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“Unregistered Beers” Get Local Bars Raided
Posted by Foobooz on March 5th, 2010
Last night the three bars of Brendan Hartranft and Leigh Maida (Local 44, Memphis Taprom and Resurrection Ale House) were raided for selling unregistered beers.
Leigh Maida sent a statement to us regarding the situation that is included after the jump.
So, you’ve been asking (some of you) and you’ve by now probably heard rumors about what went down yesterday at Local 44, Â Memphis Taproom and Resurrection Ale House. I thought I’d offer this account of the facts, rather than have it turn into sketchy gossip in a few more hours (probably too late for that, eh?)
You may or may not know by now that the PLCB started an investigation against because someone called in a complaint that we are serving beers that are not registered in PA. We have been going through the list of what was confiscated with our lawyers (and the lawyers of our major distributors) today and we are finding out that some pretty popular beers (widely poured around the city) may in fact, not registered be for sale in PA. As the day progresses, more of the list might prove to be unregistered, or more of it cleared up as bureaucratic mistakes, but for now it’s just few, and i think rather than inviting a lawsuit against ME for spreading untruths, I’d rather just let that part of the situation work itself out without using brand names.
Yesterday all three bars were visited by teams of State Police, armed with a list of “un-registered” beers (and guns!).
The beers that were on the “un-registered” list that they came looking for are some really commonly poured beers (some local, some regional) as well as some harder to get Belgian, English and German beers. How these particular beers got on that “to confiscate” list? Not sure. I blame the woeful incompetence of the PLBC itself, but that’s just a personal opinion.
Again, until the lawyers are all done pouring over the lists and double checking things, I might prefer to not list out for you what of our inventory was confiscated. Some of it would make you laugh though. Something interesting to point out, some of what they confiscated at one location, they left alone at another. Some of what they took is listed plain as day on the PLCB list of registered beers, which, if you haven’t made yourself familiar with it, is located here:
http://www.lcbapps.lcb.state.pa.us/webapp/registered_brands.asp
The State Police hold it for the duration of the investigation, and when it comes out that this is all mostly BS, we’ll get it back (hopefully unharmed). This could take 2 weeks or 6 months. Who knows. Every beer distributor with a beer on the confiscated list has been in touch with their PLCB contacts on our behalf, so hopefully that will speed things along.
Personally, two of my many concerns during all of this has been that our employees and guests might now feel like we’re up to something shady (we’re not, swearsies) and, well, perhaps obviously, that there’s someone out there with enough of a grudge against us that things took this course. My goal is to make this whole experience as un-drama-filled as possible. Our bottle lists haven’t been depleted all that severely, though there are a few favorites that we’ll just consider 86′d for a little while.
If nothing else, this will give us a great excuse to hold a couple of “welcome back bottle” weekends at the bars!
All questions welcome, all answers screened by our lawyer, for the time being.
Cheers!
Leigh Maida
Resurrection Ale House
2425 Grays Ferry Ave, Philadelphia, PA
March 5th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Well Pliny the Younger isn’t on that list, so I guess its banned in PA. *sad face*. But this entire thing is ridiculous–whatever competitor did this should be boycotted.
March 5th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
weird list. no Pliny the Younger, but Pliny the Elder is on there as well as a bunch of Russian River stuff. Racer 5 is on it, but no Racer X from Bear Republic. Nothing from Lost Abbey brewery, nothing from Ballast point brewery.
And raiding a bar because of “unregistered” beer??? They could raid half of the craft beer bars in the delaware county if this is the list they use.
March 5th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Goddamn PLCB. What other state would this happen in? Enough is enough. This is so insanely stupid.
Everyone should try to visit Memphis Taproom/Local 44/Resurrection Ale House this weekend just to show your support.
March 5th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Who in charge does not understand that it would be in the best interest of the state if they were as beer-friendly as possible, given Philly’s growing rep as a beer city?
March 5th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
The PCLB is insane, there aren’t more pressing uses for tax payer money? Hey maybe instead of charging $300 to pick up my trash you could spend less money on your own private gestapo
March 5th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Anyone remember suziew from this thread and I think some others on here:
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:ToLHRs-i-fYJ:www.philadelphiaspeaks.com/forum/food-drink-philadelphia-restaurants-bars/8121-memphis-taproom-vintage-beer-list-launched-2.html+resurrection+ale+house+illegal+beer&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
(google cached version, it appears to have been removed from philadelphiaspeaks…)
If this is bogus, should be a nice little civil suit in this for Maida and crew.
