Food and Drug Administration Requiring Nutition Labels For Craft Beer

Myself, like any other red blooded American, like to partake in a nice cold one every now and then. But... Do you really want to know how many calories are in that limited edition bourbon barrel aged stout or your all time favorite IPA brewed with oranges and spice?

The new regulations from the FDA will require brewers to include nutritional value on your your favorite brew. As of right now, the yet to be enacted nutritional values will be required for restaurants, chain restaurants specifically with 20 or more locations. What does that mean for you? When you go out to dinner and flip through the menu and see the little calorie count on your favorite burger. This is exactly what is going to be required for your favorite beer on the menu by December 2016.

How could this affect craft brewers? Well, the analysis can cost anywhere from $500 to $1000 per type of beer. An example would be Fort Collins brewery New Belgium. Based off of their beer finder menu on their website, they have 37 different beers, from year round, seasonal, limited release, etc. The nutritional analysis could cost New Belgium anywhere from $18,500 to $37,000! This might not be such a big deal for the regular year round beers, but still a sizable chunk of change for each beer they brew.

As stated earlier, this is for distribution of beer going to chain establishments that have 20 or more locations. However, I believe that this could be an eventual step towards required nutritional values printed on bottled and canned beer sometime in the future. Adding high costs to breweries, especially the smaller ones across the country that do specialty release beer in small batches. This could almost certainly mean a higher price tag to those seasonal beers or the slim possibility the brewery opting out of making those limited release beers that have different ingredients every year.

Source: The Denver Channel