New Hampshire’s New Booze Law Will Hamstring the State’s Brewpubs
The rationale behind New Hampshire’s new brewpub regulation is more headache-inducing than the beer.
On Friday, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) signed House Bill 242 into law. The bill, sponsored by state Rep. John Hunt (R–Rindge), will take effect in August and limits brewpubs in the state to self-distributing their beer to only one additional restaurant or business outside their premises. The bill is a follow-up to H.B. 1380, also sponsored by Hunt in 2024, which limited the amount of beer or cider a brewpub could sell to 2,500 barrels a year and permitted licensed brewpub owners to obtain licenses to sell their product on their premises in bars and at off-premise locations like grocery stores, so long as they didn’t have a manufacturing license.
If the law sounds like it will keep brewpubs small, that’s because it’s intended to do so. “This is what we call a very inside baseball bill,” Hunt told the New Hampshire Bulletin.Â
Hunt said that H.B. 242 was designed to preserve the state’s current regulatory system, describing New Hampshire as a “three-tier state,” where businesses operate as either beverage manufacturers, distributors, or retailers. By restricting brewpubs from becoming a one-stop shop that acts as a “bottler…distributor” and “retailer,” Hunt said the bill is intended to safeguard the “mon
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