Will blogs sell beer?

One microbrewery in Connecticut hopes so.

New England Brewing Co. is heavily restricted both legally and financially in how it can advertise. So Rob Leonard, owner and brewmaster at the 17-year-old beer maker has engaged New Haven’s Heavybag Media to get the word out both online and offline beginning this month.

Leonard, who bought the brewery in 1992, is hoping his new Web site, www.newenglandbrewing.com, and ad campaign will help generate exposure for the company and its quaffs.

At present, the Woodbridge, CT company has about 100 accounts, all of which are restaurants, bars and liquor stores in the greater New Haven area. The Web site, which requires potential viewers to state their birth dates, lists all the bars and liquor stores that sell New England’s beers.

The site also features a blog, listings of events and the firm’s brews, which include Atlantic Amber, Elm City Lager and the forthcoming Sea Hag India Pale Ale.

On the blog, Leonard promotes the India Pale Ale and humbly asks viewers to “Please be patient as I learn this new world of blogging.”

According to Jackie Peters, partner in Heavybag, the agency is also looking at running e-mail campaigns for the brewery and putting together an e-mail list. Other plans call for text messaging and banner ad campaigns.

Offline, New England Brewing is running a print campaign in a local magazine and a poster effort.

“We want to let people know there’s a microbrewery in the local area — not everybody knows that,” says Peters.

Leonard says he turned to Heavybag and online marketing partly because marketing is so restricted. Up to now, he has relied almost exclusively on things like sponsoring events sponsored by the local Pediatric Aids Foundation.

“If 100 people attend something, I can get a few customers,” he says.

On top of that, beer advertising in the State of Connecticut has it own special restrictions. For example, “You can’t use the image of Santa Claus and liquor stores can’t open on Sunday or after 9 p.m.,” says Leonard.

Since Leonard says he has no money for things like billboards, he decided to try Heavybag’s approach, which costs much less.

Despite their mammoth advertising reach, companies like Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing Co. don’t represent serious competition to New England Brewing because “microbrewed beer is 100% barley malt, while the majors typically use only 75%, and extend their recipes with corn,” opines Leonard.

It remains unclear whether the microbrewery will be able to use online marketing for direct sales of its products. Only last year, New York State and Michigan were able to begin selling wine online, thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

“We haven’t even thought about distribution yet,” says Peters.