Brian Lyman

Montgomery Advertiser

A report recommends legislation to give small breweries, wineries and distillers greater power to sell their products.

The Alabama Alcohol Beverage Study Commission accepted the report after a brief meeting Tuesday. Sen. Paul Sanford, R-Huntsville, the chairman of the commission, said the proposals recommend changes that would allow those entities greater power to sell and market their products.

“We’re trying to level it out,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ve got it completely level at this point, but we’re trying to.”

The report broke down its recommendations for breweries, wineries and distilleries. The report recommends allowing brewers and brewpubs making less than 60,000 barrels of beer a year to sell roughly a case of beer to a customer per day, as well as allowing delivery of up to two kegs of beer for delivery for charitable or nonprofit events. The report would also recommend repeal of laws restricting brewpubs to historic districts.

“Even with brewpubs or the breweries themselves and the distillers and the wineries, they all want the ability to introduce their product to people at the retail level at the establishment,” Sanford said.

The report recommends allowing wineries to establish an off-premise site approved by the state’s Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) board for sales. Sanford said many wineries are in remote locations, and the provision might help them in their marketing. The report also recommends allowing distilleries to sell up to 750 millilters of their product a year for off-premise consumption.

Bills on the proposals await drafting. Sanford said the commission would work with the Alabama Law Institute to create legislation.

Those in the beer industry seemed satisfied with the report. Donna Horn, a Anheuser Busch distributor in Troy representing the Alabama Wholesale Beer Association, said there was “definitely a niche” for craft beers and small brewers.

“They have a lot of distribution problems and things like that that this will help them with,” she said. “I think part of the give and take on this is that they don’t retail that case cheaper than what a grocery store would retail that for.”

Dan Roberts, executive director of the Alabama Brewers Guild, approved the recommendations.

“The off-premise sales is probably what my guys are most interested in, so we look forward to seeing that,” he said. “At the end of the day, we’re a business and we’re looking to grow market share for craft beers.”

The report does not address privatization of ABC stores, which some legislators have suggested in the past.

The Legislature will begin the 2016 Regular Session Feb. 2.