H
needs to go and take it home later that
night.
ouse Bill 176, more
comfortably known as the
“Growler Bill,” went into
effect on June 1.
Gadsden’s Back Forty Beer Company
celebrated with a midnight release of
100 custom, hand-numbered growlers —
glassware like a beer bottle, but specially
made for taking craft beer out of a brewery
— full of their best brews. They were gone
in a day, a testament to consumer passion
for craft beer, according to Brad Wilson, coowner of Back Forty.
Brewpubs previously had to open in
historic buildings, historic districts or areas
with economic distress, which limited
locations to a few sites per city, or less.
That change may sound like it will keep
brewpubs from revitalizing poorer areas,
but Wilson says that the overall economic
impact will be far-reaching, no matter
where a brewery opens.
“It’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars,
and creates jobs,” he said.
“People would come in from other states
and say, “Let me get a sixpack,’” said Wilson, “but we’d
have to say to go to the Shell
station and buy it, and they’d
look at us like we were insane.”
The bill makes three major
changes to the way beer
is distributed and how a
craft beer business works in
Alabama:
Breweries that make 60,000 or
fewer barrels of beer annually
can sell 288 ounces of beer
to each customer per day to take off-site.
That’s about two-and-a-quarter gallons, or
one case of beer.
Breweries can now donate and deliver
two kegs of beer to licensed charity
events. Donation prior to HB 176 was
a bureaucratic nightmare according to
Wilson, with an excess of forms, planning
and advance work for even a single keg
to go to an event. Under the new bill, a
brewery can simply drive a keg where it
INSIGHT
More than 650, according to a study by
Jacksonville State University. The Alabama
Brewer’s Guild-commissioned report found
that allowing growler sales would not
only create 655 new jobs, but generate
more than $12 million in tax revenue and
increase total economic output by more
than $101 million over the next three to
five years.
“It’s the most progressive thing I’ve ever
seen the state do,” said Wilson.
July 2016 13