Before Senate Bill 383 passed in the state of Oklahoma in 2016, it\u2019s likely that folks had never before played disc golf, built a terrarium, and attended a vegan chili cookoff in the same building. Today, at nearly every craft brewery in the state, such events are the norm.<\/p>\n
The bill amended state liquor laws to authorize the sale of refrigerated high-point; beer stronger than 3.2% alcohol by weight (4% ABV) . The bill made it legal for craft breweries to serve cold beer in taprooms.<\/p>\n
Prohibition was repealed nationally in 1933, but Oklahoma remained a dry state until 1959\u2014even then, it retained one of the most restrictive liquor laws in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the laws were written, they were written into the state constitution,\u201d said Ross Harper, Owner and Founder of Angry Scotsman Brewing in Oklahoma City. \u201cYou could only change them through popular vote. So, for effectively 60 years, the Oklahoma liquor laws stood unchanged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Restricting breweries from self-distributing high-point beer\u2014restricted taprooms\u2014restricted the kinds of experiences and events that breweries in other states consider normal. With the new law on the books, that all changed. A similar bill, Senate Bill 792 eventually reformed the whole system in 2018, the 2016 bill served as something of a placeholder that paved the way for the taproom takeover .<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say that law change really had an integral effect on the growth of craft beer in the state almost immediately,\u201d Derek Duty, Director of Sales and Marketing for Anthem Brewing Company said. \u201cYou really saw the public interest start to elevate, as folks were getting around to see and learn more about the breweries and brewers in town, what they offered, and to offer up more support.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOklahoma craft beer culture has come a long way very quickly,\u201d Harper said. \u201cIf you look back in Oklahoma four or five years ago, there were maybe a dozen breweries at most. Now, there\u2019s over two dozen in the Oklahoma City greater metro alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps connected to the fact that there are so many breweries pop up so quickly is the phenomenon of brewing as a sharing industry. In Dick Cantwell\u2019s 2013 book, The Brewers Association\u2019s Guide to Starting Your Own Brewery<\/i>, Cantwell said, \u201cThe collegiality of our industry is in fact envied by those in other artisanal industries who value individual over collective success.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cy Henley, Head of Brewing Operations at Anthem, echoed Cantwell\u2019s remarks. \u201cI\u2019ve never been one to hide recipes or anything. I don\u2019t mind sharing information, because I feel like\u2014and most people feel this way\u2014that if you drive quality in your beers, it just increases sales for the craft beer industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unique to the craft beer world, aside from the attitudes one finds, is this opportunity for customers to tour breweries and see how their beer is made, an added experiential benefit of the new legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get to smell it; you get to see the work it takes to make beer,\u201d Anthem\u2019s Duty said. \u201cYou can walk around this place and watch everybody do what they do. We don\u2019t want it to be a separate thing, so even with our renovations\u2014that was one piece we were pretty adamant about\u2014we want it to still feel like, \u2018Hey man, when I go there, I\u2019m in the middle of beer being made.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Vanessa House Beer Company\u2014also in Oklahoma City\u2014was started by a few buddies who lived and homebrewed together on Vanessa Drive in Norman while attending the University of Oklahoma.<\/p>\n
Vanessa House might not exist had the taproom laws not changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder the old laws, you needed that big investment, because you had to attack distribution really hard\u2014since you didn\u2019t have the ability to do the taproom,\u201d says Andrew Carrales, a co-owner of Vanessa House, \u201cAnd we really wanted to open a brewery.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ross Harper said he probably wouldn\u2019t have started Angry Scotsman had the laws not changed. \u201cFrom a production, old-law mindset, you had to go big or you weren\u2019t going to see your returns,\u201d he said. \u201cWith the taproom, there\u2019s a lower bar to entry, because you can put in a smaller system, be a little more artisanal.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the increase in breweries in the Sooner State suggests the new law\u2019s success, the full measure of meaning cannot be gleaned by numbers alone. The reality of taprooms in the state indicates a radical shift from the ways of the past, but perhaps the shift takes us back to a more distant past (when people never left their hometowns and beer was all local)\u2014perhaps the best things from beer culture\u2019s collective past remain.<\/p>\n
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The bill amended state liquor laws to authorize the sale of refrigerated high strength beer. The bill made it legal for Oklahoma taprooms to serve cold beer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7406,"featured_media":110170,"sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sticky_collection":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4296],"class_list":["post-110162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft-beer-muses","tag-breweries"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n