A while back, in a move that surprised many in the Craft Beer community, Bell’s Brewing Company pulled out of the lucrative Illinois market over an issue with distributors. They distribution rights were sold to a larger house who did not want to deal with their entire line, but just a few of the best sellers. Larry Bell and his crew, worried that this new company would not fully have the best interests of the Kalamazoo company at heart and would not know how to best service a craft label such as Bell’s, opted to pull their business out of Illinois rather than work with a distributor who was not fully behind them.

While this could easily turn into an article about franchise law and how distribution works, it won’t. A quick summary is in order, though. As many of you know, Illinois has a three tier beer distribution system. Tier 1, the producer, brews the beer. Tier 2, the distributor, takes the beer from the producer then sells and ships it to the retailer. Tier 3, the retailer, then sells it to you, the consumer. Due to the nature of the brewing industry in post-prohibition America, with huge breweries and mostly small distributors, laws were put in place that make it virtually impossible to leave a distributor without good cause. Not carrying all your brands does not count in this case. This is why Bell’s left Illinois, rather than go to a different distributor.

So where are we going with this? Well, as you know, we like to keep you up to date on what’s coming down the pipeline for new beers. On our latest check, we found the labels to the right.

Now, this is fine. People put out new beers all the time. In fact, we love it! What’s curious is the line on the back: “Brewed especially for the people of the great state of Illinois.”

Is Bell’s putting out a new line of protest beers in their existing markets? Maybe some novelty bottles for a brewery only beer? I don’t know. I’m intrigued, though, as everything I’ve had by these guys during “Devon and Jeff Drink the Great Lakes” rocked!

We attempted to contact Bell's for this story, and got no response to our inquiries. For now, we're still in the dark as to what's going on.