Imported Lagers

ITHACA, N.Y. — The road to prosperity isn’t exactly the high life for small businesses. Even if your business is brewing beer.

“Trying to get salaries up for the people that we have. Trying to bring new people in. Trying to market our products,” said Dan Mitchell, owner of Ithaca Beer Company.

But Senator Charles Schumer is pushing a new bill intended to serve small breweries a taste of relief.

“New York used to be a center of brewing, and it’s coming back,” said Senator Schumer.

The Beer Act would cut the $7 excise tax in half for the first 60,000 barrels a small brewery produces each year and lowers the tax by $2 up to two million barrels. But it only applies to businesses that put out fewer than six million barrels each year.

“Helping small business is really important to getting our economy going again and looking toward the future,” Schumer said.

If passed, the bill would save small breweries tens of thousands of dollars a year, money that Schumer says will go straight back into the community.

“He doesn’t just put it in the bank,” Schumer said. “He reinvests it, which means new jobs and new prosperity to communities.”

“Not so much in my pocket or the owners pockets going home, but more money into the company,” Mitchell said. “So that allows us to grow and start becoming more viable and continue to hire more people year after year.”

A benefit expected to spill over to other local industries.

“We use a lot of New York state hops, other ingredients like honey and strawberries and blueberries. Whatever our brewer can concoct,” Mitchell said. “Ideally, we bring it all from New York State.”

Keeping that beer money close to home.

The senator expects to have bipartisan support for the bill and hopes to have it passed by the end of the year.