Last year, a bill was introduced in the Georgia General Assembly that shook the very foundations of our bourgeois alcohol distribution machinery and threatened to tear the shackles off the beer-drinking proletariat, finally freeing them to pursue a more just society where the thirst of all is quenched!

Just kidding.

House Bill 314 simply would have allowed growlers to be sold to-go at brewpubs and breweries. But if you listened to the bill being debated in the House Regulated Industries Committee, you would have thought that its passage was going to result in the Department of Revenue being burned to the ground and all of Georgia’s alcohol distributors entering a Thunderdome-like battle to the death.

This committee met three times over the fall to hear testimony from brewpub owners, wholesalers and their lobbyists (one of whom was named Stony, I kid you not), and a few people trying to get liquor tastings legalized. Most of the testimony centered on brewpub growler sales, meaning that production breweries will probably be left out of any subsequent legislation.

The final report was released last week, and it contains a set of recommendations to guide future legislation. The recommendations (and grammatical errors) are as follows:



Retail locations should be allowed to engage in tastings of malt beverage and wine on licensed premises as permitted by local ordinance or resolution. This will not apply to distilled spirits.

Growlers up to 64 ounces per-person should be allowed to be sold by brewpubs for off- premises consumption if food was consumed on-premises with the purchase; this is somewhat similar to Senate Bill 55 (2008) known as “Merlot-to-go.” Specifically: one partially consumed growler per patron may be removed from brewpub premises so long as:

1. The growler contains malt beverages manufactured on the premises;

2. The patron purchased and consumed a meal on the premises and consumed a portion of the growler containing 64 ounces of malt beverages manufactured on the premises;

3. The partially consumed growler is capped by the patron and placed by the licensee or its employees in a bag or container that is secured in such a manner that it is visibly apparent if the bag or container has been subsequently opened or tampered with, and a dated receipt for the growler and meal shall be provided by the licensee and attached to the bag or container; and

4. If transported in a motor vehicle, the bag or container with the capped growler is placed in a locked glove compartment, a locked trunk, or the area behind the last upright seat of a motor vehicle that is not equipped with a trunk.

Allowing patrons to put a partially drank growler in a doggy bag is not an ideal solution. In fact, it’s a little silly when you think about it. The beer would be flat by the time you got home unless the bar filled up the growler, you took one teeny tiny sip, then they immediately capped it. What brewpubs even sell their beer by the growler? Why do you need another container for the container?

Still, this “Doggy Bag Bill” is a baby step in the right direction, and I’ve always said that relaxing Georgia’s stifling beer regulations will only be accomplished with baby steps. The question now is if HB 314 get passed this year. The General Assembly operates on two-year terms, so the bill isn’t dead yet. It will be, however, if it doesn’t pass this year. To make matters worse, legislators have every intention of making this one of the shortest sessions in recent memory.

It’s an election year, and a federal court order has moved the primary date from mid-July to May 20. As longtime Atlanta political reporter Tom Baxter wrote recently, this means that off-days will be few, controversy will be avoided and everybody should be out the door before St. Patrick’s Day.

Any bill that takes aim at the three-tier distribution system will invite some controversy, and this bill also isn’t the kind of big-deal legislation that can get the entire General Assembly to drop what they’re doing and debate it. That’s two strikes.

If I was a betting man, my money would be on this bill being swept into a corner (with a lobbyist’s broom) and forgotten. But a positive recommendation from the committee and a vow from the Georgia Craft Brewers Guild to push hard for its passage has given me reason to believe.

HB 314 has a long road ahead of it over the next couple of months.

Note: I should clarify that if the committee’s recommendations are used, they will mostly likely be added to HB 314 rather than introducing a new bill. This is called a committee substitute and is fairly common.