Never do I feel more like the proverbial kid in the candy store than when I’m browsing Sunset Beer Co., a bottle shop and taproom tucked into the back corner of a shabby strip mall at the eastern end of L.A.’s famed Sunset Boulevard. The popular craft-beer outpost draws customers from across northeast Los Angeles with its coolers full of almost 1,000 different beers. It’s easy to become paralyzed by indecision, and the options are ever expanding with incessant debuts of new breweries and new beers. The craft-beer consumers, who have none of their father’s loyalty to a single beer label, love this glut of product, and the craft-beer industry was built on the promise of choice.
The vast array of products on the modern beer aisle is a remarkable effect of America’s rigorously regulated alcohol industry—particularly the three-tier system of alcohol distribution where licensed wholesalers act as intermediaries between producers and retailers. The average beer drinker doesn’t understand very well the details and mechanics of the three-tier system, and for good reason. They are terribly complex, vary widely from state to state, and are not nearly as fun to talk about as hops, malt, and yeast. However, it’s the middle tier in the three-tier system—the beer distributors—that’s allowed the small and independent breweries to grow into a force that’s forever changed American beer culture.
The independent beer wholesalers provide access to the market for small breweries, they develop the marketplace for craft beer, and they have a big influence on beer culture, but it all happens behind the scenes. It’s a mysterious aspect of the beer industry that can seem as murky as a pint of a New England IPA. While beer fans can be experts on the brewing process and certainly enjoy tasting the beer, there’s a gap in the understanding of the path beer travels from grain to glass—specifically, how it gets from the brewery to the bar or bottle shop. It takes a lot more than a truck and a warehouse to excel as a craft-beer distributor.