprooms being able to offer beer-to-go this year but the alcohol regulators are mostly clueless about how to deal with these changes. Even when these laws do change they are often done differently than in most of the rest of the US. For example here is the essence of the new homebrewing regulations:

The statute limits production to 15 gallons per calendar quarter and possession at any time to 15 gallons. The statute allows for transport of homemade beer, mead and cider in amounts of no more than 10 gallons and only for organized events of homebrew competitions and judgings licensed by the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board as a special events retail license. Such homebrew competitions and judgings cannot be held on the premises of entities otherwise licensed by the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.
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So we can legally brew only 60 gallons a year and can have no more than 15 gallons at a time. So much for legally using my 4 tap keezer. Homebrewing competitions and judging must be licensed by the ABC board and can't be held at any place which holds a liquor license which I think is somewhat strange and unusual.

In typical Alabama fashion, because the beer-to-go legislation limited the amount able to be taken away to 288oz per day the alcohol enforcement regulators, the ABC, are now debating how to enforce this limit with one proposal being to have everyone taking beer away from a brewery fill in a form with their name, address, phone etc. Invasion of privacy and onerous regulations much?

I can't wrap my brain around how this proposal would even work. I walk into a brewery and order some beer to go. I would guess at that point I have to fill in a form and the proprietors would then look through the other forms filled in for that day's sales to see if I'd already bought beer to go. If I had they'd have to add up the amounts to see that I was still under the daily limit. And they have to do this for every single customer. Sure, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable scenario to me.
 
I live in west TN. In the suburb I'm in, there are no alcohol sales in stores on Sunday but you can go to a restaurant/bar and drink. I can drive 10 - 15 minutes in just about any direction and be in a different suburb/municipality/city and buy beer on Sunday as long as it's after noon.
Only liquor stores can sell above 6.29% ABV beers, but grocery stores can now sell wine (as of July.)
My in-laws live in a dry county in MS. The TN state line is about 10 minutes away with a store that sells beer just across the line. The police tend to sit and watch for people going over and back in a short amount of time.
 
Pratzie said:
You think some states are bad, get a load of this bull**** in my home state of PA.

http://www.pennlive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/09/pa_liquor_law.html

And I have a good friend who works in Liquor Enforcement and he talks about it all the time how the laws are still Prohibition aged and a complete joke.
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I visit philly most christmases. The laws are bizarre. No one can sell beer except the official beer store or bars. Except, like, we really want Wegmans, so I guess they can. And oh, Giant too I guess. But screw the rest of ya'll.

Boggles the mind.
 
Pratzie said:
You think some states are bad, get a load of this bull**** in my home state of PA.

http://www.pennlive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/09/pa_liquor_law.html

And I have a good friend who works in Liquor Enforcement and he talks about it all the time how the laws are still Prohibition aged and a complete joke.
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From the article:

"Sadly, it meant that I had no choice but to destroy the contraband if I wanted to stay on the right side of the law."

He immediately set upon destroying said contraband by means of his liver.
 
The only thing that bothers me about NY liquor laws is that you can't get beer from the liquor stores. Coming from WI, I feel like my beer options would be better if a store that specialized in alcohol was allowed to carry beer. Instead, it's mostly only available at the tiny corner stores or tiny grocery stores (NYC). Yes I know I could go to one of the couple beer specialty stores but those are few and far between and liquor stores are everywhere.
 
When I was in college in Memphis, I remember discovering the wondrous world of Walgreens across the river in Arkansas. They had liquor/beer stores attached to the Walgreens, and had a ridiculous variety for a Walgreens. We were excited to find 5L mini kegs of Fat Tire since New Belgium wasn't selling east of the Mississippi at the time.

Back near my neck of the woods in Memphis, we had Rite Aid and you were lucky to find a major brewery's faux-craft brew.
 
A2HB said:
Huh??
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ya true story... One of the liquor distributors told me that when I lived down there. Ever been to FL? Ever seen 90's rap music videos? It's not koolaid in those paper bags :fro:
 
Can't buy beer after 3am here. Not sure if that's our county, or all of NY. I tried to argue my point that everything is after 3am (except 3:00am), but to no avail. Just have to go to the store before work if I'm running low, gotta plan ahead.
 
So in Milwaukee County, retail sales stop at 9:00. The county just to the south allows sales until midnight. (Or at least that was the deal when I was in school.) So you can imagine that people who didn't plan ahead make beer runs to Racine County between 9:00 and midnight.

I did that once when I was in college, but our approach was to find a sober person and offer him a 12-pack in exchange for the ride to Racine. Im sure lots of others just drove down there half in the bag when they ran out of beer.
 
Yeah we recently passed legislation to allow shipments of wine to our homes thru the mail... as long as said winery/vineyard purchased a license to do so.

Such a joke, all about the money. Yet our state reps and senators get ridiculous per diems and salary/benefits. Friggin' joke.
 
mullet6577 said:
I live in west TN. In the suburb I'm in, there are no alcohol sales in stores on Sunday but you can go to a restaurant/bar and drink. I can drive 10 - 15 minutes in just about any direction and be in a different suburb/municipality/city and buy beer on Sunday as long as it's after noon.
Only liquor stores can sell above 6.29% ABV beers, but grocery stores can now sell wine (as of July.)
My in-laws live in a dry county in MS. The TN state line is about 10 minutes away with a store that sells beer just across the line. The police tend to sit and watch for people going over and back in a short amount of time.
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In Nashville (and I think all of TN), Sunday sales of liquor/wine is prohibited but beer can be sold after noon. They actually turn the lights off in the beer coolers until noon, and some stores have "curtains" they pull down over the beer until noon.
 
