"Pop the Cap": The 21st anniversary

Leonardo Bacarreza

August 14, 2026

It has been 21 years since North Carolinians were allowed to legally drink beer above 6% Alcohol By Volume (ABV). To commemorate the anniversary, on August 13, Fullsteam Brewing went down memory lane with some of the people who made this change possible.

The event took place at the Full Frame Theater, now part of the new Fullsteam location at the American Tobacco Campus, set to open in the spring. Sean Wilson, founder and CEO of Fullsteam, welcomed Theresa Kostrzewa, lobbyist and founder of Capitol Advantage, and Brad Johnston, CEO of Tryon Distributing. Lisa Parker, Executive Director of the North Carolina Craft Brewers Guild, acted as the moderator. 

How it all started

House Bill 392 passed on August 13, 2005, and it changed the lives of many people in the state. The path to that date is a story worthy of retelling.

As Johnson explained, historically beer had been capped at 6% ABV in North Carolina because mill owners didn’t want workers arriving drunk to work. What is not always mentioned when that part of history is told is that there was no cap on liquor.

The tobacco and mill era came and went, but the cap remained. The more time passed, the more outdated it felt, especially because the beermaking landscape began to change quickly in the early 90s.

Who wanted to lift the restriction? There were, of course, the beer enthusiasts who had to travel to other states if they wanted to try any beer above 6% ABV, but this was mainly a matter of business. “I couldn’t get 7% beers in the state as a distributor. I couldn’t legally bring a Spaten Optimator into any store,” Brad Johnson remembered. And to him, it was clear that many beer-loving Carolinians would be willing to spend more money within the state if given the chance.

That is why Brad Johnson, Sean Wilson and other entrepreneurs, a total of 35 people, decided to organize and request a change in state laws. The movement found a wordplay that made their purpose clear: “Pop the cap.”

The strategies

At the beginning, the “Pop the Cap” proponents had no money for their campaign. They resorted to microfinancing, in other words, to friends, in a time when crowdsourcing was not what it is nowadays.

They managed to convince one lobbyist: Theresa Kostrzewa, currently a well-known name in the state legislature. “I was young, I was being paid 36 cents an hour… and I said yes,” she told, half joking and half serious. A quick look at her curriculum within these 21 years makes it clear that today it would not be conceivable to hire her at that rate.

For those who don’t know how lobbying works, Sean Wilson made the picture clear: “The North Carolina General Assembly has 170 members (120 in the House, 50 in the Senate), and we had only one lobbyist.” The “Pop the Cap” team needed to convince a majority. None of them had political influence with any party and, given the size of the team, they realized they had to do it one by one.

“It was interesting to be asked the same question over and over again,” Wilson said: “Why are you here?” “Just for this, for the beer,” he would answer, and he was met with skepticism. Everyone expected a bigger agenda or some sort of political token to be exchanged, and when there was none, skepticism turned into puzzlement.

“We were testing the waters. We realized that at least Mothers Against Drunk Driving were neutral, which gave us some initial hope,” Brad Johnston noted. “Total Wine was also on board,” Wilson added, and so was the North Carolina Restaurant Association. And then there were the breweries that could not come into the state, even when their owners had been born here, like one of the founders of North Coast Brewing, who grew up in Cary.

“One of the first aspects we had to take care of was educating the legislators,” Theresa Kostrzewa observed. “Many were under the impression that raising the cap meant actually adding alcohol to the beer,” so the image in many lawmakers’ heads was closer to wine coolers than to beer.

Many legislators also associated beer with low-income consumers, which in turn gave them the idea of a potential increase in alcohol consumption and in problems related to it. “We had to explain that high ABV beers are aimed at a different type of buyer, both because of price and because of flavor profile,” Kostrzewa remembered.

Nowadays most people know that the Coors buyer is usually not the one who will go for a Belgian Dubbel, or at least not with the same frequency, but 21 years ago that was not common knowledge.

So, they started small. They organized beer tastings with cheese and chocolate at their homes, events to which they invited state legislators. One of the ideas was to bring samples that did not look like “normal beer”: elegant bottles with corks instead of caps, and with flavor profiles that would go well with the food.

