Why is beer regulated differently than other types of alcohol? In the US there are tons of rules about alcohol that vary widely from state to state and at the federal level. For example you can brew your own beer in most states but you have to have a license for liquor. Similarly, wine tastings are usually OK but beer tastings are illegal in many places.

I'm not asking about the specifics of how each law came to be, that would take an encyclopedia. Rather, I want to know if there was an overall philosophy that drove regulating beer differently from other alcohol. Did different companies or industry groups lobby for laws that benefited their product over other companies products? Was there an overall public sentiment that drove the differences?
Part of it is philosophical

Why are airplane pilots regulated differently from car drivers?  Because it's much easier to do damage with one vs the other.  Likewise, it's a lot easier to get so drunk that you do something stupid (or just get alcohol poisoning) on liquor than beer.  As such, they're treated differently.

Part of it is political

The companies that make beer are not generally the same ones that make liquor.  Those two groups of companies also have different groups of lobbyists, who have pushed for laws at different times in different political climates.

Part of it is practical

Liquor and beer production face different logistical needs.  For example:


Beer has much higher shipping costs per dollar worth of product, so shipping rules might need to be different.
Breweries have a need to keep their product cold at the point of sale, so it might make sense to have them sold in stores that already have coolers (like gas stations), whereas liquor companies wouldn't push as hard for that availability.
Liquor has no equivalent of the brewpub, so they don't really care much about sales at their production facility.
Beer has less consumer utility per unit of volume than liquor (ie, you need more of it to have the same amount of fun), so people generally need it closer to their houses.  Since you don't need to buy liquor as often as you buy beer, it's more feasible to have centralized liquor stores


Part of it is "moral"

Especially on the US East coast, there are a lot of laws around booze with their origins in religious morality and the puritan aversion to alcohol.  Beer, being seen as a "lesser evil", tends to have less opposition to laws that would increase its availability.