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It's been 10 years since my Dad passed away, so I think it's safe to admit now that he was an outlaw.

Back in the 1980s, before Free The Hops and the legalization of craft brewing in Alabama in 2009, he brewed his own beer in in a plastic vat in the bathroom closet. Pop's pilsner tasted like something brewed in a bathroom.

Today, craft brewers are out of the backrooms and garages (I seriously hope Dad was the only one brewing in the bathroom, because, yuck) and winning national recognition.

The industry is growing tremendously. In 2012, Alabama had 16 breweries, brewpubs and contract brewers. This year that number has nearly doubled to 31 and several more are set to open soon.

When the Legislature convenes in March, the Alabama Brewers Guild will be waiting with a bill that it believes will further expand Alabama's craft beer industry.

The bill would create a special Craft Brewers License. It would classify a craft brewer as one that produces less than 2 million barrels per year (a distinction that would qualify them for a federal excise tax break) and allow craft brewers to sell their product for off-premise consumption.

"Currently, Alabama law has one license for a packaging brewery - the manufacturer license," said Dan Roberts, executive director of the Alabama Brewers Guild. "The manufacturer license was written into law when there were no breweries in Alabama and it was obviously written with a large brewery like Anheuser-Busch (now part of international conglomerate AB-Inbev) in mind."

Alabama and Georgia are the only two states that don't allow off-premise sales for breweries, meaning that brewers can sell beer by the glass on site in tasting rooms, but customers can't take home a case or a keg. Alabama wineries, however, are allowed off-premise sales.

These small breweries are forced to work through Alabama's "three-tiered" system of brewer, distributor, retailer. Distributors may oppose this bill, which they fear will cut into their share of the growing craft beer dollar, but I don't believe that allowing brewers to sell a few take-home growlers from their taprooms will make much of a difference.

In fact, at a business of craft beer forum we held at AL.com a few weeks back, the brewers agreed that people who buy a sample at the brewery are more likely to look for their favorite brew at the local grocery or package store later.

The money from off-premise direct sales will likely go toward improving brewers' production capacity and sales staff, not buying a fleet of trucks and commercially licensed drivers to compete with an established distributorship. More importantly, this bill would put Alabama craft brewers on a level playing field with their competitors nationwide.

Craft beer is one of the few things making Alabama seem cool and progressive these days (unlike my Dad's bathroom beer).

Let's all urge our state legislators to continue that momentum by supporting any bill that helps this new and promising industry keep growing.