For 20 minutes, I had been on the phone with Sean Mossman, listening to him talk defeatedly about the status of beer laws in Oklahoma, where brewery taprooms could only sell beer up to 3.2% ABV. The restriction had held back growth of the industry in The Sooner State, he said, because revenue streams enjoyed by so many businesses across the country couldn’t be accessed for Oklahoma brewers.

He explained how Oklahoma’s best-selling craft beer, their F5 IPA, a 6.8% West Coast-style IPA, helped fuel growth from outside his taproom, where COOP Ale Works and every other brewery in the state could never serve more than 12 ounces worth of samples of “full strength beer.” It constantly led to confused visitors and lost profits.

Oklahoma was set to change that law in August after state legislators and the governor passed SB 424, which would have lifted restrictions on breweries to sell all their beer directly to customers. But the state’s alcohol board stepped in days before SB 424 was to become law, saying their own interpretation wouldn’t allow for on-premise consumption, a practice that is helping plenty of breweries thrive in today’s competitive marketplace.

“What really concerns us is there are a lot of smaller breweries in the early stages of their development that intended to derive significant revenue from their taproom and incurred debt to prepare for this,” said Mossman, director of sales and marketing for COOP.

But in that moment, something changed. From the other side of the phone call, I heard someone talking to Mossman. The voice was excited. I may have heard a clap or holler. At 4:29 p.m. on Aug. 23, Attorney General Scott Pruitt announced the law was going forward. On Aug. 25, COOP would finally be able to sell F5 directly to customers.

“This is pretty awesome,” Mossman said, his tone changed, now upbeat and excited. “It’s a big win for all of us, but a bigger win for small guys that needed to be put on a level playing field to compete and grow.”

Our exchange was a perfect example of the fine line many breweries have to walk. Across the country, there are more examples of breweries and taprooms thriving thanks to “own-premise” sales of beer directly on-site at a taproom. But as states crawl toward ending Prohibition-era laws, there are plenty of businesses who are still working within somewhat archaic governmental restrictions.

If we’re celebrating the arrival of “own-premise,” these breweries are momentarily left behind, waiting for their invitation to the party.