Those who have been interested in craft beer for a while are probably familiar with Michael Jackson, The Beer Hunter, author of several influential books on beer and the host of the popular show, The Beer Hunter, on Discovery. Mr. Jackson’s contribution to beer culture starting in the 1970s continues to have an impact on the craft beer revolution.

Mr. Jackson was born on March 27, 1942 and passed away from Parkinson’s Disease on August 30, 2007. In his honor, the J. Clyde is hosting a celebration this month. In order to participate, you must buy an advance ticket for $20. Only 100 tickets will be sold and the money will be donated to the National Parkinson Foundation in recognition of Mr. Jackson.

The ticket will give you the opportunity to purchase each of the following four featured, rare beers:

• Avery Hog Heaven – 12 oz. snifter
• Bell’s Batch 9000 – 1/2 imperial pint
• Good People BlackHefe – 0.5l weizen glass
• Yazoo Rye Saison – 12 oz. snifter

The cost per beer is $6. The J. Clyde donates $3 per beer sold on March 27 to Free the Hops. And it’s worth a special mention that Bell’s Batch 9000 was a “one-off” release — a beer only brewed one time, never to be brewed again.   Only one keg was shipped to Alabama.   This event is your only chance to taste Batch 9000 on draft, ever.

You can purchase tickets at the J. Clyde (cash or credit) or via PayPal to jerry.hartley@mindspring.com.

Remembering the Beer Hunter ^[pdf]

As promised, here is the LRS version of the substitute.

Brewery Modernization Act substitute^[pdf]

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments or in the forums.

Earlier I mentioned that representatives from the ABC Board had expressed some concern about the language of our bill. The Legislative Reference Service is currently crafting a substitute bill to the Brewery Modernization Act that should make everyone happy.

What’s a substitute? An amendment is when you want to make some small change to a bill. A substitute is when you want to change so much that you’d rather just rewrite it from scratch. A substitute, like an amendment, will have to pass a vote on the floor.

How is this going to go down? Probably like this: When our bill is up on the Special Order Calendar, the legislative body (Senate or House) will first vote for a BIR on our original bill. After we’ve passed the BIR, our sponsor will make a motion to substitute our new bill. That will take a majority vote. After that, our new bill can be voted on for final passage. When it passes, it goes to the other chamber.

What are the changes? I’ll post the substitute when it’s available, but here’s the biggest change. In our original legislation, we wanted to remove the distinction between a brewpub and a distributing brewery and combine them into one license that allowed any brewery to sell both on-premises and to retailers (through wholesalers). For various bureaucratic reasons I don’t understand, the ABC didn’t like that.

Don’t fret. Under the substitute, existing and new breweries will be permitted to have on-premise sales and to sell to retailers, and without having to meet arbitrary restrictions about which county it’s in and how old the building is. It will still allow for tours with samples. Here’s how it will work:

• Level 1: If you want to make beer and sell it to wholesalers, you have to apply for an alcohol manufacturing license. This will be the same license that Good People and Olde Towne have now.
• Level 2: If you are a brewery with the above license and you want to sell your beer on-premise and have tours with samples and stuff like that, you have to additionally get a brewpub license. This is the license that Montgomery Brewing has now.  The difference is that, under our legislation, a brewery would still have the privileges from the above license. Another difference is that we removed all of the crazy restrictions. It can be located in any wet county or wet municipality, at any location a regular brewery can be in, and is not required to have a restaurant.

So when it comes to what we are fundamentally after, there’s little difference except that a brewery would have to pay two licensing fees if they wanted the on-premise sales. The language of the substitute will make it clear that any brewery, new or old, will have both licenses available to them.

Our Tuscaloosa Chapter has organized a very cool event featuring southern breweries. There are still a few tickets left available online. At $10, this is a great deal. You get to meet and sample beers from the following folks:

• Lazy Magnolia of Kiln, MS
• Terrapin of Athens, GA
• Sweetwater of Atlanta, GA
• Good People of Birmingham
• Back Forty of Birmingham
• Olde Towne of Huntsville
• Abita of Abita Springs, LA
• Yazoo of Nashville

It’s on Saturday, March 13 from 4:00 to 6:00pm. The cost will cover unlimited samples, a 3oz sample glass and special discount on Southern Beers at the after party. I plan on making it so I hope to see you there.

After we passed the appropriate Senate and House committees, the Brewery Modernization Act was put on an unofficial temporary hold. A representative of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board informed us that they wanted some language in our bill to be clarified before it progressed further.

