Raise Your Pints: Raising craft beer awareness in Mississippi

Perhaps more than anything it is a testament to the recognition of beer as a craft that an organization like Raise Your Pints has cropped up in Mississippi. Raise Your Pints is a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to repealing Mississippi's Prohibition-era laws that cap beer at 5% alcohol by weight (ABW), using a variety of social networking venues, speaking tours, fundraising events featuring craft beer, and online and viral marketing. Their aim is to lift the law so that a greater variety of craft beer can be produced, purchased and tasted in Mississippi.

It's easy to forget about the fact that Illinois has no limit on its alcohol content in beer. We take for granted that alcohol-rich imperial brews and others that almost make their way into the wine category--even if not ubiquitous here in Carbondale--are at least permissible under state law.

South Carolina, however, only raised its ABW limit in 2007. Other states like Washington, Montana, Alabama, and West Virginia only upped caps on their alcohol by weight this year. The lingering limits are partly the result of laws passed after Prohibition, which limited the strength of beer in order to decrease rowdy behavior caused by drinking. Partly, too, however, it is due to a serious push against drunk driving which gathered momentum in the 1980s.

So why are we seeing a push back now, with so many states voting to increase ABW? It's not for the sake of getting a quick buzz from a beer with higher alcohol content, it's because beer itself has regained its status as a specialized craft with millenia-old roots--a recognition which recently has only been reserved for wines. The craft beer market has exploded in the last couple of years, as an extension of the slow food movement. In countries where an interest in traditional, local, and sustainable farming and cooking has flourished--such as Italy and Norway--an interest in craft beer has also grown exponentially.

Those who are campaigning the hardest to change beer laws here in the United States, like the leaders of Raise Your Pints, are those who are showing a renewed interest in local food and traditional preparation of food in its many forms. They are the people who savor and appreciate the entire practice of crafting beer, from where the hops and grains are grown, to the tools that are used to make them. They are the people who are most thoughtful in the world of beer--and the ones we should least worry will drink mindlessly and irresponsibly. (Indeed, raising ABW has not been linked to increased levels of drunk driving or underaged drinking.) Umbrella laws like Mississippi's act in many ways like federal laws that prohibited Native American tribes from continuing centuries-old sustainable whale hunting, a part of traditional cultural practices, simply because poachers and other whalers utilize devastating environmental techniques in their fishery. Surely there is a balance that can be struck which will allow responsible craft appreciation to flourish alongside those who are happy swilling Bud Light. It has already been done in many states. 

That is why groups like Raise Your Pints are important. They raise awareness for lawmakers in the few states that have yet to fully appreciate the fact that the renewed interest in craft beer is part of a larger movement which emphasizes local and traditional brewing practices; higher alcohol content is merely a by-product of the care put into better food and drink. It is worth all of our time to support organizations like Raise Your Pints, in solidarity with what it means to be a craft brewer (or drinker).

A Raise Your Pints glass, filled with beer at a fundraising event. Pint glasses are available and money supports Raise Your Pints.