March 5th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
This has nothing to do with Leigh Maida bragging in the press about bootlegging kegs from Out of State? She had to known the State Police monitor news. Is she brazen or stupid, that is my question.
March 5th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
This is sooo ridiculous… A couple beers that are not on that list: dogfish 60, 75, or 120 min IPA…. Murphy’s Irish stout, Yeungling black and tan, there are only 3 yards beers on there, and of course Stoudts Gold?? What a joke!!
March 5th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Actually DKH, Dogfish 60/75/120 are on the list (they’re listed at the top as numbered beers), but Yuengling Black and Tan is hilarious!
March 5th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
@Barry. That was my first thought as well. And let the drama begin…
March 5th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
PS – This is absolutely ridiculous and infuriating. Hopefully the hassle and money spent by Brendan, Leigh & Co are minimal, even recouped.
March 5th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Nevermind, yeungling is under black and tan, Yards TJ and GW are there, but I don’t see sinebrychoff… My point is this list is missing beers that have been served in this city for years!
March 5th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Were they serving Kilty Pleasure Scottish Ale, Biberry, Winter Wunder or one of the other unlisted beers from PBC?
If they didn’t operate such a shady business, then they wouldn’t have to worry about such things. They started all of this when they drove to Baltimore to pick up an illegal keg and thumbed their noses at the local brewery.
Bar owners should take this as a lesson and not try and work outside the law. Their blatant disregard for the law is what has put them in the position.
March 5th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
absurd. I wish I knew who called… Kenzorealitycheck? I am now gonna patronize them even if they only have coors light left.
March 6th, 2010 at 1:28 am
So our tax dollars are hard at work giving the local businessmen/women a tough time and shutting them down for selling beer that is not on “the list”. Yet we are understaffed as a city and every other week now flash mobs rule our city streets and terrorize. Makes sense. Way to go Nutter!
March 6th, 2010 at 2:29 am
Way to fail basic civics, Tirednodles! This being a PLCB Liquor Enforcement/State Police raid means the city had absolutely nothing to do with it. You want to gripe, you have a right to gripe. But please aim your gripe at the appropriate party (Rendell, the legislature, PLCB itself). Your ignorance online here is as embarrassing to the city of Philadelphia as those dastardly flash mobs.
March 6th, 2010 at 9:10 am
So, why do we have to register beers in PA? Is it to make sure PA gets their cut? Does anyone know what other states do? Do they all require all beers sold to be on a list? Doesn’t it seem weird that one of the best beer cities in the country has to deal with this bullshit? Honestly – let the capitalism take care of its self!
Certainly seems like Kenzorealitycheck has a stick up their ass about this. I sense some jealousy from someone that is being out sold by modern bars that listen to what their patrons want. I call that good business.
Pointer Obvious – I blame the PLCB. What do you think Rendell had to do with laws that have been in place for over 50 years?
March 6th, 2010 at 9:27 am
Someone posted the PLCB Consumer Suggestions/Comments e-mail address on a beeradvocate.com forum: RA-LBconsumer@state.pa.us
If you’re looking to voice your opinion on this particular matter, this might be a good start.
Cheers!
Leigh
March 6th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Conspiracy theory: Leigh and Co. intentionally boasted in the media about their “bootlegging” from B’more back when in order to force this raid thus laying the legal foundation for some sort of federal challenge that the PLCB disrupts interstate commerce.
Brandon, you think a guy who’s a big proponent of Philly’s food and drink scene would, sometime during his two terms as governor, seek to redress the institution that limits the ability of bar owners to do business. Moreover, if your reading comprehension ability extended to the whole thread instead of one post, you’d recognize the point of my comment was to point out the obvious that city government has no control over this matter. If you want to appeal or gripe to someone, it’s a state matter.
March 6th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Well it looks like almost every bar in the city at some point poured an unregistered beer–mostly unknowinly.
I said this on another forum: compared to the amount of liquor that crosses state lines I find this to be, well, a bit silly.
Leigh and Brenden enjoyed tremendous success very rapidly. Success garners jealousy. While the person who started the drama over unregistered beer sought to be spiteful to 2 people they failed to realize the far reaching implications. Over beer no less. One would think this was blood.
At the end of all of this a whole lot of people might wind up in trouble. And there might be a drop off in what we can and cannot get in PA and the number of one-off or limited release brews our own breweries produce.
Think about this: breweries do 1-off beer that honestly might not be worth paying to register. ( I have no idea how much the fee is) Given all of this attention the overall beer bar industry in PA could suffer. As an owner that quite frankly pisses me off. As a beer lover, again, I’m well, not happy about any of this.
