Liquor laws. Whats up with that?

[Pratzie]

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.

 

[hopkincr]

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.

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.

 

[Alpotun]

Can't buy here in MS on election day. Just when we need it most.

 

[kristiismean]

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.

 

[Auger]

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.

Intent is to drink....what other intent could one possibly have after buying beer???

 

[JonM]

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.

 

[cdug619]

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.

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.

 

[kristiismean]

Intent is to drink....what other intent could one possibly have after buying beer???

out of bag, you intend to drink it in the car, in the bag, you intend to NOT drink it in the car.

 

[Homercidal]

out of bag, you intend to drink it in the car, in the bag, you intend to NOT drink it in the car.

This. It's pretty simple. If it's in the bag, there is no possible way for me to be drinking it in the car.

 

[FloppyKnockers]

Oregon: Micro brews flow from the water fountains.

 

[JonM]

The bag thing reminded me of this.

http://www.theonion.com/article/police-baffled-by-bottle-shaped-paper-bag-746

 

[Murphys_Law]

This. It's pretty simple. If it's in the bag, there is no possible way for me to be drinking it in the car.

Because taking a beer out of a bag while sitting in a car is so difficult!

 

[BentBrewer]

Because taking a beer out of a bag while sitting in a car is so difficult!

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!

 

[Jim311]

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?

 

[catdaddy66]

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?

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.

 

[petey_c]

MO actually allows you to drink in a moving vehicle as long as you aren't the driver which is awesome.

If you get pulled over, I wonder if you could pull the old "sovereign citizen" BS, "I'm not driving, I'm travelling."

 

[petey_c]

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.

I remember in SC (?) (1977?) they'd put chains through the handles of the beer coolers on Sundays.

 

[Auger]

Yeah in CT after hours they pull curtains over the beer cooler doors in grocery stores that sell it.

 

[mattd2]

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.

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 )

State by state comparison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_laws_of_the_United_States

Someone needs to update that with alcohol related crime states

 

[Qhrumphf]

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.

 

[petey_c]

Q, I if may so so bold as to ask, what did the Westy 12 cost you? I bought two bottles from Belgium for about $53 with shipping. I'm going to do a taste comparison between that and St. Bernardus 12.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Q, I if may so so bold as to ask, what did the Westy 12 cost you? I bought two bottles from Belgium for about $53 with shipping. I'm going to do a taste comparison between that and St. Bernardus 12.

I was amazed. Was only $25. Very fairly priced. I expected it to be much, much more when I asked, which was why I ordered it (had it before a couple times anyway but my mate across the table hadn't, we split it).

 

[TallDan]

My attention was just drawn to this today:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-wine-shipping-bill-0827-biz-20160826-story.html

Seems like Illinois just took a step backwards. An online wine retailer that I've been buying from for years just informed me that they can't ship the wine I bought directly to me.

 

[JonM]

We just had a dustup here over something silly. I know I said anything goes in Wisconsin, but that doesn't really apply to the three-tier distribution system.

Anyway, we have a James Beard award-winning chef here. He's also a beer guy and he and some others decided to open a brewery. (Before all of this I was lucky enough to have one of his dishes paired with one of his beers. Freakin awesome.) The suits in Madison told him he couldn't do that because he's a retail license holder and can't also be a producer who sells his own stuff in his own licensed business. He said screw it, I'll set up the brewery in Chicago. Madison promptly found a work-around. Brewery (Like Minds Brewing) opened in Milwaukee on Tuesday.