There is the interesting idea that the fear of methanol poisoning came from torpedo juice. It was ethanol fuel denatured with methanol, and the sailors would drink it. Supposedly they would pour it through a loaf of bread to filter it.

So it’s possible that some places don’t have the right water to make a good dark beer, at least not with the technology available to them.

The story I always heard was that the first batch spoiled, which is why they raised both the ABV and the hop content.  Not sure where Smithsonian is getting that story, but that’s a new one on me (and I’m a bit of an Imperial Stout nut).  For an alternative explanation see here:  http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/ImperialStout.html

Unfortunately the laws mean some locally produced wines don’t get sold locally (unless you visit the winery itself).

That’s exactly how the distributors want it.  If they can’t influence the laws they’ll just threaten to cut off their producers if they ever catch them selling to someone else.  There are a lot of winemakers who won’t sell their stuff on the internet because they’re afraid of pissing off their distributors.

My favorite local liquor law, though, is that you can’t buy Jack Daniel’s in the county where it’s made. They’re not even allowed to let visitors to the distillery taste it. I always laughed about how you could go there and see it made but you had to drive to the next county to buy it. 

It still seems a little strange to me that such a warm place produces a stout, and it’s the only beer of its type that I know of to come from the Southern hemisphere.

Imagine a virtual soviet-style storefront – totally devoid of all color and decor. The customer side had nothing in it: no liquor, no signs, just old chipped linoleum floors and dun-colored walls. There was a long empty counter, shelves on the wall behind it with a few dusty bottles on “display” and a bored clerk staring off into space. After standing at the counter for anywhere up to a minute, the clerk would eventually deign to notice your presence, grudgingly take your order, then disappear for 15 or so minutes in the back before emerging with your bottle. For this, you got to pay close to twice as much as in Maryland, where everybody went every year before the holidays to fill up their car trunks with booze.

Oh boy, could my dad could get an awesome rant going about the state store system!

The law has also resulted in the creation of some very oddly configured buildings with a thin wall and two entrances–one for the side that sells wine, liquor, and any beer with more than 5% alcohol, and the other for the side that only sells beer. It seems like a silly law, but I think it’s actually helped create specialty stores that sell more exotic beers that groceries and minimarts aren’t inclined to carry. So I can get in touch with my inner czar.