OUR VIEW: Repeal ban on home-brewing in wet counties
Published: Tuesday, September 25, 2012, 7:05 AM
By Mike Hollis, The Huntsville Times
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Fifty years ago and before, it made sense for the state to have a law banning the
sale and possession of the equipment and ingredients to make beer and wine to drink at home.
At the time, the sale and possession of any sort of intoxicating drink or beverage was illegal in most Alabama counties, and sheriffs spent a lot of time and made a big to do when they busted up moonshine stills deep in the piney woods.
Times and attitudes change, and that's why the Legislature should repeal the law that bans the sale and possession of home beer brewing equipment and ingredients in cities and counties where alcohol isn't banned.
The subject comes up because of a raid agents of the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board staged last week at a beer and wine store in Birmingham, Hop City Craft Beer and Wine. Three agents seized immersion chillers, carboys and other supplies, including literature on home brewing. (The ABC insists this was not a "raid" but an inspection, and that Hop City had been warned that home brewing equipment had to go.)
ABC agents really have no choice but to make a seizure in a case like this because that's what the law requires. Here's what it says: "It shall be unlawful for any person, firm or corporation in this state to manufacture, sell, give away or have in possession any still, apparatus, appliance or any device or substitute therefore to be used for the purpose of manufacturing any prohibited liquors or beverages."
Many of the items used in home brewing, including buckets, grain and yeast, can be found in grocery and home improvement stores, although not all of it in one place. That's apparently why Hop City made headlines.
David Peacock, an attorney for the ABC Board, explained it this way to The Birmingham News' Madison Underwood: "You can have sugar, you can have malt, you can have hops, you can have tubing, copper and everything else, but if you put it all together in a store and market it like it's going to be home brewing stuff and have a book about how to do it, it's a problem."
If you know anything about Alabama, you won't be surprised to hear that it's is one of only two states where home brewing is illegal. Of course, Mississippi is the other one. There was a time when residents of every small Alabama town with an Episcopal congregation chuckled about the little old woman who made muscadine wine, only for communion, you understand. The sheriffs in these places never dared mess with the free exercise of religion.
Alabama's law on this point for communities where alcoholic beverages are legal is an artifact of the prohibition era. This is the Age of the Internet (and UPS). For a trifling sum, you can have delivered (inconspicuously) to your front door every piece of equipment and ingredient you need to brew up all types of beers to drink at home.
For some, home brewing is a hobby as satisfying and rewarding as any other, maybe more so. And so long as beer and wine can be bought legally in a community, there's little reason to outlaw the local sale of the stuff to make them.
By Mike Hollis, for the editorial board. Email:
[email protected].
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