Ohio beer enthusiasts will have reason to rejoice this fall when the Pennsylvania brewery, D.G. Yuengling & Son, will begin selling its products in the Buckeye state.
Yuengling, the oldest brewery in the United States, is currently filing the necessary paperwork with the state of Ohio to legally sell its product, said Matt Mullins of the Ohio Division of Liquor Control.
Yuengling must register the product, the company as an out-of-state supplier and designate which company will serve as their wholesale distributor, he said.
The company currently has production and distribution plants both where it originated in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, as well as Tampa, Florida.
“(Yuengling) should be submitting paperwork sometime this month,” said Mullins. “They plan to have their product available sometime this fall, in early October.”
The regional beer is currently distributed in 13 states and Washington D.C., but is not sold further west than Tennessee. The company’s brewing capacity has previously deterred its sale in Ohio, as the company could not produce the quantities necessary to fulfill the beer’s high demand in other states.
Prior to the decision to begin selling in Ohio, the closest distributors of Yuengling in the Athens area were those in West Virginia—where some Ohio University students have traveled to buy the beer.
“Now I won’t have to cross state lines to smuggle Yuengling back to Athens,” said Rebecca Koch, a senior at OU and fan of the Pennsylvania-crafted beer.
For OU students and Athens residents seeking the brew come fall, they won’t have to look further than the Athens Kroger, which will be among the future carriers of Yuengling.
“Kroger will carry (Yuengling) in all our central Ohio Kroger locations,” said Amy McCormick, a Kroger Company representative. “We do plan this fall to start carrying that line of beer.”
—Allison Wichie
aw261607@ohiou.edu
@ThePostCity