Not much to contribute, all very funny/interesting. in Lake County IL, if you get a "open" six pack, Like Samuel Adams or Fat Tire come in (closed would be like ballast point 6 pack cans or Budweiser 12 packs). and it's within the drivers reach, you can be arrested for having an open container if it's not in a plastic or paper bag. So when you go to the stores, they always put it in a bag.

(not prosecuted, but arrested) has to do with intent. if it's in a super thin plastic bag, you intend to bring it somewhere to drink. Learned that from a cop, and looked it up and it's real and on the books.
 
kristiismean said:
Not much to contribute, all very funny/interesting. in Lake County IL, if you get a "open" six pack, Like Samuel Adams or Fat Tire come in (closed would be like ballast point 6 pack cans or Budweiser 12 packs). and it's within the drivers reach, you can be arrested for having an open container if it's not in a plastic or paper bag. So when you go to the stores, they always put it in a bag.

(not prosecuted, but arrested) has to do with intent. if it's in a super thin plastic bag, you intend to bring it somewhere to drink. Learned that from a cop, and looked it up and it's real and on the books.
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Intent is to drink....what other intent could one possibly have after buying beer???
 
In Milwaukee, bar time is 2:30 am on weekends, and bar time means everyone is out the door by 2:30 on the dot. I haven't seen bar time in a long time, but I remember bouncers being really firm about GTFOing everyone.

I visited my brother when he was a student at Ohio State. The rule there was stop serving at 2:00, but people don't have to be out until 5:00 or whatever. I guess some bars served big buckets of tap beer right before 2:00 so people could just sit there and keep refilling.
 
bruteforce said:
NM: You can buy anything anywhere, but you can only have 3 beers at a brewery. I suppose it's to keep the DWI rates up and make everyone drive to one place after another.
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We were there in December and visited a couple of places. Only one we saw like that was Canteen. I asked about it and they said it was a self imposed 3 beer serving limit (any size you wanted and they did sell 22oz pours) since there weren't close to any mass transit or walking distance.
 
Murphys_Law said:
Because taking a beer out of a bag while sitting in a car is so difficult! ;)
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No. Getting it back into the bag without the cop noticing, is difficult! If it's out of the bag, you were obviously about to break the law, and you're gonna get your weewee slapped for even thinking about it! :D
 
I was in South Carolina the other day and went to this liquor store that had two sides. I thought it was fairly normal that all the liquor was on one side of the building and all the beer on the other. But then I attempted to pay for both the liquor and beer at the same register on one side of the building and was sternly told we could NOT do that and that I shouldn't have even carried the beer into this side of the building without paying for it. WTF?
 
Jim311 said:
I was in South Carolina the other day and went to this liquor store that had two sides. I thought it was fairly normal that all the liquor was on one side of the building and all the beer on the other. But then I attempted to pay for both the liquor and beer at the same register on one side of the building and was sternly told we could NOT do that and that I shouldn't have even carried the beer into this side of the building without paying for it. WTF?
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Yep! Liquor is sold separately from beer and wine and it must be kept in a separate space. Most of the bigger beverage stores like Greene's, Total Wine, etc. will have a common lobby but separate doors. Oh, and liquor stores are identified with large red circles and are known as "red dot" stores.
 
hopkincr said:
In Nashville (and I think all of TN), Sunday sales of liquor/wine is prohibited but beer can be sold after noon. They actually turn the lights off in the beer coolers until noon, and some stores have "curtains" they pull down over the beer until noon.
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I remember in SC (?) (1977?) they'd put chains through the handles of the beer coolers on Sundays.
 
JonM said:
Wisconsin? Anything goes, pretty much. Sales 7 days a week, some counties say 9:00 pm is when sales stop for the day. Kids can be in bars or liquor stores and, if with a parent or guardian, a kid can even be served. First offense DUI is a civil forfeiture (I.e., not a crime). Liquor depts don't have to be isolated from the rest of the grocery store. They can hand out samples of beer, wine and liquor - yes, free samples of 80 proof liquor in the grocery store. I could go on.
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And what is your alcohol related crime stats compared to other states (not meaning to sound confrontational because I expect that there is no difference or even better statistics - looks like you are at the lower end http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/26/alcohol-deaths-states-us_n_5532034.html :))

TallDan said:
State by state comparison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_laws_of_the_United_States
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Someone needs to update that with alcohol related crime states :)
 
Virginia is pretty straightforward. Just about anything goes in terms of packaged sales, can buy beer and wine at any licensed retailer, the hard stuff only via state stores, no Sunday restrictions (unless there's dry jurisdictions I'm not aware of). If only small breweries were allowed limited self-distribution as some states have (best I've seen is tiered barrel per year limits directly related to radius of self-distribution, but no luck here).

Maryland is weird because every county handles it themselves. PG county seems to be a craft beer wasteland for the most part, but there are drive thru places. Montgomery County is actually fairly cheap to buy alcohol, good for liquor, but the county does all the distributorship so the beer is always stale and selection sucks. But the best bottle shop I've ever been to (State Line Liquors) is in way northern Maryland, literally the last exit on 95 before you cross into Delaware.

DC, Free For All doesn't even begin to cover it. Grey market sale is legal. The way it works, anything not currently imported into DC by a licensed distributor can be self-imported by any licensed retailer. So DC beer bars will have Heady Topper, Pliny the Elder, Hill Farmstead, and so on. Now, they're not always common and almost always at MASSIVE markup, but they're there. Hell, at Zwanze Day last weekend, I bought a bottle of Westvleteren 12. I understand how US-brewed beer flies in DC, but I didn't think that'd work with imported stuff, so I have no idea. But it's there.
 

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