In a tragic scene last week, thousands of perfectly drinkable beers were unceremoniously dumped by authorities in Utah. Instead of being enjoyed at holiday office parties or family get-togethers they were poured into a digester.
The move wasn’t necessitated by reports of contamination or fears of spontaneous, refermentation-related explosions. No, the cause of this senseless purge was purely bureaucratic.
Earlier this year, politicians in Utah made a tweak to the state’s liquor legislation. There were two small changes made to the sale of beer.
First, the maximum ABV of beer sold at convenience or grocery stores was bumped from 4% to 5%. That 5% also became the new minimum for beers carried by state-operated stores.
As the November first deadline approached many stores reduced prices in an effort to clear out the affected brews. There were 106 in total, including beers from Asahi, Corona, Kirin, Kokanee, Shiner, and Stella Artois. I even spotted a few cases of a household favorite — Crabbie’s ginger beer — among the wreckage.
When the day finally came there were still nearly 300 cases of beer that could no longer be sold by DABC stores — because they would have been competing directly with private sellers.
In Utah, it’s also illegal for distributors of alcoholic beverages to accept returns from sellers. That didn’t leave officials with many options, so the cans and bottles were rounded up and taken to the Wasatch Resource Recovery facility.
At least there the beer would be “enjoyed” by the microbes that convert it into natural gas and fertilizer. DABC sustainability manager Morgan Bowerman told The Salt Lake Tribune “if you can’t buy it and you can’t drink it this is the best place for it.”
She’s not wrong. Anaerobic digesters are a great way to deal with food waste — which, by some counts, amounts to 40% of all food produced in the United States.
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