Iowa craft brewers given boost

A change in Iowa law will now allow the state’s craft brewers to sell to their mid-western neighbours.

The law, passed last year, allows Iowa brewers to ship their beer to neighbouring states such as Illinois and Missouri and is the latest in a string of rulings that began in 2010 with the purpose of helping the state’s brewers keep up with demand for their products and expand their increasingly profitable businesses.

According to local newspaper The Gazette, since 2009 the number of craft brewers in Iowa has grown from 22 to 60 with around a dozen opening last year alone. The industry’s economic impact is reckoned to exceed US$100 million and provides 1,520 jobs per a study commissioned for the Iowa Wine and Beer Promotion Board in 2015.

Iowa craft brewers produced 41,000 barrels of beer in 2014 and that figure is projected to grow to 146,000 by 2019.

The chairman of the Iowa Senate’s State Government, Jeff Danielson, admitted that in general, “the marketplace is ahead of our laws” many of which date back to prohibition (the law in 2010 allowed brewers to make beer above 5% for the first time since the ‘noble experiment’). He added he was preparing to bring brewers, distillers, distributors and regulators together to discuss ways other current alcohol laws could be changed or updated to benefit all.