pics and audio from House Tourism Committee Hearing on SB153

Here’s the audio from the March 3 House Tourism and Travel Committee Hearing on SB153. Normally, speakers are limited to 3 minutes each. However, in this case, the Chairman of the House Tourism and Travel committee did not set a time limit. He let the speakers say anything they wanted to say, and there was a long Question and Answer period later. The audio is over 50 minutes. We have been told numerous times how impressed the legislators are that we have come so far in such a short period of time.

SB153 passes Alabama Senate

It has been a whirlwind this week, so this will be short and sweet. Thanks to Senator Larry Dixon and the strong efforts of members of Alabama homebrew clubs: Auburn Brew Club (Auburn/Opelika) | Carboy Junkies (Birmingham) | Central Alabama Brewers Society (Montgomery) | Hopheads (Phenix City) | Malty Orgasmics of Lower Alabama (Dothan) | Rocket City Brewers (Huntsville), SB153 passed the Alabama Senate this past Tuesday. A summary of Tuesday’s action is quoted below from Gary Glass of the AHA, but if you really want to be entertained, Click here to listen to the audio from Tuesday’s Senate debate and voting on SB153. And here’s the amended version of the bill that will now be considered by the House.

Alabama Homebrew Bill Passes Senate!

Alabama bill SB153 to legalize homebrewing passed the Senate on Tuesday Feb. 23.

It was an emotionally charged day for Alabama’s homebrewers, many of who listened to the proceedings via live broadcast on the Alabama legislature’s website. The bill was initially rejected,on a vote of 13 nays to 7 yeas, at which point most of the homebrewers who were listening dejectedly tuned out.

However, the bill was brought up again, amended to restrict transport of homebrew to 20 gallons at a time, then passed by the Senate 13 to 6 with one abstention.

This is a tremendous step forward for homebrew legalization in Alabama – one that would not have happened without the hundreds of phone calls, letters and faxes sent to Senators by Alabama homebrewers. Alabama’s homebrewers should be proud of what they have acheived, I know I am proud of them.

It’s too early to get cocky though. The bill now moves on to the Alabama House of Representatives, where there are a lot more legislators to educate on homebrewing than there were in the Senate. Alabama residents should start contacting their Representatives ASAP to politely urge them to support SB153. Click here for instructions on finding your legislator by zip code.

Alabama AHA members can expect to receive an Action Alert from the AHA as soon as we find out which House committee the homebrew bill is assigned to. We will need everyone of our Alabama members to contact the Representatives on that committee to help ensure passage of the bill on to the full House.

Push for a Senate Floor Vote on SB153

Your calls, letters and faxes worked!!!

Yesterday, the Senate Tourism Committee met for their first meeting of the year, and we really wanted to be on the committee’s agenda. Going into this week, we didn’t know this would be a really big week for Bingo in the committees. Electronic bingo, gambling, raids and a high noon showdown between state and county authorities have been all over the news in Alabama lately, and the issues have the potential to grind the Alabama Senate to a halt. So when the Senate Tourism Committee and the House Tourism Committee met yesterday for a *joint meeting* in the House Chambers for a public hearing on two companion bingo bills, we figured we’d have to wait until next week to get on the Senate T&M’s agenda.

However, according to several secretaries, the Senate T&M members received lots of calls, faxes and emails urging the committee to pass SB153. Last night, ALISON showed that SB153 was reported out of committee favorably with a 5-0 vote. Apparently, after the public hearing on the Bingo bills, the Senate T&M members quickly passed SB153. We really don’t think the T&M committee would have dealt with the bill yesterday had it not been for all the calls in support of SB153.

We now need Alabama homebrewers to make a strong and sustained push to get SB153 to a vote on the Senate floor.

Rocket City Brewer Brant Warren recently wrote the following which sums up the need really well:

Thanks to all of your calls over the past few days, SB153 passed favorably from the Senate Tourism and Marketing Committee yesterday! If anyone doubted it before, this is proof that phone calls to our elected officials work.

The next step is to get our bill to the Senate floor for a full vote. As you probably remember, this is the point we reached last year before time ran out, but this time we have arrived here over 6 weeks earlier than last year. The gambling-induced gridlock that killed our bill last year has not yet taken hold of the Senate, but it is fast approaching. We need to get to a floor vote as soon as possible!

Today, please contact each of the 13 members of the Senate Rules Committee to request that SB153 to legalize Homebrewing in Alabama be placed on the next Special Order Calendar. The Special Order Calendar lists which bills the Senate will vote on during a particular day, and the Rules Committee chooses which bills to put on that list. As there are hundreds of bills waiting their turn, we have to work hard to convince the Rules Committee that our bill is important enough to make the Calendar. Popular support is how we convince them of that, so we need hundreds of phone calls, faxes, and email to each Rules member!

