Imagine you’re on a tour of one the state’s 34 craft breweries. You’re sampling the brewer’s offerings – stouts, pilsners, pale ales – when you find a beer you really like.

So you ask to buy a pint at the bar or a six-pack to take home.

Right now under Georgia law, you can’t.

“They can’t pay for beer in any shape or form at all at a brewery,” says Nick Purdy, who runs craft brewery Wild Heaven near the Avondale MARTA station.As heard on the radio

Georgia is one of five states that ban this kind of direct sale between brewers and the public. Currently brewers like Purdy work around it by selling merchandise or tasting glasses while handing out a limited number of free samples, but Purdy and a growing legion of Georgia craft brewers want to see the law changed.

The Georgia Craft Brewers Guild, the trade organization representing the state’s craft brewers, is looking to do just that. The guild says it’s currently working on a bill to allow direct sales between beer makers and customers, and it could brew up a heated debate with the state’s alcohol distributors in the upcoming legislative session.

Georgia is on what’s called a three-tier system and has been since the end of Prohibition. It separates the brewers, the wholesalers who distribute the beer, and the retailers.

“We don’t want to change that,” says Purdy. “We just want this one small edit to the existing code that would allow those who come into our doors – give them a chance to take a little bit home with them or drink a little bit while they’re at the brewery.”

Purdy points to South Carolina, which just turned over its law banning direct sales. He says brewers there have reported a revenue bump of $40,000 a month. If the same thing happened here Purdy says he’d be able to hire at least three more people to help run his operation.

Brewers have tried before to change the law in their favor but have come up unsuccessful. But this year, the Craft Brewers Guild has hired its own lobbyist ahead of the legislative session. They’ve also started a fundraiser and an online petition that’s received more than 10,000 signatures.

“This is a small business issue, and it’s also a small government issue,” says Nancy Palmer, who heads the brewers guild, “and we’ve gotten a lot of positive support all the way from the right-leaning to the leftist left-leaning.”

The distributors see a problem with brewers selling their products directly to customers.

They argue the move would financially cripple those who currently sell beer and undermine the long-standing system.

“Craft brewers have doubled in size in the last four years as far as the numbers of brewers, the quantity of beer they produce is huge,” says Martin Smith of the Georgia Beer Wholesalers Association. “It’s greater than all the states around us, just short of what North Carolina is doing in the craft industry.”

Martin says that’s proof the system is working.

“Some of them want to make some extra capital, and that’s great,” Smith says. “We think that they could make that extra capital without potentially jeopardizing or changing the current regulatory system.”

For now the law remains intact: no beer sales from the brewers.