It wasn’t intended to save the fledgling craft brewery movement in Minnesota, which was doing pretty well anyway.

But state lawmakers’ decision to allow Sunday sales of beer growlers was seen as a way to give small brewers a helpful income stream and provide another small opening in the state’s long-standing blue laws that prohibit Sunday sales.

Craft breweries with tap rooms had only been around since 2011, when the Minnesota Legislature passed the Surly Bill. The change let small brewers sell their own product in-house, but it also to let customers take a growler or two home, and the 64-ounce brown jugs soon became symbolic of the state’s return to its brewing roots.

While tap rooms could be open Sundays, they could not sell growlers to go on those days. That fit in with the state’s long-standing ban on off-sale of beer, wine and liquor on Sundays, which in turn led some brewers to stay shut on that day. Those who were open had to explain to customers why they couldn’t take a favorite beer home.

“They’d get upset,” said Jill Pavlak of Urban Growler in St. Paul. “They’d think it was our policy but we had to explain that it was not policy, but state law.”

That changed in early 2015 when the Legislature passed a liquor bill that included gave local governments authority to allow growler sales on Sunday. Cities and towns raced one another to be the first to approve the change. Among the first were the towns of Buffalo, 40 miles northwest of the Twin Cities, and Montgomery, 56 miles southwest.

“One good thing about being in a small town is that if you need something to happen fast, it can,” said Charles Dorsey, the proprietor and brewer at Montgomery Brewing, a small batch brewer with the same name and in the same building as a brewery started 130 years ago.

Montgomery hadn’t been open Sundays before the law change. But it quickly took advantage of the council’s vote and has built up a steady stream of business. Beer tourists from the Twin Cities who made the trip down on Saturday now can come on Sunday as well.

Brewpubs, the subset of operations that brew beer as part of a traditional restaurant, also benefited. Scott Kolby, one of the owners of Red Wing Brewing, said his Sunday revenue doubled. “It made Sunday another Saturday.”

Pavlak at Urban Growler said Sunday growler sales have “exceeded our expectations. Our Sunday sales are greater than some of our other days.”

Not everybody is seeing a Sunday growler boom, though.

Sunday sales are mixed at Dangerous Man in Northeast Minneapolis. Sarah Bonvallet, a co-owner and creative director of the brewery, said they did not begin opening on Sunday until November, and that, so far, Sunday sales do not match other days. She attributed that to the fact that the brewery had always been closed on Sunday, and that customers are only slowly realizing the change.

Dorsey of Montgomery Brewing said the Sunday growler sales law produced one change that produced mixed emotions. Before, the brewery was open to the public Wednesday through Saturday and reserved Monday and Tuesday for beer production. That left Sunday as an actual day off.

“I can see how liquor stores like having that day off,” Dorsey said, while adding that he doesn’t think state law should mandate Sunday closure.

Callaghan reports for MinnPost.com, a Twin Cities-based online newspaper.