Find all of the contact information easily here: http://www.auburnbrewclub.org/off-menu/2010-senate-rules-committee-members/

Although it will take no more than 15 minutes to call all 13 Rules members, if your time is short, be sure to at least call Sen. Lowell Barron, Sen. Zeb Little, and Sen. Ted Little, as they are the officers of the Rules Committee. Please then call the others when you can.

Finally, it is also time to call your own Senator to urge him or her to support SB153 to legalize Homebrewing. If you do not know who your senator is, your voter registration card will tell you your State Senate District number, and you can cross reference it with http://www.legislature.state.al.us/senate/senators/senateroster_district.html

We will likely not have any advance warning about when SB153 will reach the floor, so we need to prepare each of our Senators to vote in favor of legalizing Homebrewing!

Help needed to get SB153 out of Committee

telephone.jpgWe need your help! Please contact the members of the Senate Tourism and Marketing Committee and ask them to send SB153 (permitting the home brewing and winemaking hobby in Alabama) to the Senate floor.

Everything you need to equip you to make this contact is located here.

We thought we’d have it a bit easier this year, but they’re gonna make us fight for it every step of the way. Senator Larry Dixon introduced SB153 to legalize the home brewing and winemaking hobby in Alabama on the first day of the 2010 legislative session (January 12). The bill was sent to the Senate Tourism and Marketing Committee where it has remained since then. The Senate came to a grinding halt almost immediately due to disagreements over a highway spending bill, and now issues involving the recent bingo hall raids and gambling in Alabama are poised to dominate the legislature in the near future.

The Senate Tourism and Marketing Committee is scheduled to meet this week, but the Chairman has placed only bingo related bills on the committee’s agenda. We are hoping that he will revise the agenda and place SB153 on it. The bill passed the same committee 7-0 last year. We’re sure it will pass again, if only the committee is permitted to vote on it. We need to get out of committee as early as possible in order to have the best chance of having the bill placed on the Senate’s “Special Order Calendar” (which means it can be voted on by the entire Senate).

Do you support craft brewing in Alabama? The national Brewers Association leadership have said time and again that over 90% of America’s small, independent craft breweries were started by homebrewers. You cannot have a vibrant craft brewing culture or market without a vibrant homebrewing community. Alabama laws passed over 75 years ago after the repeal of Prohibition remain the law in 2010.

You can read a history of Alabama homebrewing legalization efforts here: part I and part II.

We need your help! Please contact the members of the Senate Tourism and Marketing Committee and ask them to send SB153 (permitting the home brewing and winemaking hobby in Alabama) to the Senate floor.

Everything you need to equip you to make this contact is located here.

ABC February Club Meeting

The February meeting of the Auburn Brew Club will be on Sunday February 14th at 3pm.

See you there with your homebrew, tasting glass, and chairs may be needed depending on the turnout.

If you’d like to get more details, just contact us.

Members should log onto the forum for more information and directions.

2010 Alabama Senate Bill 153 (SB153)

Alabama Home Brewing and Winemaking Legalization

We are very grateful to Senator Larry Dixon of Montgomery for representing us as a matter of principle in the Alabama legislature. Here is the Alabama homebrewing legalization bill for 2010, as introduced.

2010 AL SB153

History of Alabama Homebrewing Legalization Efforts (part II)

Well, this is the week. The 2010 Alabama Legislative Session begins. Many Alabama home brewing and winemaking enthusiasts (outlaws because of our enjoyment of a craft that people in 47 other states legally enjoy) are very optimistic and worried at the same time.

We’re optimistic because we managed to secure a Senate sponsor on our own last year without a paid lobbyist. Instead of paying someone to line up legislators who we really don’t have a relationship with and who typically wouldn’t return our calls if we tried to discuss a bill with them, we were very excited to have Senator Larry Dixon of Montgomery step up and carry our bill. And he did this for us after only two things happened: First, he met some of us and sampled some Alabama homemade beer at the 2009 Tourism Bash sponsored by the Alabama Tourism Committee (He really appreciated the Belgian Tripel). And Second, after we made our case to him and asked him to sponsor our bill, he readily agreed. That’s it. Just those two things. There were no PAC-to-PAC transfers and no lobbyist spending of $250/day unreported. Just genuine constituent representation in a state where things typically work much differently.

And not only is Senator Dixon agreeing to carry our bill in 2010, Rep. Mac McCutcheon is agreeing to carry the bill in the House. What’s happening here is something homebrew hobbyists can be proud of. We have a promising outlook for 2010, in spite of the fact that it’s an election year. Imagine that… an election year and we have an awesome Senator and an awesome Representative who are agreeing to help us on a bill that can be easily maligned and misconstrued. Bravo to Senator Larry Dixon and Representative Mac McCutcheon.

