Sheila Ubel hustled out of Morelli’s Market in St. Paul on Wednesday afternoon, a store clerk and four cases of Miller beer trailing close behind.

“I got the last case of Miller High Life,” she said as the bottles were loaded into her trunk.

Ubel, of Lindstrom, a still-employed state worker with the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System, stocked up on her favorite beer a day after news broke that Chicago-based MillerCoors could be forced to remove nearly 40 brands of beer from Minnesota liquor stores, bars and restaurants because of the state government shutdown.

For the longtime East Side liquor store and meat market, the chance that such brews as Blue Moon Pale Ale, Coors Light, Hamm’s and Miller Genuine Draft could be in short supply caused a minirun on the beers.

In its first two hours of business Wednesday, Morelli’s sold 40 cases of MillerCoors brand beer, and customers were calling to see how much was left, an employee said.

The reason for the panic?

MillerCoors wasn’t able to renew its brand-label registrations for 39 brands of beer it sells in Minnesota because of the shutdown.

Without the registrations, brewers, wineries and distillers are not able to manufacture, distribute or sell their goods in the state, said Doug Neville, spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety, which oversees the Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division in charge of the registrations.

MillerCoors did try to renew June 15, Neville said, but it overpaid the registration fee of $30 per brand and had to resubmit the paperwork.

The second check arrived less than two weeks later, but the state wasn’t able to complete the renewal before employees who handle the registrations were laid off because of the shutdown.

Neville said the Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division has since asked MillerCoors to submit a plan for how it will remove its products from the state. The office has seven enforcement officers working during the shutdown, he said.

MillerCoors spokesman Julian Green said the company has no intention of pulling out of Minnesota, where it controls 38 percent of the beer-buying market.

“This is not a simple issue of missing the deadline. We met the renewal date,” Green said.

The state just didn’t process the paperwork in time – and that’s Minnesota’s problem, not MillerCoors’, Green said.

“As of today, we are currently selling our products in Minnesota,” one of the biggest markets MillerCoors serves, Green said.

He said the company hopes to resolve the registration issue through discussion with state alcohol regulators. Green said MillerCoors is considering legal action.

“We don’t take securing our licenses lightly,” he said.

The registration kerfuffle does not affect MillerCoors’ Leinenkugel’s brand of beers, which is on a different renewal schedule than Coors, Miller and the rest of the lot. The Leinenkugel’s registrations are good through 2012, Miller-Coors said.

Neville said agents are working to determine whether any local labels will have brand-label registration issues as the shutdown continues, but he did not know of any Wednesday.

The nation’s largest brewer, St. Louis, Mo.-based Anheuser-Busch Cos., has a batch of registrations due Oct. 1, Neville said.

At Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul, founder and President Mark Stutrud said his registrations were updated in early June.

“It’s not going to put the brakes on for us in any way,” he said. “To see businesses be hurt over simple annual registrations is a shame.”

The brand-label registration issue is different from the licensing issue facing some Minnesota retailers, who are in a tough spot because they can’t renew their buyer’s cards during the shutdown. The cards allow business owners with liquor licenses to buy alcohol to sell in their stores. Without the cards, retailer can’t buy booze.

Local liquor purveyors said Wednesday that alcohol sales would continue as usual, despite the MillerCoors dustup.

“We have no plans to change,” said Brian Smith, assistant manager of Big Top Liquors in St. Paul. “We currently have MillerCoors products in stock.”

His advice to customers?

“Don’t panic, don’t freak out. We still have your beer,” he said.

That message of calm was the same at Billy’s on Grand, a bar on St. Paul’s Grand Avenue.

“We talked to our distributor (Wednesday) and they said don’t worry about anything,” said manager and owner John Wengler.

Anyway, he said, Miller-Coors products make up only a fraction of the bar’s 34 taps.

“We have a big craft-beer lineup,” he said.

Billy’s distributor, J.J. Taylor of Minneapolis, had no comment on the registration issue when called by a reporter Wednesday.

Back at Morelli’s – where another shipment of MillerCoors products is slated to arrive today – laid off state worker Jeanne Soban of North St. Paul picked up two cases of Miller High Life in cans for a graduation party this weekend.

An accountant for the state, she said this is the first time in her career that she’s had time off in July – the beginning of the state’s fiscal year.

“It’s bittersweet,” she said. “They told us we were laid off at the last minute, they’ll tell us when to come back at the last minute. I can’t plan for tomorrow. I have to take it day by day.”