(Nashville, TN) – The folks at the Tennessee Brewers Guild, TN Malt Beverage Association and the Blount County Partnership are at it again. Last year, their efforts helped repair Tennessee’s beer tax structure. This year, they are going after the state’s unusually low ABV cap of 6.2%. As you can see in the map above, Tennessee is way behind its conservative peers with respect to ABV cap. More facts below via the Fix the Beer Cap website…

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“Beer” in Tennessee is defined as a beverage with an alcohol content of not more than 5% by weight, but many of the new popular beers, particularly craft beers, are often brewed to a higher alcohol content in order to achieve the desired taste profile of their customers. Any beer over 5% ABW in Tennessee can only be sold in one of the approximately 560 liquor stores statewide or liquor-by-the-drink establishments. This severely limits the marketplace availability for these beers and is holding back one of the fastest growing segments in the beer industry – contributing to Tennessee’s reputation as an unfriendly state for brewers.

Tennessee has the lowest alcohol content percentage for beer in the Southeast and is one of only a handful of states in the country with such a low standard. Many states have no “cap” at all on alcohol content for beer while many fall within the 12 to 15% range.

Tennessee brewers that want to brew a beer over 5% alcohol content must acquire a “high alcohol content” beer license from the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission at a cost of $1,000 annually.

A Tennessee brewer with a high alcohol content license that wants to sell their beer to customers in their taproom must acquire a liquor-by-the-drink license at a cost of $4,000 annually. Additionally, the brewery would have to achieve 15% of their gross sales in food in order to meet the requirements of the LBD license.

The solution is to simply change the definition of beer and raise the alcohol content for beer to 12%. This will move the vast majority of beer under the beer laws and open up the markets to them where all other beers are sold. It will also remove the burden of $5,000 in annual liquor license fees currently required for brewers to produce and sell higher alcohol beer at their brewery.

The Beer Cap Reform Act of 2014 raises the limit on alcohol in “beer” from 5% to 12%, recalibrating a Depression-era cap that now makes Tennessee’s beer laws the most regressive in the Southeast. Please take a minute to contact your state legislators to ask for their support.