Georgia has some of the most restrictive beer laws in the country. Breweries can’t sell directly to customers, for starters. No draft in-house, and no growlers, six packs, or bombers to go. No anything. The Georgia legislature passed Senate Bill 63 this summer, which granted Peach State breweries the privilege to sell tours at different price levels, including different amounts of “souvenir” take-home beer. But even that was thwarted recently by a thoroughly dubious Department of Revenue policy bulletin, the consequences of which are still being sorted out.

Georgia breweries only have one customer (their distributor), and they’re completely at that customer's mercy. Thanks to onerous franchise laws, if a Georgia distributor is doing a bad job, the brewery’s only recourse is to pull out of distribution for five years before signing with a new one. When you can’t sell your own beer, that’s not a viable business option, which means that a Georgia brewery’s deal with a distributor is a deal for life.

Direct sales and distributor woes are a couple of the biggest difficulties facing Georgia breweries, but when you consider that many basic rights most of the country takes for granted (growlers were legalized in Georgia in 2010, retailers were allowed to start selling beer on Sundays in 2011) are absent in the Peach State, the frustration down here starts to make more sense. And when you consider that the ABV limit in the state was only raised above 6% in 2004, and that it’s still capped at 14%, the idea of a Georgia-only Strong Beer Fest starts to make a lot of sense.