It all began in 2017 with a thunderbolt—the harbinger of a brave new world in Maryland hospitality, multi-national investment and 21st-century manufacturing.
It ended earlier this month, on a misty fall day in Baltimore, with a simple press release—one that generated spotty and elegiac news coverage of what could have been but never was.
While the Guinness Open Gate Brewery and its parent company, Diageo PLC, never approached the lustrous promise of those heady, pre-COVID days, its eight-year run in the old Calvert plant in Halethorpe will be remembered long after the taproom lights are turned off for the final time on Nov. 1 and the last cases of Blonde are shipped elsewhere to collect dust.
The publicly-traded Irish behemoth (NYSE: DEO), turned even the most-jaded Annapolis insiders into fanboys, all too eager to bask in the reflective glory of the new craft beer movement their kids were talking about. After its 2018 opening, grizzled State Circle lifers who had subsisted for years on a steady diet of Jack, Johnnie and Jim, and would have been hard-pressed to explain the difference between an IPA and a BRFA, trekked to the taproom to bolster their newfound hipster credentials by hoisting and pretending to enjoy spumy pint glasses of Guinness Blonde.
Unwittingly or otherwise, it ignited an Annapolis street fight in which the survival of real Maryland craft beer hung in the balance. As it turned out, the Guinness thing in Baltimore just would not pencil for the suits in the Diageo C-Suite without a modification of Maryland’s Pleistocene alcohol laws. For the sake of making the deal work, the General Assembly was asked to increase the cap on direct taproom sales of alcohol from 500 barrels to 2,000 barrels per year.
At this point, dear readers, you may be asking yourself why is there a cap at all on how much beer a brewery can sell within their own taprooms? Shouldn’t a private business owner be permitted to sell as much of their product as the marketplace will buy, and isn’t that the way it’s done in every other business sector?
Respectfully, folks, if you are, in fact, asking that question, you just haven’t been in Maryland long enough.
Anyway…Diageo made the ask, had the clout to make it happen, and the so-called “Guinness Bill” was hatched. All was well, except that, once again, this is Maryland we’re talking about. So a shadowy cabal of alcohol lobbyists who represented package stores and distributors—and were not at all pleased with the soaring popularity of local craft beer enjoyed by a diverse assemblage of happy Marylanders in neighborhood taprooms—seized this opportunity to insert bill language that would have instantly killed most of these fledgling businesses in their proverbial tracks.
Draconian and unprecedented limits on taproom hours.
A virtual end to contract brewing—a venerable industry-wide practice that is essential to the existence of many new and undercapitalized brewers.
Finally, a new provision called “Come To Rest.” In which craft brewers seeking privilege to distribute more of its own beer would have to sell their beer to a licensed distributor at wholesale price. The distributor would then put that beer on their truck, take it back to their warehouse. Then turn around, go back to that same brewer, and sell it to them for full retail price.
I swear that I’m not making that up. To this day, this writer believes somebody lost a bet.
Go ahead. Ask your questions.
But, but…why would the package store owners want to hurt an industry that would bring so many customers into their establishments? And wouldn’t the distributors earn even more money than they already were if these craft breweries were able to grow, succeed and brew more beer?
You’re asking the right questions. And you aren’t wrong for doing so. Now turn in your Maryland card and kindly take leave of us.
Let’s get back at it. Because a legendary beer producer that brews most of its product in Ireland, under the corporate auspices of a publicly traded corporation headquartered in London, needed the statutory equivalent of a chip shot to hang its shingle in Maryland, a legislature that purportedly loves small business nearly adopted a bill that would have destroyed locally-owned and operated breweries in Baltimore, Salisbury, Frederick and Columbia.
This, in turn, inspired a dizzying chain of events that, collectively, exposed to the world just how painfully archaic, illogical and anti-business Maryland’s existing craft beer laws were in relationship to its neighbors:
- The poison pill legislation was sidetracked at the 11th hour;
- Motivated by a potent blend of principled outrage and political calculus, then-Comptroller Peter Franchot convenes his own task force—Reform on Tap—with the expressed purpose of bringing Maryland’s legal and regulatory climate into the 21st century. Or at least up to the Protestant Reformation;
- After six months of meetings—notable because most of them took place in taprooms, beer was served in generous quantities, and they were inevitably followed by boozy “after parties” in local watering holes—the Task Force produced a body of recommendations that called for the elimination of all statutory limits on the production, distribution and sale of craft beer. Fitting for an endeavor not known for its understated mien, the final report was dubbed “A World Without Limits.”
- Bolstered by a wave of public support for his populist insurgency, Franchot demanded that the General Assembly pass his bill with no amendments. A clean bill, as they say.
