I’ve been heralding the Rochester Beer Renaissance for quite some time now. 2007-2008 marked an explosion in craft and import beer availability, variety, and customer enlightenment. To mangle the words of Winston Churchill: Never before has so much been available to so many who actually knew how good it was. But business is business, and because of that we Rochester beer lovers are a bit worse off.

but the sheer impersonal machinations of business have put a bit of the dark ages into our Rennaissance. Beer commonly gets to you, dear consumer, via the three-tier system; a brewermakes the beer, a distributor brings it to the retail points, and they in turn sell it to you. These distributors handle dozens, sometimes hundreds of brands, and often lack the sheer manpower to give each individual brand the attention its creators and consumers would like. Instead, they focus on their best-sellers at the expense of lighter volume movers.

Beer Lover’s Paradise was the distributor that brought many of the rarest and most interesting beers to Rochester. Now that they’ve been sold to the much larger, Syracuse-based T.J. Sheehan (primarily an Anheuser-Busch distributor), many of those beers are disappearing as publicans’ stocks run dry.

Last night, I had my last Jever Pils at the Tap and Mallet. Chris, the bartender, expressed doubt about ever getting Jever again.

Now Sheehan does distribute craft beers, and some damn good ones. I know the sales guy and he’s a good egg who loves good beer, but there’s no denying that  the distributor level is the choke point that can make or murder the craft beer movement. Without them, bar and store owners and breweries must develop dozens of individual arrangements in a process that’s simply to cumbersome for establishments that carry more than a few brands.

I guess my point is, go out and find great beer. Enjoy it, but don’t take it for granted. You never know when you’ve tasted the last drops of a brew you love.

-Mark