Dirty lines, payola and hijinks? Only since the dawn of human history.

As usual, the opposing social media camps quickly coalesced, and we were advised to move quickly to one bloc or the other by shunning the bribe takers or ostracizing the embittered brewery.

Payola? Fact of life and a feature of capitalism. The best antidote has been, and remains, a consistent conceptual program at the point of dispense, augmented by principle and integrity. There'll never be any system of commerce capable of eliminating palm-greasings, so we might as well get over it and do the best we can.

My question: When supply of a product, the success of which is predicated on expanding distribution in a tightly regulated marketplace, explodes at a rate greater than available dispensing outlets ... aren't we designing a situation tailor-made for the abuses of payola?

BEER BRIBERY, by Aaron Goldfarb (Esquire)

One brewer has cried foul on breweries that pay off bars to serve their beers

With around 3000 breweries now in America producing tens of thousands of beers, I bet you wonder how a bar could possibly choose what to put on their few taps. Of course, we all know some bars prefer the kind of corporate swill that their non-demanding customers can drink a lot of on the cheap. While other, more scrutinizing spots surely opt for local offerings and the absolute best craft beer they can possibly land. But what if I told you something more insidious is actually going on?

Last night while you were sleeping—or closing down a bar—Dann Paquette, co-founder and brewer for Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, decided to blow the whistle on an illegal practice going on right before our very beer-soaked eyes. In a series of Tweets under the brewery’s handle, Paquette revealed that Boston is a “pay to play town and we're often shut out for draft lines along with many beers you may love.”

What’s “pay to play”? It’s when breweries bribe bars under the table to stock their beers and freeze out competition and is, according to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau regulations, an illegal practice.