Reading this post I was shocked to learn there is a brewery in Utah. Why would anyone brew beer there? “Utah: not quite dry but we sure make it difficult to drink.” I wouldn’t survive long there.
If you think Layton is bad, try staying in Brigham City. I don’t think a single establishment serves alcohol there. You have to go to Ogden just to get a drink.
SLC, on the other hand, is almost approximating civilization. Sure, it has a tiny airport and is laid out in a fashion more regular than a Metamucil addict, but it also has a couple of actual microbreweries (the beer at Red Rock is quite good and the food is even better) and you can watch good movies at Brewvies with a beer in hand (although their food is terrible and pool tables are in abominable shape). Their liquor laws on average are actually slightly less prohibitive than Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and certain counties in Tennessee, believe it or not.
And the skiing is terrific, just slightly beaten out by Montana. I can’t say that I love Utah, but there are places I hate much, much more.
The laws have changed significantly in the past two years or so—There are places (many places) where you can drink without ordering food, but in a restaurant (depending on it’s specific liquor licence type) you are technically required to order something to eat (even if it’s just bread or chips) in order to get more than one drink at a seating.
You can also get “heavy” beer and even malt liquor at restaurants, bars and liquor stores as long as it’s in a bottle or a can, but Utah still dosent sell any beer stronger than 3.2% alc. to be sold on draught—Of all the assinine liquor laws I have had to put up with, this one is the most onerous to me personally.
PS—there are at least 15 micro-breweries in Utah, some making really great beer, but in order for them to brew strong beer (above 3.2%) they have to bottle it for sale in Utah, or they are free to sell the kegs out of state for consumption across the mollyfocking state line…:rolleyes:
There’s a big non-Mormon/ex-Mormon/Mormon-but-only-when-others-are-looking population there, and lots and lots of people like Crafter passing through. Most Mormons have never had any problem selling things forbidden by their religion to others and in fact SLC got rich by being the first town of any size people passed through after crossing the Rockies and the last before entering the desert. Boarding houses and hotels routinely served alcohol and coffee even if they were owned by the devout who abstained from them- “your soul is your business, this establishment is my business” type of thing. The Marriotts were very devout Mormons and pretty much every one of their hotels has a bar.
I hate to hear that Polygamy Pale Ale is bland though, but then the polygamy in Utah has always been depressingly bland. Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and many less famous folks wrote about how they took such a sordid and exotic seeming concept and made it so mundane.
Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor) hung out in Salt Lake City for a few weeks with Brigham Young, and was also less than enthralled with Young’s selections for his harem…
I was in a brew-pub in Park City having a lunch of fish’n’chips and ale. When the waitress came round again, I ordered another ale. When she brought it I said, ‘Thank you,’ but she just stood there. I said, ‘Just put it anywhere.’ She indicated the 2" of al left in my first glass and said that she couldn’t put the second one down until I’d finished my first. :rolleyes: I like to enjoy a beer; not be forced to chug any of it – even if it is only a couple of inches.
On another trip to Park City I ate at a Mexican restaurant and ordered a Margarita. Weakest damned Margarita I’ve ever had. See, they have actual meters on the bottles that not only count how much was served, but also dispense exactly one shot.
Kurt Vonnegut was the descendant of several generations of German and then German-American brewers and had a copy of their recipe, the secret ingredient of which was coffee. Wynkoop Brewery, a microbrewery owned by a fan turned friend of Vonnegut’s in Denver, marketed it as Kurt’s Mile High Malt.
I’m not a beer drinker so my opinion doesn’t mean much, but I was kind of sorry to hear people I know who are and who tried it say it was perfectly dreadful. One even said it wouldn’t have been too bad if it hadn’t been for the *@#Ring coffee taste.
Those are becoming quite widespread in the rest of the US - especially in bars owned by absolute penny pinching tight asses. Fat shots, where the meniscus is overflowing to the point where it’s just about to give way, are a thing of beauty. But if the owner leashes his bartenders to only pour exact shots, I guess I can tip exactly 10%.
