Missing Beers in Alabama

Of the Top 100 beers of the World at BeerAdvocate.com, a renowned beer review site, 98 cannot be sold in this state. Why is our choice so limited?

Currently, Alabama is one of only three states in the country that limits alcohol by volume (ABV) for beer to only 6%, and the only state that limits beer containers to a size of no more than 1 pint (16 ounces).

Free The Hops drafted the Gourmet Beer Bill to modify existing laws to allow more specialty and gourmet beers in Alabama. Specifically, the Gourmet Beer Bill would raise the limit on ABV in beer to just below that of wine. Free The Hops presented the Gourmet Beer Bill to the Alabama Legislature in 2006 and 2007 and has presented it again for 2008.

The Impact of the Current ABV Restriction

The 6% ABV limit excludes approximately 1/3 of the world's beer styles, some of them comparable to the finest wines.
Entire styles of specialty beers fall above this limitation:

• Barleywines - brewed like wine from barley instead of grapes. Elegant and expensive, they are sometimes cellared and aged for years like a fine wine.
• Trappist beers - brewed by Trappist Monks in Belgium (considered by many to be the greatest beer in the world) are comprised almost entirely of beers above 6% ABV.
• Russian Imperial Stouts - created by the English royal court as a gift to their Russian cousins, these rich and flavorful beers are excluded by both the ABV limit and the container size.
• Speciality beers - Midas Touch, brewed in Delaware, is made from the oldest fermented beverage recipe in the world. Molecular archaeologists painstakingly reconstructed it from the remnants inside Iron Age drinking vessels. At 9% ABV, it can't be sold here.

All these - and more - are currently illegal in Alabama.

The Impact of the Current Container Restriction

Many more fine beers are unavailable to Alabamians because of the container size restriction:

• Rogue Ales sell most of their beer in 22oz bottles. Only 5 of their 25 core beers fall within Alabama's ABV and container size restrictions, so beer you might be able to buy on draft at a local bar (like their popular Chocolate Stout) is not available for you, as a consumer, to buy in store and take home.
• Dogfish Head has only one beer that fits Alabama's restrictive conditions; you can't find it here, because it's not cost-effective to distribute only 1 beer out of 15 or more.
• European beers are only exported in 500ml or 750ml bottles — too big for Alabama.

These are only a few examples of the hundreds of beers and styles that you, in Alabama, are missing.

Surely there are enough beers here already?

Let us put that to you another way. Would you want to be told that you can't buy a Mercedes because there are already plenty of Fords and Hondas available? This is exactly the type of restriction that is being placed on gourmet beer in Alabama.

FTH is not trying to change the existing beers in Alabama. To refer back to the analogy, there will be plenty of Fords and Hondas around once we lift the restriction against Mercedes. FTH and its supporters would just like to have the option to choose the Mercedes of beer.