The above bills have been proposed by the Alabama Legislature. The bills will allow breweries to sell beer directly to consumers off-premise and to operate a restaurant but only for breweries above 25,000 barrels in annual production. Currently there are not any Alabama breweries above that threshold so this bill does not help Alabama breweries. It will help to attract larger out of state breweries to Alabama which is a good thing but a bill that does not help Alabama breweries is not something that Free the Hops can support.
The bills in their current forms are not supported by Free the Hops or the Alabama Brewers Guild. The bills need to be amended to apply to all craft breweries as defined by the Brewers Association. A craft brewery is defined as producing 6 million barrels of beer a year or less.
Here is the Alabama Brewers Guild official statement on SB439 and HB581.
Please contact your House Representative and your State Senator and let them know you oppose these bills in their current form because they do not help local Alabama businesses that are currently here, only out of state ones that may be interested in opening a second brewery location such as Oskar Blues, Sierra Nevada and New Belgium have done in North Carolina. We want the bills to be amended to include all craft breweries by the Brewers Assocation definition.
Here is the link for legislature contact information… click here.
We welcome an environment in Alabama that would allow breweries to look at our state for expansion but not at the expense of current local business.
Cheers,
Gabe