It’s Time For Alabama To Enter The 21st Century Over Breweries / Growlers

By Nathan Young on July 30, 2015

Hey Alabama, you still have a long way to go to move into the 21st century when it comes to breweries. A commission called the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Study Commission is going around Alabama and other states like Colorado to examine beer laws and deliver a draft of proposed legislation with findings for the next regular legislative session in 2016. Currently, Alabama is one of the only states in America where breweries can not sell their beers in portable containers from their facility. You instead have to go to a store to purchase the beer from that brewery.

Seriously, the legislature cares more about the distributor lobbyists so they can keep making that money instead of being like every other state in America that allows breweries to sell their beer to take off their property. For starters, if Alabama breweries want to grow and compete with other breweries around the country, they need to be allowed to sell their beer for people who want to take it home. Sure, you can enjoy their beer on their property, but you can not take the beer off their property. In what breweries calls growlers, Jacksonville State did a study and it determined allowing growlers would create 655 jobs, generate $12.3 million in tax revenue and create $100 million in total economic output within three to five years.

The distribution companies who do not want growlers in Alabama say they have invested millions in their facilities, and they provide a one stop shop for the ABC Board. They also say allowing breweries to sell their beer to take home would undercut prices, really? There is also the problem of some people in Alabama who believes that more alcohol would lead to more social problems. Umm, Alabama has seen a huge increase in homegrown breweries, and more social problems have not happened! At the end of the day, this is mostly about wholesalers wanting to keep a monopoly and be greedy.

And in Alabama, where our Republican lawmakers are wanting a better and open Alabama, this is not one way to do it! It’s time to remove all barriers for breweries, and allow them to sell beer for people to take home. And to allow people to sample beer at the brewery, which is also not allowed in Alabama, but allowed in mostly every other state in America. Will this happen, well with the speaker of the house facing 23 felony charges and not stepping down, and the legislature not coming up with a fair general fund budget, I am not optimistic!