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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

• The roots of homebrew club activities in Alabama were traced back to 1983.
• We continued to ask Senator Little to sponsor our bill following his letter of August 29, 2008, in which he relayed the Legal Advisor to the Governor’s position that Governor Riley would veto any alcohol related legislation that did not provide for a referendum vote. We simply wanted a bill introduced by one of our own representatives in order to make some type of progress. Senator Little continued to decline, expressing instead his preference for a generic initiative and referendum bill. Even though he declined to sponsor our bill, Senator Little did provide helpful advice and other assistance throughout the 2009 session.
• The Montgomery Advertiser ran a front-page, top-of-the-fold article on homebrewers’ struggle to find a bill sponsor. This article was published on a Thursday, a day when every legislator receives the Montgomery Advertiser on his or her desk.
• Utah became the 46th state to legalize homebrewing, leaving only Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky and Oklahoma.
• Alabama home brewers and winemakers hosted a Tasting for Alabama Legislators. Approximately 70 people attended, including senators, represenatives, legislative staff and an Alabama ABC official. No warnings were issued and no citations were issued.
• The day following the Legislative Tasting, a House Representative who had attended promised to sponsor our bill in the House.
• Alabama homebrewers again serve delicious Alabama homemade craft beer to legislators and other state and local officials at the 2009 Tourism Bash, sponsored by the Alabama Tourism Council. We were informed afterward that a beer wholesaler lobbyist in attendance had complained to other sponsors about our presence, and that complaint made its way up to Tourism Bash officials.
• Senator Larry Dixon introduces Alabama Senate Bill 492 to permit the production of beer, mead, cider and wine for personal and noncommercial uses, without tax or license.
• Gary Glass of the AHA discussed Alabama homebrewing legalization on the Brewing Network
• On March 26, 2009, SB492 passed the Senate Tourism and Marketing Committee Favorably by a 7-0 vote.
• The House Representative who had many weeks earlier promised to sponsor our bill in the House, changed his position after keeping us hanging through most of the 2009 session, leaving us no time to initiate with a new potential sponsor and dooming the effort to introduce the bill in the Alabama House that year.
• We pushed to get a vote on the Senate Floor.
• Researchers at Auburn University’s College of Human Sciences (Department of Nutrition and Food Science) initiated a study on “Homebrewing as a Serious Leisure Pursuit”
• We finally made it onto the Southern Baptist’s radar.
• The Mobile Press Register published an article on Alabama homebrewers’ efforts. Alabama ABC officials state in interviews that they are not interested in prosecuting typical hobby homebrewers.
• In late 2009, the Kentucky Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) provided their interpretation of Kentucky law as permitting the home brewing hobby inside one’s home for personal use, making Alabama one of only 3 states remaining where the home brewing hobby is illegal post-Prohibition.
• The Rocket City Brewers host two educational events attended by Alabama House Representative Mac McCutcheon, in whose district many RCB’rs reside. Rep. McCutcheon contemplated sponsorship carefully, conferred with Senator Larry Dixon and ultimately decided to help homebrewers in the House, along with a large number of other co-sponsors.
• In early January, 2010, we were informed by the Alabama Tourism Council that their Planning Committee had decided against extending an invitation for homebrewers to participate in the 2010 Tourism Bash for legislators, citing the initial objection raised in Committee as the complaint raised in 2009, and further supported by a new objection that homebrewers cannot sell their products and present no tourism draw to Alabama.

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)!

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.)

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.

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)