Brace for the Great Beer War of 2015

• Like the fight over ride-sharing companies%2C microbreweries are challenging laws governing existing brewers
• Arizona brewing companies are following the path blazed by Colorado's New Belgian Brewing Co.%2C growing beyond local
• State microbreweries are seeking changes in law that allow them to raise sales while keeping their lucrative restaurants

Changes in the transportation industry prompted by the likes of Uber and Lyft have captured the attention of the nation in recent years — not because we care deeply about taxis and such, but because we love the romance of technological advances. And Uber's app-based car-hiring service is nothing if not techie.

Uber and Lyft matter because their struggle for market share touches us where we live. Which is to say, in our phone apps. We love our apps.

Now, a similar fight is brewing. Like the fight over app-based "taxi" rides, this one touches us where we live. In the fridge. Where we keep our beer.

And if we love anything as much as our apps, it's our beer.

Some locally brewed beer is getting so popular it is on the precipice of becoming legally big. Since 2009, Arizona has defined "craft" breweries as those creating no more than 40,000 barrels a year.

That designation allows the little guys to do things that Big Beer, such as Anheuser Busch, cannot. Mostly, that means skipping middleman distributors. Arizona-based "microbrewers" can self-distribute up to 3,000 barrels to retailers each year.

And they can sell their own beer at their own restaurants. The Four Peaks Brewing Co. pub on Eighth Street in Tempe is an enormous — and enormously popular — example of how that law works. So is Chandler's San Tan Brewing Co.

Those two microbreweries are bumping up against their "micro" designation. If they surpass their legal production limits, they would have to close restaurants and sell all their product through distributors.

Which brings us back to the Uber issue.

Like last session's big fight over fledgling "cabbish" companies, the battle over the definition of a microbrewery may be among the larger non-budget battles of the coming legislative session. Really.

Large beer producers and Arizona liquor distributors beat back the first attempt by microbrewers to raise production levels while keeping their special designations.

Now comes Round 2. According to Arizona Capital Report's Yellow Sheet, both sides are stocking up on expensive public-relations and lobbyist teams. The microbrewers have come up with a compromise proposal — grandfathering in the right to operate a certain number of restaurants while giving up some rights to self-distribute — but the Yellow Sheet notes that Big Beer has yet to respond.

Arizonans who love their local beers know where microbrewers like San Tan and Four Peaks are headed. The New Belgian Brewing Co. of Fort Collins, Colo., a formerly small, local brewer, captured the nation's taste buds. Arizona brewers could follow that model — provided they can escape the bonds of local laws limiting production.

Like the Uber fight, the brewing beer battle at the Legislature involves a question of balance for the Legislature.

Lawmakers must decide to what extent — if any — they can give latitude within the law to help foster a small-but-growing industry that the public seems to favor, while not unfairly encumbering existing industries. Or whether, in this red state, it should limit free enterprise in any form.

And, who knows? If someone develops an app for buying local beer, the two issues may merge into one, big … uber-microbrewery issue.