As it did after Katrina, Abita Brewing in Louisiana has brewed a beer to benefit victims of disaster.
This time 75 cents from the sale of every 22-ounce bottle of Save Our Shores (S.O.S.) Charitable Pilsner will will go to a fund that will be used to support those devastated by the BP oil disaster. But here’s the rub, via The Mississippi Brew Blog, Abita can’t sell the beer in two of the states most affect by the spill.
At 7 percent the beer is too strong to sell in Mississippi and the 22-ounce bottles are too big to sell in Alabama.
Think about it.
Abita first brewed Restoration Ale after Hurricane Katrina — a beer remains on the market — and also sold a variety of related items to raise money to benefit Katrina victims. Likewise 100 percent of the net proceeds from the sale of SOS gear will go to the SOS Fund. I’m pretty sure they are even legal in Alabama and Mississippi.
A pilsner at 7 percent? Even the BJCP considers that wrong. I wonder why a brewery located in a region produces beer for sale in this region (albeit for a good cause), but seems to be unaware of local regulations? Or were they simply hoping not to sell too much of it?
@Mike
Perhaps they just plan on selling a bunch in the 30+ other states that can legally sell the beer. Maybe folks outside the Gulf Coast region will spend their money on a special beer that is contributing to the cause…maybe.
@Jason
I’m not pretending to be an expert in this. However, if a company wants to be successful, especially for a good cause, why not try to be as successful as possible. Why was it necessary to make a pilsener at 7%? Why use the larger bottle size? Neither of these actions make any sense if you assume the goal was to sell as much as possible, given the local regulations. I don’t know why they did it, but it doesn’t seem very smart to me.
Mike – They went with the bigger bottle because it is faster to get label approval and they can get the beer to market quicker.
Stan – label approval? Is there an art committee that has to approve labels?
If you were a brewer, Stan, and you had a choice between quicker, but limited distribution or slighter slower, but complete distribution, which would you choose?
Mike – label approval is a function of American bureaucracy.
I were a brewing company I would have gone out of business long ago so I can see where Abita would not ask me for advice. But I can see the sense of doing 22-ounce bottles only (Abita only recently started distributing that size for special beers) and the positive message involved it treating this with a sense of urgency. If there is rip roaring demand for the beer, and that would be in states with more craft beer consumption than Mississippi and Alabama, then they could add 6-packs.