The Feds owe me and my firm $20k plus that I won't see until months after the government starts back up...but this is the last straw. They're messing with beer now. -B
FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- The federal government shutdown is giving some folks one more reason to cry in their beers: An obscure but powerful arm of the Treasury Department has stopped approving new brews.
All new beers that get bottled or canned to be sold across state lines must be approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, known in the industry as the TTB. Federal workers must approve the label, as well as the recipe if it uses non-traditional ingredients, which many seasonal beers contain.
While the TTB as stopped approving new recipes and labels, workers there are still collecting brewery taxes.
Any delays in approvals create a "domino effect," said Carla Villa, a spokeswoman for the New York-based Brooklyn Brewery, which has several new labels pending: "It's this one thing that then affects all these other things. We can't launch beers on time, which means our distributors can't sell it, which means our customers can't buy it."