There are far worse things in this world than “unregistered” beer. I certainly hope that everyone comes thru this as head-ache free as possible. The person who started all of this will have karma to deal with.
Best,
Heather
March 6th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
If you guys want to blame someone, there are two great candidates: the rat who dropped a dime on Memphis Resurrection 44 (“an anonymous complaint,” forsooth, about a violation of PA Liquor Law that is the equivalent of a victimless crime), and the PA Legislature. The PLCB simply enforces the Liquor Code; they aren’t responsible for writing it. You want to change this? Don’t write the PLCB, write your legislator and ask them why beer brands have to be registered, why it’s so much ($75 per brand, which is a lot when you’re a small craft brewer putting out 20+ labels), AND why it isn’t a one-day process.
Then EVERYONE should get on finding out who the rat that dropped the dime is…and let us know, so we can put a proper boycott in place. Nailing Oscar’s for serving cheap whiskey as Maker’s Mark, that’s one thing. Nailing a bar for selling perfectly good beer that isn’t “registered”…that’s another.
March 6th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
And Pointer Obvious…”some sort of federal challenge that the PLCB disrupts interstate commerce.” The 21st amendment provision that states set their own alcohol policies has, with a very few exceptions, been held to be more important than the commerce clause. That’s why it’s somehow constitutional and legal and…okay that I can’t drive over the Burlington-Bristol to Mt. Holly for lunch and pick up a bottle of wine at Canal’s on the way back. Because there is no way for a private citizen to legally bring a bottle of booze into PA from another state. But what really steams my crabs is that is IS legal to bring it in from another COUNTRY. So coming in from New Zealand? No problem. From New Jersey? Sorry, you’re busted. And if the dingdong who dimed out Memphis had their way, you WOULD be busted. Like I said: let’s find out who did this and expose them to ridicule.
March 6th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
What an enormous waste of our city’s already scarce resources.
I just came back from the middle east, and it was easier to get a drink there… seriously
March 6th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Whoever hosts the various sites where this person was posting all their crazytalk could do some digging. Hopefully he/she isn’t tech-savvy enough to have covered the tracks. This person is a coward.
March 6th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
@John, again, NO CITY RESOURCES ARE WASTED IN A PLCB ENFORCEMENT MATTER. It’s state enforcement. Now if L&I shows up in a followup (which, admittedly is something they often do) THOSE would be city tax revenue at work.
@Lew, I didn’t say any federal challenge to the PLCB is in line with current legal/Constitutional thinking. In fact, such an “activist crime” would largely be put out there to change precedent. Basically, if an enterprising lawyer looking to build a rep (I don’t know if there are any legal superstars dealing with interstate commerce / and or alcohol laws, the former may be busy in CA with the Prop 8 appeals) could run with this, you would basically have, well, the state of PA and MADD (just because) vs. the beverage industry. This of course would operate under the assumption that state reform is as dead as its always been.
March 6th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
PO, relax. This isn’t about scoring points. I’m just saying that the 21st Amendment has generally won over the commerce clause, two exceptions being the drinking age and Granholm. Granholm gives me some hope. And…someone on the City Paper blog made a comment about 1,000 Pennsylvanians walking across the Ben Franklin Bridge with a bottle of New Jersey-bought wine some fine day this summer…now THAT would be interesting to see. They gonna arrest all of us? There’s your activist crime, and a beauty.
March 6th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
@Lew, not trying to score points, just trying to apply some imagination to a crappy situation.
Your activist crime made me imagine the PLCB bringing out internment pens, mothballed by authorities since the Republican Convention, and setting them up on our side of the Franklin, maybe just using a chainlink feeder from the bridge’s walk to the detention area. And people on this blog will blame Nutter and the city. Like most problems requiring political solutions, the problem is exacerbated by a poorly educated public just shrugging at “the system” while not bothering how to learn how it works in order to affect change.
March 7th, 2010 at 9:01 am
True, PO, true. I will admit to an evolution in my position over two years of writing my PLCB blog: it’s not the PLCB that’s the problem. It’s the Liquor Code, and the PA Legislature. Blaming the PLCB does no good. Getting angry and writing your legislator is the only thing that can.
March 7th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
In prior similar cases the raids came at the anonymous behest of some taxing authority. The IRS, PA Revenue or City Revenue needed further evidence for tax evasion cases. Bottles seized from out of state showed tax evasion. It seems Operation Memphis NoTaxRoom is following a similar path. Given the defendants bragging in press releases about bringing alcohol from out of state the tax authority will not be willing to settle without conviction.