But at the same time, we’re pessimistic because of the way things are in Montgomery. There are things that can happen that would be very much outside of Senator Dixon and Representative McCutcheon’s control. All it takes is someone’s willingness to create a logjam, something that seems so easy to do in Montgomery. There’s always opponents, and some who say they’re supporters can easily stab you in the back in secret. That’s the way it is. It’s very much *not* typical to see that “good old constituent representation” in Montgomery. Go down there and see for yourself. Paid lobbyists literally line the hallways. If you’ve ever witnessed it and later sit and recollect, you can easily recall them slithering in and out of the offices. And if you pay attention to what’s happening on the House and Senate floors, you see common sense trampled, and occasionally in the heat of things you can get lucky and catch a legislator looking from the podium to lobbyists in the hallway for guidance. Man, the spigot is open down there.

And then there’s the Southern Baptists and the Alabama Citizens Action Patrol. With them, it’s not so much about money as it is their longstanding dominant influence in Deep South culture and their inclination to want to control the lives of others rather than simply walk with God themselves and be an example to others. Its similar to the way Budweiser Distributors control anything that happens with beer legislation in Alabama. It’s not so much that they want to honestly compete for the loyalties of consumers as to legislatively control market share.

But yet here we are again, a handful of ordinary citizens… simple hobbyists who enjoy a home-based craft similar to the way others enjoy gourmet cooking and competitive barbequeing… rallying, and often sacrificing considerable time and effort, to secure what we feel is a basic civil liberty. And we have two representatives in the Alabama legislature who are willing to give us a voice, not because we’ve funneled large amounts of cash into their campaign funds and lavish trinkets on them, but because we’ve made our case to them that what we’re after is the respectable enjoyment of a down-to-earth hobby. That is really something that Alabama’s brewers and winemakers can be proud of.

If you’d like to be on the Auburn Brew Club’s mailing list to find out from time to time how you can help in Alabama’s legalization efforts, please contact us.

As a Part II to “A History of Alabama Homebrewing Legalization Efforts,” which provided an overview up to the beginning of the 2009 session, here’s a list of milestones, good and bad, that occurred between that writing and now, the beginning of the 2010 session.

Obviously, there’s some negative items in the history, but we’ve really got nothing to hide and no reason not to tell it like it is. We’re just a bunch of ordinary people who like to brew beer and make wine, very often of much higher quaility than can be purchased. We don’t have a central organization. We’re autonomous local homebrew clubs. And we don’t have a paid lobbyist.

And as unlikely and as contrary to the status-quo as it may be, we’ve got some really positive things happening. For example, yesterday, the very first day of the 2010 Legislative Session, Senator Larry Dixon introduced SB153 to permit the production of homebrewed beer, mead, cider, and wine for personal use and facilitate organized tasting and judging events. To be out of the gate on the first day of the 2010 session is really amazing. Homebrewers can truly be proud of this progress and proud that they haven’t sacrificed their integrity in the process.

Stay Tuned (and keep your fingers crossed)!

ABC January Club Meeting

The January meeting of the Auburn Brew Club will be on Sunday January 10th at 3pm.

See you there with your homebrew, tasting glass, and chairs may be needed depending on the turnout.

If you’d like to get more details, just contact us.

Members should log onto the forum for more information and directions.

Big Brew Set for December 12th

The Auburn Brew Club will hold its 3nd annual Winter Big Brew on Saturday, December 12, 2009. Around a dozen brewers are planning to set up each of their brewing systems at one of our member’s house in Auburn, each brewing 5 or 10 gallons. This will be an all-day event, and there’ll be plenty of food and, of course, great beer.

If you’ve never brewed, come on by and observe the process. You may decide you’d like to try it for yourself one day. If you’re a brewer but have never been to an Auburn Brew Club meeting before, come meet some interesting and inspiring people. Everyone agrees that the club meetings and discussions have served to improve their brewing and beer judging skills.

If you’d like to get more details, just contact us.

Members should log onto the forum for more information and should fill-out what they are brewing and bringing.

An Excel sheet will be available on the forum within the next week.

Hope you can make it!!!
Auburn Brew Club

November Meeting

The November meeting of the Auburn Brew Club will be on Sunday November 15th at 3pm.

See you there with your homebrew, tasting glass, and chairs may be needed depending on the turnout.

If you’d like to get more details, just contact us.

Members should log onto the forum for more information and directions.

October Club Meeting is set for Sunday

The next meeting of the Auburn Brew Club will be on Sunday October 11th at 3pm.

See you there with your homebrew, tasting glass, and chairs may be needed depending on the turnout.

If you’d like to get more details, just contact us.

Members should log onto the forum for more information and directions.