Yes. That General Assembly. Which in those days was reluctant to order lunch at Harry Browne’s without soliciting feedback from Jack Milani, Nick Manis and Steve Wise. “The Guys,” as they were collectively known, both then and today. The holy trinity of alcohol lobbyists whose lobbying muscle, political ruthlessness and tactical mastery was sufficient to extinguish even the humblest petitions for consumer reform.
- The General Assembly, having processed Franchot’s demand for quick, clean passage of his bill, responded by quickly and cleanly killing his bill.
- Angered by Franchot’s audacious insistence that Maryland’s craft breweries should have the same privilege as every other American private industry sector, the General Assembly moved the following year to strip the voluble Franchot of his regulatory oversight of alcohol beverages. A new state commission was established to regulate alcohol, tobacco and, eventually, cannabis, and remains in existence to this day.
All of this, because Guinness wanted to brew just a few more barrels of beer than was permitted under the existing laws of the state. Again, it has been quite a ride.
Now, as Guinness’ residency in Baltimore County prepared to end with a whimper, overdue attention must now be paid to a local craft beer sector that was ignored, abused, patronized, vilified and willfully mischaracterized during those tumultuous days in 2017 and 2018. Because their situation has also changed for the worse.
Just as 2017 was a heady time for Guinness and its Baltimore experiment, so, too, were they the best of days for Maryland’s craft beer industry. New production breweries and taprooms were opening by the week, or so it seemed. Locals and out-of-state enthusiasts alike would think nothing of traveling 50, 75 or even 100 miles to try a new product line.
Can releases at establishments such as RaR, located in Cambridge, would invariably draw crowds that would snake out the front door, around the corner and down several city blocks before the crack of dawn. A generation of brewers, sporting lengthy beards and performative churlishness, earned status comparable to that of celebrity chefs. Brewery owners such as Heavy Seas’ Hugh Sisson, UNION’s Adam Benesch, Flying Dog’s Ben Savage and Denizens’ Julie Verratti embodied the spirit of daring rebellion against bland, tasteless and watery corporate beer.
Everything and anything was possible in those days. In the words of Owl Eyes, remembering Jay Gatsby’s abbreviated West Egg heyday, “My God! They used to go there by the hundreds.”
It’s all different now. While craft brewers, both large and small, continue to ply their trade in every corner of Maryland, and even as their beer tends to be even more reliable and consistent than it was in those frenetic days of 2017, they labor in the face of the strongest headwinds this industry has ever experienced.
The legalization of recreational cannabis has provided consumers with a less expensive and more calorie-conscious way to relax and have a good time.
The ubiquitous consumption of weight-loss drugs has taken a sizable (no pun intended) percentage of one-time beer consumers out of the marketplace.
Donald Trump’s tariffs—the bane of virtually every component segment of the American economy—has also wreaked havoc with the bottom lines of the beer industry, resulting in dramatic increases in the price of everything from aluminum cans to grain, hops and production equipment.
Those same rising costs have resulted in fewer nights out for American families, while those that do enjoy an occasional evening on the town are less inclined to spend $7 or $9 for a round of double-dry hopped West Coast IPAs or Czech-inspired Tmave Pivos.
The list goes on. The challenge facing the industry in 2017 was momentary and could be solvable by the wave of a legislative wand. Today’s challenges are structural, industry-wide, economic and existential. We hear it when we ask our favorite neighborhood craft brewer about the state of their business. We see it in the long and growing list of onetime favorites that have, tragically, locked their doors for good over the past five years.
What hasn’t changed is what Maryland’s craft brewers, and the beer they sell, mean to our state’s economy, the identity of our communities and our emotional wellness in these historically troubled times.
They remain a source of good-paying and family supporting jobs in an economy where they are particularly scarce.
They bring together people from every walk of life in a world that is irrevocably divided by partisanship, ideology, race, theology and education. People who would otherwise find reasons to despise one another can, against the odds, come together and enjoy the pleasure of each other’s company over a couple of crisp pints and a plate of good wings.
They are clean manufacturers in a country that simply doesn’t make things like we used to, and in a state with the most ambitious renewable energy goals in all the land.
The edgy, upstart rebels of 2017 are now the venerable cornerstones of close-knit communities from Berlin to Cumberland. The twenty-somethings who flocked in packs to their favoite taprooms in those early days now come back with Baby Bjorns, strollers and sippy cups in tow—older, grayer but still in need of good times with good friends over good beer.
Our hometown brewers are still in the fight, still surviving in defiance of all odds. Now more than ever, they need the active support of a state that rhetorically lionizes small businesses and now has the chance to back those words with deeds.
Now more than ever, they need our legislature to prioritize their survival above the prerogatives of industry players that tend to flex their political muscles for the sheer hell of it.
Guinness’ magic ride in Maryland is over. The fight to save Maryland craft beer, on the other hand, has just begun.
Len N. Foxwell served as chief of staff to Comptroller Peter Franchot from 2008-20 and helped was lead staff on the Reform on Tap task force in 2017.
