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Y’all, we’ve changed.

Walk into almost any grocery store, and you’ll catch folks with plastic cups of Dead Guy, Dogfish or something you can’t even pronounce.

It’s maybe two fingers’ worth. Two ounces. But show them your ID, and you can pick up a plastic cup of something that’s brown or red, pitch-black or orange. Then, taste.

Your face puckers, your eyes widen and you realize you’ve sipped something that tastes a little like coffee or a lot like pumpkin soup.

Then the comments come.

“Can I try a Dead Guy?’’

“How do you pronounce that?’’

“I had no idea beer could taste like that.’’

Yeah, when it comes to our thoughts on beer, we’ve changed.

And it’s all legal.

Approved by state legislators last summer and enacted last month, two new permits will allow retailers, beer representatives and North Carolina’s craft brewers to set up shop at big-time events and casual spots where customers and cash registers meet.

It’ll generate a chunk of change. A one-time fee for the special-event permit is $200; a one-time fee for the beer-tasting permit, $100.

State officials expect to generate at least $100,000 the first year, and according to the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission, at least one $200 permit and 206 $100 permits have been issued in the past month.

The blueprint for all this comes from North Carolina’s own wine industry.

In 2001, the state’s wine industry got a similar tasting permit passed. That move opened the door for wineries to offer tastings in grocery stores and give free samples at almost any public event.

Back then, North Carolina had 34 wineries. Today, that number has nearly tripled. At least 90 wineries operate in North Carolina; it’s a $1 billion industry that’s continuing to grow.

Now, think about what could happen to beer, wine’s working-class sister.

North Carolina has become the craft beer capital of the South. Right now, 42 breweries are operating statewide. And according to Beer Advocate magazine, Asheville beat out Portland, Ore., as the country’s No. 1 beer destination.

Asheville, a place of nine breweries, is now Beer City USA. Imagine that.

A law change helped.

Four years ago, legislators overturned a law that limited brewers to making beers that could contain between 6 percent and 15 percent alcohol content.

Now, here comes the possibility of obtaining two permits. But there’s something bigger going on.

We live in a land made famous by Mayberry and Michael Jordan, and often, we hear it described as the buckle of the Bible Belt South, a state of dry counties, no alcohol sales and preachers seeing beer as an elixir that’ll lead you to hell.

But step into one of these beer tastings, and you sense a cultural shift, a different way of thinking.

Like at the Rioja Wine Bar. There, in this bend along Battleground a few blocks south of Krispy Kreme, you meet people just like Brian Vervynckt.

He’s 28, a former Army sergeant who came from Cincinnati to study marketing at UNCG. And after sips of Poland’s Okocim Palone and Dogfish Head Punkin Ale from Delaware, he’ll tell you what he thinks.

“Moving down here, all I heard was how restrictive North Carolina is and how conservative they were toward alcohol,’’ Vervynckt says. “But (the beer tasting) is lifting that. The idea of it. It’s allowing people to be open to other things.’’

Ask Mark Lile-King about that. He’s a native of Kentucky, and he and his wife Phyllis own Rioja. They also own the Wine Warehouse. But before that, Lile-King had another occupation: Baptist minister. For 15 years.

He sees craft beer as akin to something incredibly Southern: iced tea.

“Most of us who live in the South love iced tea, and when we have friends over and serve iced tea, there is this certain level of comfort,’’ he says. “Now, open a bottle of wine, and you find a different level of community — the same kind of community developed with craft beer.

“People feel free to express who they are, their thoughts and their ideas,’’ he says. “I know it sounds hokey. But it’s true.’’

Then, stand beside Jon McSween. He’s 28, a first-time father who teaches North Carolina history at Jackson Middle School. But his part-time job puts him at Bestway, the seven-aisle grocery store near UNCG.

There, he talks to people about beer. And on a recent afternoon, he gives some of the current catchphrases that surround one of the world’s oldest beverages:

Respect beer.

Be a beer geek, not a beer snob.

Craft beer is not about getting drunk; it’s about enjoying different flavors.

All right here in North Carolina, his home state.

“This all shows we have some culture in North Carolina,’’ says McSween, 28. “We’re not just about the Outer Banks anymore.’’

Indeed.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com