Our people are talking to their people and all that stuff to get the details worked out, but the gist of the matter seems to be taxation. They want to make sure it’s clear that beer sales at the brewery pay all appropriate taxes. Actually, free samples are taxable as well. As I understand it, none of their concerns are anything we would have a problem with – the current version just isn’t clear on a few subjects. We certainly don’t want to promote ambiguous legislation.

The rules on taxes and samples would be the same as are imposed on Alabama wineries.

This being politics, there was an amendment made to the bill which helped it to pass. This amendment restricts the transportation of homebrew to no more than 20gallons at a time, whether to clubs, competitions, or whatever, but this does not affect the quantity that can be brewed which falls under the Federal guidelines.

I now have the updated wording of the bill, which now says:
6 (c) Not more than 20 gallons of beer, mead, cider, or wine produced under this
7 section may be removed from the premises where it was produced
8 and may be transported for personal and noncommercial uses,

Nothing is guaranteed, not in politics, but this is a very exciting stage, and massive kudos to Alabama’s homebrewers for passing the Senate! Next stage – the House!

Because we don’t want to take credit away from others who rightly deserve it, a public service announcement.

This year’s Homebrew Legalization bill is not a Free the Hops initiative. Although we fully support SB153 and will utilize our resources to help its passage, the bill is primarily being promoted by a loose alliance of homebrew clubs and the American Homebrewers Association. So even though you may see us promoting it here and in other Free the Hops communication, proper credit goes to several individual homebrewers and the AHA.

I had just seen a few blogs that credited us with the bill. The Brewery Modernization Act is technically the only Free the Hops initiative in the legislature this year, and all of our resources are dedicated to that initiative. When the Homebrew Bill gets on the special order calendar, however, we do intend to issue a call to arms to our members and supporters.

The primary means of communicating information to our members and supporters is the Free the Hops newsletter. Although we also use this blog, Facebook, Twitter, and the FTH Community to inform and discuss our issues, all of our followers should be signed up for the email newsletter.

The newsletter is typically sent out once a month, although we also send out special emails on occasion. Examples of non-monthly emails include action alerts when our legislation is scheduled for a floor vote or before the Governor, notices of events that Free the Hops is hosting, and (once) a special email to let everyone know the Governor has signed our bill and it has become law. We don’t use the subscription list to spam you, we usually only send an email a month, and we don’t sell or distribute your information to other folks.

Sign up for the Free the Hops newsletter

Our Senate flavor of the Brewery Modernization Act, SB328, passed out of the Senate Tourism and Marketing Committee quietly yesterday. It will likely be re-introduced to the full Senate tomorrow.

Also of interest, SB153, the Homebrew Legalization bill, passed out of the same committee and received its second reading in the Senate.

Senator Bobby Singleton is the chairman of the T&M Committee. The other key members of the T&M Committee are Senators Barron, Smitherman, and Z. Little.

The best way to contact the senators is to fax and email today through Sunday, and then voice call his office Monday and Tuesday morning before the 10:00 committee meeting. If you are not sure what to say, these are the relevant points they need to hear:

* Please move SB153 for legalizing homebrewing to the Tourism and Marketing Committee’s agenda.

* this is the same bill that passed the committee unanimously last session

* SB153 legalizes a hobby enjoyed by thousands of Alabamians and which is legal in 47 other states

Faxing is an excellent way to communicate during off hours like over the weekend, because paper in the in-box demands attention. Email can run into problems because your message can easily be lost in the bulk, and may not be read until it is too late, but is still worth sending.

During business hours, voice calls to the senators’ receptionists are the most productive means of communication and is very quick and easy to do.

Legal homebrewing in Alabama is well overdue. Please just take a couple of minutes of your time to help make homebrewing legal in Alabama.

The available contact information for the Committee members is:
Bobby Singleton (334) 242-7935, FAX (334) 242 -7191, bsingle164@yahoo.com
Lowell Barron (334) 242-7858
Charles Bishop (334) 242-7894
Del Marsh (334) 242-7877
Myron C. Penn (334) 242-7868, myronpenn28@hotmail.com
Quinton T. Ross Jr. (334) 242-7880, quinton.ross@alsenate.gov
Rodger Smitherman (334) 242-7870, rodger.smitherman@alsenate.gov
Zeb Little (334) 242-7855, zeb@zeblittlelawfirm.com
J.T. Waggoner (334) 242-7892, FAX (334) 353-8255, jabo.waggoner@alsenate.gov