AU-WV Tailgate Rained Out

rain

We just decided… no tailgate Saturday. Everything is drenched, and the forecast is even more rain. We are considering the 26th, or 10/31.

AU-LaTech Tailgating Pics

We served up about 28 gallons worth of homebrewed beer samples this past weekend, and we had 130 folks sign our petition to legalize homebrewing in Alabama. This is the third time we’ve had the petition out, and that is the most signatures yet. Last year we collected about 80 at one and 100 at another, so we’re continnuing to get more traffic.

Thanks for coming by and helping with our efforts!

NOTE: It’s alot of work to get 6 beers ready for each of 3 games on 3 consecutive weekends, so we’ve decided to skip next week’s game and wait until the West Virginia game to do this again.

We’re also planning to find a new location down closer to the stadium, closer to the action. If you have any suggestions, please let us know. Several of us are going to walk around for a while down there this weekend and pick a good spot that doesn’t infringe too much on the obviously hard-core, elaborate-tailgate, had the same spot for years groups.

We hope to see you at the West Virginia Game! (NOTE: You must be 21 to get samples, and we ID.)

Oh, what a tangled web of morality we weave.

I’ve been finding out more and more info about the Craft Beer Bill the longer I talk to club members and people in the booze industry in Auburn. Some of it is a little odd, but the latest tidbit I found just really stuck out as ridiculous.

Silly laws go against common sense.
Silly laws go against common sense.

The passage of the Craft Beer Bill happened because an amendment was tacked on at the last minute to appeal to the more conservative folks on the fence. It states that only businesses with on/off premises licenses are allowed to sell high gravity beer.  These kinds of licenses are given to people who conduct tastings or things along those lines. I guess the author thought he was going to marginalize high gravity beer and put it in an environment where there would likely be few children. Fine, that works right?

Well not really. In search of the almighty dollar (or to a lesser extent, customer service), off premises licensees are attempting to change their licenses to on/off premises licenses. Aye, there’s the sticky wicket. You know lots of places with off-premises license; they’re called grocery stores and gas stations.

You know all those “no loitering, no alcohol” signs up around these places. Esentially, those signs will be nullified and downright illegal when the licenses are converted.

I’m pumped, kind of. I can go buy a six pack at Kroger, then go back with my buggy and do my shopping. That scenario is truly silly, but it could happen.

Where do you put people who want to consume on premises? Hasn’t the moral faction who encouraged something like this done themselves a disservice? It won’t just be high gravity beer being consumed by responsible, enlightened adults in these places.

Any beer or wine will be able to be consumed on premises. People who want to consume too much will be in a place where lots of families go and well within their rights to consume in these places.

It just seems like nobody thought this one through to its eventual conclusion. Businesses are going to jump through whatever legal hoops are put in front of them to be able to sell lucrative, legal products. Had the bill passed without this amendment, “morality” would be better served.

Am I way off on this one? Your comments are encouraged.

2009 Auburn Brew Club Tailgating

Pack some food, homebrew, good commercial beer, chairs, tasting glasses, etc. and join the Auburn Brew Club in the grassy park area just south of the Draughon Library for tailgating before and after Auburn’s nightime home football games.

Contact us to sign up for the Auburn Brew Club’s Tailgating email list to be notified of any changes and to find out what excellent, locally-brewed craft beers will be on tap each week. We hope to have at least 6 on tap each tailgate.

We secure our spot each Friday before gameday at 4pm (the soonest anyone can rope off a spot). Other craft beer/War Eagle fans from around the state will be stopping by throughout the day to help us celebrate Auburn football and good beer. Join us for a great tailgating experience.

  • Prior to night games only
  • Typically set up by 10:30-11:00am and leave by 10:30-11:00pm
  • Note: We won’t set up when its raining or when the ground is really soaked.

Check Auburn University’s Gameday page for official information about parking, restrooms, available tailgate areas, etc. Here’s the 2009 Gameday map. Look for the Draughon Library. We’ll be in the park just south of that, usually near the intersection of College Avenue and Roosevelt Drive.

2009 Auburn Brew Club Tailgating
Sept. 5 Louisiana Tech (6:00pm)
Sept. 12 Mississippi State (6:00pm) (taking a break, preparing new beers)
Sept. 19 West Virgina (6:45pm) (rained out)
Sept. 26 Ball State (6:00pm) (considering)
Oct. 31 Ole Miss (possibility depending on time)

Auburn Brew Club Tailgating

Use a chest freezer for lagering

Found a cool article about using a chest freezer with a modified temp controller as a fridge. It uses a tenth of the power that a standing fridge uses. If you’re strong (or know how to use pulleys), it’s perfect for lagering or temp control. Find it here:http://ecorenovator.org/diy-superefficient-fridge-1-kwh-day/