Free beer in North Carolina

It's always encouraging when federal or state laws are actually heading in the direction of freedom, no matter how small the step. Not surprisingly, this is most often accomplished by repealing laws, or by having verbiage removed from them. This is what is currently happening in the North Carolina General Assembly.

House bill HB392 proposes to remove the restriction placed on beer's alcohol by volume (ABV) level, currently capped at 6%. This makes sense for a number of reasons, the most important to me being that I personally enjoy high ABV, craft/micro-brew beers. They offer a wine like experience, but with beer. Many are served in a stemmed glass, perfect for sipping on after dinner. Unfortunately, being in NC, the government decided in 1935 that I could not reasonably handle this amount of alcohol in my beer. Can anyone say personal freedom issue (albeit a minor one)? This current restriction falls into the camp of ill-conceived laws that intrude unnecessarily on our personal freedom. The only bright side of this issue is that this is a state law, as opposed to a federal law.

There are many arguments for passing this legislation; most of them detailed here - www.popthecap.org. In my opinion, the counter argument, that this is somehow dangerous, is foolish, since you can buy fortified wine at 15-20% ABV by the barrel at your grocery or convenience store -- not to mention regular wine (which is most comparable to high ABV beer). Of course for me, my selfish reasons are enough, given that changing this law should have NO impact on other's personal freedoms and should benefit mine. This is usually a fairly good test for any law, but that is a topic for another post.

Things are looking fairly good for HB392 at the moment. If this trend continues, I could be enjoying a rich Belgian Ale or a full bodied Double Stout by Winter, and that sounds pretty darn tasty to me.