Gas Station Beer Reconsidered

Minnesota has two unique and mystifying drinking characteristics: we’re nuts for Michelob Golden Draft Light and the only alcohol you can buy on a Sunday is something called 3-2 beer. The prevailing notion is that you’d better plan ahead for Sunday by stocking up on Saturday, or else you’ll be driving to Wisconsin. The liquor stores are closed, bub, and heading to the gas station or grocery store to buy 3-2 beer is not an option. Why? It denotes a quality of desperation and an inability to manage time. Most important, it has less alcohol and is therefore uncool.

3-2 beer, so called for its 3.2% ABW, is a holdover from the prohibition days. It helped it ease the country into and out of prohibition. Lower alcohol beverages were used as a compromise by brewers and politicians hoping to avoid an all out ban. A dozen years later, as FDR repealed the Volstead Act, he allowed only 3-2 for months until the 22nd amendment was enacted.

Minnesota and a handful of other states have inexplicably held the torch for lower alcohol beer. Our beloved Blue Laws mean we can’t buy a car or alcohol on Sundays because we’re supposed to be observing the Day of Rest. It didn’t take long for Minnesotans to say, “what’s the point of a whole day of rest (and relaxation) without beer?” Again, 3-2 was the compromise. “Maybe God wouldn’t be as pissed if we had beer that wasn’t as strong for one day a week?“

Beer drinkers, though, aren’t supposed to compromise. Imagine all those beer commercials. We want more. And they’re giving us less. The only way we will take less is if it allows us to drink more. Which is the premise of light beer.



Michelob Golden Draft Light is 4.1% ABV. Many Minnesotans drive for long distances and cross state lines on Sundays to purchase it. There are intense debates at the capitol about our ability to legally purchase it.



Here’s the thing, though. Michelob Golden Draft Light has only 0.1% ABV more than gas station Michelob Golden Draft Light. Note that 3-2 refers to alcohol by weight while 4.1% is the more common alcohol by volume. This blew my mind.

The comparison, when using the same scale:

Michelob Golden Draft Light from the liquor store: 4.1% ABV

Michelob Golden Draft Light from the gas station: 4.0% ABV

But the times, as they say, are a-changing. The craft beer boom has surely taken a bite out of the macro light beer market. And it’s likely that Minnesota will repeal the Sunday sales ban within five years. Before 3-2 beer foams out to the great brewery in the sky, hopefully we can give it the recognition that it deserves: not a large step down from regular beer, and certainly better than nothing.

