For craft beer brewers struggling through the hardest season in their history, the law Gov. Charlie Baker signed on Tuesday couldn’t have come too soon.
The bill finalized a compromise that has taken brewers and distributors nearly a decade to agree on, allowing any brewer producing fewer than 250,000 barrels of beer annually — which effectively means every Massachusetts brewery except Boston Beer, the maker of Sam Adams — to leave lifelong contracts with distributors in exchange for fair market value of the portfolio.
“I think it will save some breweries,” said Sam Hendler, president of the Massachusetts Brewers Guild, who helped negotiate the final compromise, and co-founder of Jack’s Abby.
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