Johnston remembers bringing to one of those soirées a Sam Adams Utopias, famous for being a very high ABV barrel aged beer (around 21% back then, 30% nowadays and, because of this, still banned in the state: our current cap is 15%). It is also famous for its price in the hundreds of dollars. Johnston served samples and auctioned the bottle afterwards, so lawmakers could understand that there was beer that could cost as much as fine wine. The show caught the lawmakers’ attention.

In the end, 87 legislators tried beers above the 6% cap before voting.

There was also the Carolinian way of doing things. Johnston remembered a man who showed up in the General Assembly wearing an undertaker’s garment. He apparently was a well-known local character in Wilmington, and he had taken the time to travel to Raleigh just to talk to his representative, a Republican. The voice of the people had materialized in the capital, and it was difficult to say no to demonstrations like that one.

“The first time I felt our law was going to pass was one day I was at the Assembly, just standing in one of the halls. Nobody knew who I was, and I heard two lawmakers passing by. One of them said to the other: ‘So, what do you think about this Pop the Cap thing?...’ They were talking about us!” Sean Wilson remembered.

The Pastor said…

The law was introduced in February 2005 and was set for a vote in May. The “Pop the Cap” team felt that they had a win. But then, they ran into a couple of setbacks.

Seven legislators came to them with variations of this narrative: “I got a call from my preacher… Is it ok if I change my vote? Sorry, guys.” Johnston recalled that one of the most vehement opponents to the new law was Rev. Mark Creech, from the Christian Action League, although he later softened his position.

Another “convert” remembered at the event was Kris Gardner, from the North Carolina Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association. Brad Johnston mentioned a retreat with lawmakers in Puerto Rico, in which Gardner changed some more minds against “Pop the Cap,” concerned about losses in sales from traditional beer companies. “I was also there trying to convince them. Every one of them shot me down,” Johnston recalled, and added, with a touch of irony, that nowadays Kris Gardner attends and presents at craft beer conferences.

Both in the pastor and the wholesaler minds, the business and employment creation that came to the state with craft beer seem to have been one of the factors that changed their minds. “At that time, we calculated that craft brewing would create about 300 jobs. It turned out to be 1,600,” Sean Wilson noted. And, of course, the state did not see a multiplication of alcoholics but of bearded guys who made their own IPAs. 

Preserving the memory 

The proposal had to go through several steps before approval: Pass the House Commerce committee, pass the House ABC committee, pass the House floor, pass the Senate commerce committee, pass the Senate floor, and finally reach the office of the Governor for signature. How do we know this? The Internet Archive preserves a copy of the original website where the process was followed step by step.

Today, UNC Greensboro maintains an archive with photos and documents from the days of the campaign, and Well Crafted NC also keeps a digital archive with more information. A visit to these sites explains why this change in the law has become a milestone in North Carolina’s recent history.

Lessons

 The panelists did not agree about what they learned from that campaign. Brad Johnston had a harsh point of view: “Our government system sucks. It felt like a ‘pay-to-play’ system.” Theresa Kostrzewa provided a contrasting view: “This was one of the purest forms of democracy. There was no exchange of favors. It was ultimately about what was good for North Carolina.” Sean Wilson agreed: “There were no caucuses, no party lines. Everything was done the right way.

What cannot be disputed is the fact that the movement was imitated by neighboring states. South Carolina even borrowed the name “Pop the Cap,” and Georgia followed suit.

More recently, the “Pop the Cap” crew is following closely another campaign, “Regulate, Don’t Ruin,” which is advocating for clear regulations to prevent a total ban of hemp beverages. Times have changed, but they still believe that regulation and consensus are the way to go regarding adult beverages.

A happy ending

Twenty-one years ago, NC House Bill 392 passed and the era of the craft brewers began. What was the panelists’ first legal drink after they popped the cap? Their confessions make the final scene of a movie.

Brad Johnston celebrated with a Chimay. A Belgian trappist. Above the old cap.

Sean Wilson drank a Highland Gaelic Ale. Made in Asheville. A modest 5.6%, but proudly Carolinian.

 Theresa Kostrzewa drank tequila. Probably her phone rang. The bat-signal was on for some other quest.