Brands like Lawson's and Terrapin were established in their home states of Vermont and Georgia, respectively, and built up good enough reputations locally that their demand outstripped their supply.People demanding you take their money is usually a good thing, unless you have nothing to trade. This is the point at which success becomes a problem, but a good one. The resultant gap in supply is often filled with empty tanks at places like Two Roads. Beer from a brand that was licensed, established and made its name in another state just isn't Connecticut Beer, to my mind. There's no need to reach, we have too many new breweries and too many great beers in Connecticut.

Verdict: Connecticut-brewed, not Connecticut Beer.

*Lawson's though? I'm calling it Vermont beer.

So what does this mean for brands which were established in Connecticut, but don't brew here? Beaver Brewing and Charter Oak Brewing Company both draw special attention to their Connecticut-ness - Charter Oak even calls itself a "Connecticut-based brewery" on their web site - and both contract brew through Paper City Brewing in Holyoke, Mass. Farmington River Brewing Co. makes their beer at Mercury Brewing in Ipswich, Mass., which also contracts Clown Shoes, Cisco and Slumbrew beers. It feels geographically imprecise to call these Connecticut Beers, if we're being black and white about the question, at least until they start brewing in-state.

Verdict: Connecticut-owned, not Connecticut Beer.

So do we acknowledge grey areas? Beer isn't just Light or Dark, after all. Hartford Better Beer Company presents a more interesting case. This brand's lineage makes it one of the originators of craft beer in our state. Founders Phil Hopkins and Les Sinnock opened The Hartford Brewery Limited for business as a brew pub in 1990, making their own beer on site, but that venture shuttered several years later. They decided to try the brewing business again when American craft beer movement skyrocketed in the 21st century, and now their beer is sold under the Hartford Better Beer Company label, but brewed by the Shipyard Brewing Company in Maine - a fact about which the company is refreshingly upfront. Feel free to discuss the point, but...

Verdict: Connecticut-owned, not Connecticut Beer.

Further into the grey, we have OEC Brewing, who not only brews beer in Connecticut, they blend it, sometimes using imports. Categorizing OEC beers is difficult, especially since most people can't even make sense of their names. The easiest way I've found to remember what's what at OEC is this: beers with single names - Aeris, Albus, Amara, Exilis, Novale, Phantasma etc. - seem to all be made from scratch on site. These are Connecticut Beers. The multi-name beers, like the OEC Artista Zynergia series are blends using beers imported by B.United, as are subtypes of the OEC beers like Phantasma Sour Blend.

What? Yeah, I know, sorry. Stay with me. Have you ever heard of RUF? RUF makes cars - road-shredding, eyeball-flattening, oh-my-god-are-we-driving-this-thing-or-launching-it sports cars. They do this by taking a car like a Porsche Cayman, and changing it so profoundly that the ever technical German government considers it a whole new thing. Germany looks the same way at Alpina, who uses BMWs as an ingredient.

That's the way I think of OEC. The blends they create are so far away from their component parts as to be new and original. After all, we don't nitpick Connecticut Beers which use hops grown in Oregon, right? There's really no need to think of OEC beers in different categories, here.

Verdict: Connecticut Beer.

That's my outline of how the rows are laid out in the "Connecticut Beer Or Not" game. It is very important to remember that this is all just taxonomy. Craft beer is craft beer no matter where it's made, or by whom, and should be judged on its own individual merits. I have had magnificent contract-brewed beer, and I've had beer from major craft brewers which I wouldn't use to poison a weed in my driveway. Keep an open mind, and I'll see you out there.

(Thanks to Jie Yu, and @: A2K3D, CTMQ, ConnecticutBeer, and ElmCityBeer for their inspiration and info. Images via www.etsy.com/shop/hartfordprints)