It’s been a horrendusly long time since I lived in Utah, but unless things have changed enormously, things aren’t quite as bad as you depict.
1.) You can join a Private Club and drink without having to buy any food. Private Clubs require that you have a sponsor – but anyone can sponsor you, even (especially) total strangers. And you are automatically a member at many hotels if you’re staying.
2.) At Private Clubs you have to buy a bottle – but mini-bottles count.
3.) as i recall, 3.2 beer is NOT the maximum for the state, but the maximum that can be sold in places that aren’t private clubs. If you want real beer, join up.
4.) Restaurants have 9or at least had) weird restrictions, but I don’t recall having to finish your previous drink being one of them. The front of the restaurant was declared a State Liquor Store, and they could sell you a bottle, which you brought back to your table, where the waiter/waitress opened it, for a price (corkage fee).
5.) There are State-owned liquor stores where you can buy wine, > 3.2 beer, or whatever and take it back to your room. No one will stop you from eating KFC with a Pinot Grigio in the privacy of your own room.
OT - Restaurant that serve alcohol are one of the biggest places for employee theft and owner tax fraud. Inventory control sucks. The IRS loves to audit bars and try to match inventory to sales - since one of the easy tax fraud tips is to sell drinks off the books (and its one of the ways that employees steal as well). When I took my audit class a few years ago, the professor showed us a study that said that HALF the alcohol a restaurant goes through is “breakage” - no one pays for it.
Half your inventory goes out the door via generous bartenders and then the IRS accuses you of fraud, you might put tighter inventory controls around your processes too. Order a double.
Yeah, I’ve heard that from bartenders, and I’m sure there’s truth in it. There is a difference for giving regular customers a generous pour and giving away rounds of free booze. Seems like one would earn you some loyal regulars, and the other would definitely cut into profit. Either way, I’ve got no problem with ordering doubles, but I’m much more likely to do so where the pour isn’t measured robotically - like I’m ordering whiskey at the Star Wars Cantina.
I wish Dubai would go back to the days before there were bars all over the place. Utah too. Having lost my father’s mind to alcohol, and then spending loads of time in dry countries, I fail to understand the US (and esp UK) fascination and near dependence on alcohol. I don’t drink myself but certainly don’t mind people that do… but to not be able to handle a short time in Utah/Saudi etc (as seems to be common around here) is just boggling.
I can’t get Mountain Dew or Mauritian Vanilla tea in Prague, but I still go there.
It’s not necessarily “not being able to handle a short time” in Utah. At the ski resorts, for instance, people want to have wine with dinner, or drink to socialize, or just to drink – they’re on vacation, after all. So it’s easier to get a drink there (Pat Bagley had a great cartoon about this in one of his books). Similarly, I lived in Utah for four years + – more than a “short time”. I’m sure many of the guys at the military bases in Utah are there for considerable stretches, as well.
I’m sorry about your family members – I lost a cousin to this, as well. But the Utah I remember, while it had access to liquor, still didn’t exactly have bars “all over the place”. You’d be hard pressed to find a bar in Manti or Cedar City or many of the smaller population centers in the state
There is a difference - and if it were just the regular customer getting a generous pour, the inventory would match up “well enough” - but between “everyone” being a regular (because it does increase a bartenders tips), the occasional crooked bartender or waitress not ringing up the drinks at all and pocketing the cash (and apparently that is more than occasional in the business), and an aggressive IRS…
(It isn’t the customers getting the free booze, its the waitress charging you for your draft beer, and never ringing it up).
Personally, I’d suggest that perched on the precipitous edge of one of the gorgeous national parks like Arches, Zion, Bryce or Capitol Reef with your favorite bottle of import that Utah is, in fact, a wonderful place to drink.
Especially microbrew. So I wandered on over there after dinner.
