When will New Belgium Brewing expand East of the Mississippi River?

Well, I had the chance to talk to them personally at the Keystone Bluegrass and Beer festival last year, and according to them, they're in a weird situation right now. I guess theoretically three things could happen to make it available over here:

1. They could get bigger.

2. They could get smaller.

3. Our government could change the laws.

Most people think that the problem is that they're not big enough to provide beer to distributors over here, but that's not it. They're caught in somewhat of a no-man's land in our laws. Basically, a microbrewery has a given limit of the number of barrels they can produce in a year. They cannot go beyond that without running into restrictions, such as not being able to distribute it east of the Mississippi. They could have nation-wide distribution if they got as big as some of the big players such as Miller or whatever, but the difference in what they produce vs. what they would have to produce to get to that level is HUGE. So, like I said, they're caught in a no-man's land somewhere between a microbrewery and a huge brewery, and our laws are forcing to deal with some limitations like this. Several months ago I heard a rumor that they may be bought out by Anheuser-Busch, so if that happens, there may be a real good chance that it will be distributed nationally at that point.

Here. Ask them!

http://www.newbelgium.com/contact.php

I don't know, but Fat Tire is one of those beers that seems to taste better when it's hard to get.