Andhra Pradesh: Popular beer brands to be sold at govt-run wine stores soon?

VISAKHAPATNAM: Some of the country’s most popular beer brands may soon be available in government-run liquor stores across the state.Acting on a request from hotels and bar-cum-restaurants, the government has started collecting samples of stocked beer from these places and are sending these bottles to manufacturers for testing. If the manufacturers give the green signal, the stocks would be shifted from the bars and sold from neighbourhood wine shops soon.Since Oct 1 last year, after the government took over all wine stores across the state, popular brands started vanishing from the racks of state-run wine outlets and were replaced by unknown and locally produced brands. The popular brands were available only at star hotels, which was not affordable for most residents, especially the regular drinkers.“Following our requests, officials have started visiting the bar-cum-restaurants. They are matching batch number of the beer stocks and collecting two-three samples of every batch number. The samples would be sent to the manufacturers for testing purpose. If the manufacturers give the green signal, these beer stocks would be sold from government-run wine stores,” Prasanth Singu, president of Hotels & Restaurants Association of Andhra Pradesh, told TOI.Andhra Pradesh Beverage Corporation Limited (APBCL) officials said beer stocks at most bar-cum-restaurants are either on the verge of expiry or are already expired. “The collected samples have been sent to the manufacturers, who will test the quality of the stocks. If they give us the green signal, we may consider to sell the stocks through our retail stores. It will take around 10 to 15 days to get the report,” said a senior APBCL official.Experts in the field said there shouldn’t be any issues for the samples to get the clearance. In fact, though Andhra Pradesh allows an expiry date of six months from the date of manufacture, in states like West Bengal the expiry date is 12 months from the manufacturing date. “The main thing to ensure is that oxygen does not enter the bottles. If the seal of the bottles is done properly, I see no harm in extending the expiry period,” said Parag Mitra, founder of Parag Breweries that used to manufacture Carlsberg beer in India.