Greetings, zymurgists. For today’s topic I’ll be reaching back to a suggestion made in the comments of my “Just What in the Hell” article on GTotMW. “Brice” asked for an opinion on Kentucky’s pitiful ranking in breweries per capita (or capita per brewery, as the BA likes to express it). Request granted. Prepare your eye-holes for some opinionating. I presume he is referring to the sorta-recently released 2012 statistics by the Brewer’s Association listing all of the states plus D.C. in order beginning with the state having the lowest population per brewery (Vermont with one craft brewery for every 25,030 people) and ending with the state having the highest (Mississippi with just one brewery per 989,099 folks). Without cheating, care to guess at where Kentucky falls? First hint: not on the first page of the list. Second hint: also not on the top half of the second page. Third hint: 43 with 309,955 fine, upstanding individuals per brewery.
Ok, I’ll concede that the last hint wasn’t so much a hint, per se, but let’s get into the meat of this. We are bracketed by Texas (42) and Florida (44). Their problem seems to be that they just have so many damn people that getting their “per capita” numbers to look good would require a pretty astronomical number of breweries. The same could be said of New York, which placed only 39th on the list but still boasts 88 craft breweries. While an expeditious group of individuals (with a saintly DD) could fairly easily have a drink at every Kentucky craft brewery in a single day, I would venture to say that such a task in New York, Texas, or Florida would be impossible even if those breweries were all lined up in a row. Elevated population is not the issue in Kentucky. In fact, for a while (and this may even still be true) Danville, KY had the highest number of breweries per capita of any city in America. Is that because two is just a staggering number of breweries for a city to have? No. It’s because Danville has the population of my last family reunion.
Now that we have established that the number keeping our ranking low is the dearth of breweries rather than the overabundance of Kentuckians, we can start to approach the question of why and whether I see it changing any time soon. Absent some sort of grand culling of our people, we are talking about why there are relatively few craft breweries here and if we should expect more soon.
In short, I believe our number of breweries per capita will continue to increase steadily, but I don’t think we should get our hopes up about that change being too great in speed or scale. Over the last two years we have seen a hearty number of breweries open in Louisville, Lexington, and Danville with whispers (or outright shouts) of breweries opening in some of the smaller towns scattered around the state. Growth even continues to occur in those cities already boasting several craft breweries, and we are still very, very far from market saturation.
There remain, however, a number of obstacles. Kentucky still has only 32 of its 120 counties classified as completely wet. 39 are completely dry, and the rest live in a variety of “moist” Purgatories. That’s a lot of territory in which a craft brewery may not operate under Kentucky law. Granted, many of those counties also carry fairly small populations, but even a small population with zero breweries will weigh down the ranking. The story I related in one of my first articles about the narrowly averted redefinition debacle should evidence the degree of legal uncertainty in Kentucky, which further serves to rein in brewery growth. It’s tough to take the proverbial entrepreneurial plunge when you feel that the state government could close the pool at any time. Additionally, the Kentucky beer tax situation serves to severely restrict growth. Though the state excise tax of $.08/gallon is less than half the national median, our 11% wholesale tax is among the highest in the country (most states don’t even collect a wholesale tax), and the 6% sales tax also applies to on-premise sales (true of most but not all states).
To end on a positive note, remember that all of these obstacles are removable. The power to promote the growth of craft beer is in the hands of the voter. Next time you vote, ask the candidates for their stance on these things. They may not have a stance yet, but with enough questions, they’ll surely develop one. Until then, faithful readers, thanks for reading, and happy drinks!
P.S. Remember to let me know if you have some specific topic you would like me to babble about next time. You can tell me in person, by e-mail, or in the comments right down below.
