At the beginning of 2019, it's kinda wild to think about all the hurdles that Oklahomans have had to jump over just to enjoy the rights to make, sell and buy beer. Over the last five years, the number of local breweries has exploded at an exponential rate, and they've been integral to expanding their abilities to make and sell their products. Hell, it wasn't that long ago that you could only buy low-point beer at the source, and now they've got the good stuff everywhere.
Of course, nothing can come easy around these parts, and the government shutdown has thrown a pretty serious wrench into the works, one that is really affecting our beloved craft brewers. From NewsOK:
Even the beer companies are feeling the effects of the government shutdown.
An inability to submit or receive approvals for beer labels from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau during a shutdown of the federal government is interrupting cash flows for some Oklahoma breweries and limiting product availability for Oklahoma consumers.
The shutdown, which began Dec. 22, completed its 17th day Monday. President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats have yet to reach an agreement over border security funding; but far from the border, Oklahoma brewery Prairie Artisan Ales is experiencing its own form of delayed progress.
“Every month we have a new release come out, and for us it's a pretty big deal,” said Zach Prichard, who owns Prairie and is president of Krebs Brewing Co. “We have a beer we would like to ship as early as next week. We were expecting to get the approval any day when the shutdown happened.”
Prairie has actually been one of the more vocal craft beer opponents to the federal shutdown. They tweeted about it earlier in the week:
Hey @realDonaldTrump, we are an American-owned company and we want to distribute a new beer, but the shutdown includes the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau... so we currently can't move forward. Please help. The people want the beer. #beer2020
— Prairie Artisan Ales (@prairieales) January 7, 2019
Don't read the replies unless you just love seeing MAGA chumps and Russian bots show their racism and speak up for a useless wall. Anyways, it was probably this viral tweet that lead to Prairie getting media coverage on MSNBC yesterday morning:
Thanks @craigmelvin for the interview this morning on @MSNBC. We're just one brewery pointing out the impact of the government shutdown on our business. https://t.co/DzxixVc6lr
— Prairie Artisan Ales (@prairieales) January 8, 2019
It's worth watching the video embedded on that story, at least to see the awkward moment when a guy realizes that he missed his chance to tell Donald Trump to go fuck himself on live television.
They also show the label for the beer that Prairie is pissed about not getting to release:
Look, I'm a craft beer drinker, and this might be pretty damn tasty, but what world are we living in where it's just expected that brewers can throw any kind of junk food into the mash tun and we call it a day? It's 2019, and adults only want to watch comic book movies and drink cans of boozy peanut butter and jelly beers (that is an absolutely a real product that came in today at the liquor store that I work at). Like, our nation is having a debate about whether or not we should sell THC gummy bears, but the neighborhood brewery is churning out Fruit Roll-Up and Cocoa Puffs-flavored beers every week.
I digress. The real issue at hand is that we have a criminal president who's legal team informed him that if he finds a way to grind the federal government to a halt, it can possibly slow down the increasingly intense criminal investigations that are probing his corrupt path to political office, and he's using a slab of bricks at the southern border to hold the entire country hostage under the guise of xenophobia and nationalism.
"First, they came for the double dry-hopped IPA's, and I didn't speak out..."
