Earlier this week on his blog , Coleman Wood argued that "if you have a passion for brewing, by all means, open a brewery. But do it in Florida or North Carolina or Teneseee." The post's title? Don't Open A Brewery In Georgia Coleman's smart and thoughtful. We've been internet pals for a couple years, and recently got together for beers and some great conversation. But the crux of his argument here is wrong. The SB 63 that got passed is far from the SB 63 that was proposed , and even farther from perfect. Hard to argue with that. Will it create jobs? We'll see. How will the Department of Revenue enforce some of the bill's vague language? Only time will tell. Did brewpubs get a less-enticing deal than breweries because they aren't beholden to distributors, and distributors hate that? They sure did.But! The bill's a step in the right direction, the biggest beer legislative progress in Georgia in more than 10 years . And if people stop opening breweries here, Peach State beer laws will be even more fucked.In the wake of SB 63's passing late last Thursday, I tweeted a Georgia brewery timeline originally used for one of my Creative Loafing cover stories last year . I was trying to put into perspective how far our beer culture, as a state, has come. But it was also midnight, I'd had a couple beers, and I didn't realize how out of date that timeline was until the next morning when a pal asked me about a missing brewery. We made that infograph barely a year ago, and it's already totally inaccurate. That's crazy. That's progress.So my friend Dave and I made GeorgiaBreweries.com . It's a timeline of every currently operating craft brewery and brewpub in Georgia. Did you know we have 45 now? I didn't! Each brewery name links away to its website, and I plan to update the list as new places open. If you have thoughts on the site, please reply to this email. I'm looking forward to feedback.Now, of course more breweries doesn't mean better beer. It simply means, well, more beer. But the nice thing about having more beer is that you realize how good beer can be—and how not good it can be as well. If you're worried about shitty, sub-par brews taking over Georgia, relax. As more good stuff comes online, the bad stuff will fade away. It will take time, and some of the mediocre establishments might make it through the fray for various reasons, but mostly it'll be onward and upward. The cream rises, as they say.In the meantime, every brewery that opens is another brewery fighting for better laws. When places like Appling, Augusta, Americus, Brunswick, and Toccoa have breweries, it'll be that much harder for their legislators to say no to better laws. Having more breweries won't solve Georgia's legislative woes, but it will certainly make the opposition less mighty, less entrenched.Coleman also makes some great points in his post. This one is my favorite:"If you are a small brewery in Georgia, your only customer is your distributor...[and] your customer just spent a lot of money to prevent you from making more money. Your distributor wants you to make enough to stay in business, but it really wants to make a whole boatload of money for itself at your expense."Elsewhere, he notes that these Peach State alcohol wholesalers who actually make more money off of hard liquor and macro beer than any of the stuff they've been fighting against under the Gold Dome "still hold immense political power in Georgia." This is true. This is the problem. It's been that way for a very long time. The fact that any beer bill got passed in this climate is a minor miracle.The only way to disrupt the power structure is to open more breweries, educate more consumers, build up the Georgia Craft Brewers Guild, make sure the general public knows about our absurd laws, and keep pressure on politicians. The Georgia Beer Wholesalers Association and its members can throw money around all day, but the unfortunate truth for them is that the only people on their side are other distributors.There are way more of us.Open more breweries in Georgia.