Government Shutdown Halts South Carolina Craft Beer Boom

Approvals of brewery licenses and labels are on hold until the federal shutdown ends, with South Carolina’s fledgling craft beer industry taking the hit.

October 10, 2013

COLUMBIA, S.C. – The government shutdown threatens far more than just opening hours at our national parks, food inspections and border patrol training. This just in from South Carolina’s The State: “It’s messing with our beer supply.”

The shutdown threatens to interrupt the opening of two new South Carolina breweries (River Rat, Swamp Cabbage), while delaying bottling operations at a third (Conquest).

“Our permits are just sitting on someone’s desk right now,” said Mike Tourville as he watched his tall, conical stainless steel fermenting tanks being installed in the new River Rat brewery at 1231 Shop Road. “Every week it stays shut down, we lose a week. We can’t even do test runs. Until the feds say so, you can’t brew alcohol.”

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is the federal agency that regulates breweries, including the approval of brewery licenses.

As long as the government shutdown is in place, TTB workers aren’t working and no brewery licenses are being issued.

The TTB also reviews beer labels to ensure that they have proper government warnings and ingredient information, as well as ensuring they aren’t pornographic, promoting drunkenness or is in some other way socially unacceptable.

The problem is a national one, but it is acute in South Carolina, where the state’s craft brewery industry is in its early stages.

The state currently has 12 operating breweries with 11 waiting for permits. Even those breweries that are operating, like Conquest, face delays. While they can make beer, they can’t affix labels to them until the TTB approves them.

“The federal government does strange things sometimes,” said brewer Matthew Ellisor. “We’ll just have to wait.”

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