March 7th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Guys, let’s be honest. Are these rules ridiculous. Yes. Was it probably someone with an ax to grind? Yes! At the same time, do some bars such as Memphis feel like they can play by different rules then the rest of us. Yes! Is it ridiculous for you guys to absolve them of some wrongdoing. Yes!
March 7th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
I’d like to clear something up about Uncle Sam (also Beatles Taxman from Jack’s blog, WTF, is all this THAT exciting to you?) post:
Someone called in 3 separate complaints about three separate bars. Resurrection Ale House was visited months ago by the PLCB regarding the keg that was illegally tapped. That was a different complaint, and it won Resurrection a warning, one that we took very seriously. (And, regarding taxes paid or not paid, that keg was a gift, we did not skirt paying any taxes on it. We paid every penny of the tax we collected selling it at our opening.)
That these three complaints are new is even more disturbing. There were four 12oz bottles of (the same) beer confiscated during the investigation at Memphis Taproom that Memphis should not have been selling. They were old, and were bought long before Memphis Taproom existed. Not that this makes the crime any less, but they WERE bought in Philadelphia and they were bought while the beer was registered. The brewery has been closed for some years now.
EVERY other single beer that was confiscated any of you can get all over the city, tonight. You might be drinking one of them right now. About half are absolutely on the PLCB’s “ok†list. The others are not on the list due to various situations of paperwork falling through the cracks, expired registrations that no one realized, importers changing hands and not being organized as to who would re-register the brand. With the exception of the four bottles mentioned above, all of the beer confiscated from Local 44, Memphis Taproom and Resurrection Ale House was bought legitimately through one of the major distributors in the area (Origlio, Shangy’s Stockertown, etc.).
Whatever else gets said, we’re freaks about paying our taxes to the last cent at all three locations, and I resent that this whole mess might ALSO turn us into “tax evaders†in the eyes of some.
Leigh
PS: Tom, we’re not playing by different rules at any of our three bars. Ask me questions before you assume that you know what you’re talking about. I’m out here, answering questions, offering up honest accounts of what happened this week to us (and where we screwed up.) We’ve worked our asses off every single day for a lot of years to create nice places, not so that you can sit at you house and anonymously accuse us of playing by a different set of rules.
March 8th, 2010 at 4:06 am
Does anyone take responsibility for anything anymore? I’m sure this is just a small bump in the road. I wish you guys all the best. It is truly a shame that you were chosen to make an example of. I guess this puts the other 100 gastro-pub bars in Phillly on notice. Good Luck.
March 8th, 2010 at 9:07 am
Art: Maybe you could break the link in the ‘kenzorealitycheck’ comment that points to PBC, since there is zero eveidence that the Bartons have anything to do with this. I exported the PA LCB list to an Excel spreadhseet and sorted it by brewery name, which made it a lot easier to parse. Kilty Pleasure Scottish Ale, Biberry, and Winter Wunder are all absent. Why would PBC draw atention to themselves?
March 8th, 2010 at 9:36 am
this country was founded by people disobeying ridiculous laws like beer registration. Tom is advocating cowardice. The onlycontrol we have is to not shop at the plcb. I will no longer patronize state stores and drive to de. Yes, it’s the legislatures fault yet they do nothing about this agency which is unpopular from the Delaware to the monongahela, the susquehana to lake Erie.
March 8th, 2010 at 9:54 am
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Section 445 of the Pa Liquor Code (Brand registration), I think people have lost sight of where the primary responsibility for compliance lies. Under Section 445 and PLCB-1905 (the Application for Malt or Brewed Beverage Brand Registration, available at http://www.lcb.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/applications_and_forms/17493), it is up to the manufacturer or the franchisee of the manufacturer to register the brands. In addition, PLCB-1905 states importing distributors who accept delivery of unregistered beverages may also be subject to penalty. However, it is not the legal responsibility of the “retail dispenser” (the bar) to check the list every time they bring in a new beer. When a beer is offered or made available to a bar, they are justified in relying on the representation that the manufacturer or franchisee registered the brand and paid the $75 fee, and that the importing distributor is not offering unregistered brands. Now, it may be wise for a bar to check the list because unregistered beers are considered “contraband” under Section 444(c) that may be confiscated by the board and “disposed of,” which could be at a large financial loss to a bar. But primary responsibility for this law lies with the manufacturers and distributors not the bar owners.
March 8th, 2010 at 10:12 am
If the link to PLCB-1905 (Application for Malt or Brewed Beverage Brand Registration) is not working, go to the PLCB website, then “for licensees,” then “applications and forms.” There you will see PLCB-1905.