Category Archives: politics

SB192 passes House

The vote was 58-25. The Senate will need to concur with the substitute before it is sent to the Governor. That should happen today.

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Session starts at 1pm

They will spend about an hour or two on housekeeping stuff and local bills before moving to the special order calendar. Once they start on the calendar, we’re the seventh bill to be considered. We have invested in some server upgrades since last year, so you should hopefully be able to get the news here [...]

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What to expect Tuesday

Representative Mike Ball has agreed to handle SB192 on the floor of the House. Our bill will be introduced with a substitute pending. (pdf of the substitute). The substitute favored by the House Committee on Economic Development and Tourism must be approved by the full House, so a motion to adopt the substitute will come [...]

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SB192 on the House agenda Tuesday

SB192, the Brewery Modernization Act, will be on the Special Order Calendar for the Alabama House on Tuesday, May 31. We are the seventh bill on the list. Now is a good time to start contacting your elected representatives. Also expect a Legislative Update email on Monday as a reminder. UPDATE: Forgot to mention that [...]

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Patience

I guess I never explicitly explained this here – the Alabama legislature took a two-week break to hold hearings on redistricting. This is a big requirement they have to accomplish after the census last year. During the break, no bills were able to move, including our SB192. They came back this week. We hope SB192 [...]

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Speculation

There seems to be a lot of speculation floating around about why we accepted the substitute and ended the boycott. Some of it is from people trying to support our decision and some of it is from critics of the decision. It was not the tornadoes. I’m sure that had some affect on our psyche [...]

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SB192 passes House committee

The substitute passed committee this morning. Now we work to get on the House calendar for a full vote. Because there is a substitute, the Senate will have to concur with the change. This is a quick procedural vote and should not affect our timeline.

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Details of the substitute

Perhaps the biggest thing we conceded, in the eyes of the distributors, is maintaining the separation between brewpubs and production breweries. Alcohol laws are very specific to individual states, and in Alabama the brewpub license is a special class of license which allows a manufacturer of beer to sell directly to the public. It is [...]

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Boycott ceasefire

A lot happened last week before the storms. For obvious and understandable reasons, however, our legislation has taken a back seat in our lives as well as the lives of other stakeholders. As Alabama begins a return to normalcy, here is an update. With the help of our Senate sponsor, Bill Holtzclaw, and Alabama’s brewing [...]

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Homebrew legalization fails

After some lively debate, HB266 failed a floor vote today 28-45. I’m really quite confused. Some of the No votes don’t even make sense. We’ll put the vote results in the Find Your Legislator tool shortly. HB266 is not a Free the Hops bill.

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