Beer Snobs now safe in West Virginia

Now Legal, Craft Beers Ease into W.Va. Markets
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
CHARLESTON, W.Va—In the nearly three weeks since a state law allowing craft beers to be sold in West Virginia went into effect, new labels are slowly making inroads into the state, officials say."We have people calling us daily, asking, 'When can we get this brand or that?'" Kathy Folio, president of North Central Distributors in Clarksburg, said Tuesday. "We're bringing new brands in slowly but surely."Unlike many distributors in the state, Folio pushed for passage of the craft beer legislation, which increased the maximum permissible alcohol level for beer sold in West Virginia from 6 percent by volume to 12 percent.Since many craft beers are brewed seasonally, Folio said they're getting requests for beers that won't be available until this fall or winter."These are things people have been looking for for a long time," she said of the requests.After years of having the legislation blocked by lobbyists for the West Virginia Beer Wholesalers Association, the craft beer bill finally passed the Legislature in April. The law went into effect July 9.Since then, the state Alcohol Beverage Control Administration has approved for sale 54 beers with higher alcohol levels, from eight different breweries or distributors, according to ABCA beer administrator Cindy Clark.Approved labels include such items as Harpoon Leviathan Imperial IPA, at 10.05 percent alcohol; Samuel Smith's Yorkshire Stingo Ale (8 percent); Trappistes Rochefort 10 Belgian Ale (11.3 percent); Rogue Double Dead Guy Ale (8.43 percent); Samuel Adams Imperial White (10.3 percent); Great Lakes Brewing Blackout Stout (9 percent); and Nosferatu Stock Ale (8 percent).Clark noted that ABCA approval doesn't necessarily mean all 54 brews are showing up on store shelves or in bars and pubs."It's up to the distributors whether they carry them," she said.Mark Grey, general sales manager for North Central, said demand for craft beers has been strong in some locations but weaker among large grocery and retail chains."The major retail chains aren't sure what direction they want to go with this," he said.He said it's also a matter of expanding consumer awareness of craft beers."Some areas, like Morgantown and Charleston, have very educated consumers," he said.Also, he noted that craft brewers, by definition, tend to expand slowly into new markets."Most of the craft brewers are very particular and very concerned about the quality of the product they produce," he said, noting that craft brewers cannot increase production levels on short notice, as mass-market brewers can do.Grey noted that the introduction of Yuengling beer into West Virginia this summer led many consumers to mistakenly believe it is a craft beer.However, he said the Pottsville, Pa., brewer's expansion into the market, after slowly expanding production capacities, is a blueprint craft brewers are likely to follow, he said."Yuengling is the model a lot of craft brewers strive to be," he said. "They were very slow and deliberate in their expansion into new areas."