According to TheDenverChannel.com, several bars and restaurants in Colorado are breaking state laws, and they may not even know it. By selling certain types of beers, these bars are violating their liquor licenses, which only allow bars and restaurants to sell wines, spirits, and “malt” liquors, which are defined as beers with greater than four percent alcohol by volume.
Many low-calorie beers such as Amstel, Beck’s Light, Yuengling, Bud Select 55, Guinness Draught in bottles, and Heineken Light, among others, fall into this category of having less than four percent alcohol by volume, which are considered “fermented malt beverages,” or “3.2 beers.”
The state law passed by the legislature this year requires that the state liquor authority must adopt a new rule by January 1st that forces all beer makers to verify the alcohol strength of the beer sold in Colorado. Once the state is aware of the alcohol volume levels of all the beers, it can then inform the bars and restaurants which ones they are not allowed to sell.
If a bar or restaurant is selling a 3.2 beer, they could receive a warning, but the violation would not be at the level of selling alcohol to a minor, or selling to someone who is visibly intoxicated.
“You go to a bar, you go to a restaurant, you would think you’d have full access really to whatever you want,” said Jason Carolan, a patron of Cherry Cricket in Denver. “Marketplace deserves choice. I think everybody should be able to sell whatever they want to.”
