Well you thought Wisconsin had problems! Take a look at their neighbor, Minnesota. The State government in Minnesota has been shut down over the last two weeks while lawmakers try to figure out how to pay the bills. Well this has had a concequence that I don’t think any of them considered while they dug their heels in at St Paul’s capitol. It is just a timing thing, but July 1 there were a lot of beer licences and distributor licences that needed renewal. This is typically a rubber stamp procedure, and things go on as normal. Problem is there aint nobody home to work the stamp!
All the state employees that are involved in renewal of permits and licences have been on a mandatory unpaid vacation since the budget ran out July 1. This has had some rather far reaching consequences. Specifically the distributor for Miller Coors products has no licence to sell in the State. This is requiring them to remove all their brands from store shelves. This includes:
- Miller, Miller Lite
- Miller High Life, High Life Light
- Coors, Coors Light
- Blue Moon
- Pilsner Urquell
- Hamm’s
- Keystone, Keystone Light
- Mickey’s
- Olde English
- Red Dog
- Foster’s
- Killian’s
- Leinenkugel’s
- Henry Weinhard’s
Beer & Whiskey Brothers 
I have a good friend in the Twin Cities. This is absolutely horrible. July is the time of the year when fisherman flock to Minnesota to fish and now with the government being closed they can’t access state owned ramps to lakes and now will run out of beer. They are really hurting their economy more than they know.
Yep, the perverbial Shit hits the fan when beer is lost! I truly think that unintended consequence put a lot of leverage on the Governor to acquiesce to the Republican budget. It will probably take a couple of weeks to straighten out again as I’m sure the backlog is huge, but the beer should be flowing again soon in Minnesota.
They will have to stop selling beer, because, if they don’t, the government will come in and shut them down!
Oh, wait…
I’m thinking the ones in charge of shutting them down are probably “essential” employees. So while the permitting arm is shut down, The enforcement arm is probably alive and well.
My advice to them… make your own damn beer.
This would have been a great opportunity for some entrepreneurial spirits to introduce the fine art of home brewing.
u think the state would have renewed the companys request since beer is taxed by states..STUPID,now they lost more money than they were
You said it Jason, the whole thing is STUPID! I guess that is why it doesn’t happen too often, but I gues sometimes you have to get STUPID to prove a point. At least the Republicans in Minnesota thought so.
I heard about this from my WI friends. Sounds like time for a road trip if you’re from Minnesota. I have some friends who run a bar not to far from the border who would be more than happy to serve them 🙂
I’m sure the bordertowns in Wisconsin and North Dakota are loving this.
This sounds like a great wake-up call for our Federal Congresspeople–the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again. Ya’ll might just wanna pass this one on to your own reps for their consideration and delectation.
Just heard that the governor caved into the state legislature–estimated loss to date: 52 mil. What you wanna bet that MN will be seeing some new faces in the governor’s mansion & state legislature come next elections.
Memories are short for this sort of thing, but if the beer supply was truly impacted, it might just tickle their minds in November.
No Miller-Coors in MN? Sounds like a great opportunity for folks to drink Summit & Surly!
I think that a lot of taps were changing. Who knows it might have just converted a few more people to craft beer.
No need to worry people… I have enough beer stashed in my home bar to get all of you drunk for the whole weekend and then some.
Oh, and I just tapped a keg of Schell’s Hefeweizen last night too.
Life is good in some parts of Minnesota!
Mikey, with your Caches of beer all over the upper mid west, I knew you would be well cared for! 😉
Now, I may be missing something here, but that while MillerCoors beers may account for more than a third of all beer brands in Minnesota, there are plenty of others left, right? Plenty of Grain Belt, Schell, Leinenkugel’s, Summit, lots of Canadian beers and everything made and distributed by Bud.
But with everything else going wrong in Minnesota now (it sounds like the agreement that was reached yesterday made no one happy), isn’t it a great time for Minnesotans to embrace whiskey?
My thoughts exactly! Perhaps a little Irish Single Malt. That’d fit!