Local Craft Beer

Local craft beers on tap at Wish You Were Beer Bottleshop & Taproom in Madison, Ala. (Bob Gathany /bgathany@AL.com)

(Bob Gathany)

I share somewhat a common bond with craft brewers, if only by distant relations. Family lore has it that a great uncle had something of a taste for adult beverage that was, shall we say, inhibited by certain governmental regulations of the day.

My great uncle built a contraption underneath my grandparents' porch to enable him to quench his thirst. All was well and good -- until the fateful day when his still blew up and took my grandfather's porch with it.

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So I can appreciate the brewers' plight and progress.

The most remarkable thing about the success of craft brewing in Alabama may well be the Mt. Everest of legal restrictions initially stacked up against it, just like my poor great uncle faced.

There is a law saying no brewery may open in a county if that county didn't allow brewing for public consumption before Prohibition.

Sip on that a second.

The mountain isn't quite down to speed-bump size yet, but it's shrinking.

That's been made easier by the "Free The Hops" movement that made inroads in at the state capitol in Montgomery. The organization began in 2004, became incorporated three years later and by 2009 began winning some battles in the legislature. First, a law permitting "higher gravity" beer - that's brew-phemism for "gets you a buzz more quickly" - and another for larger containers. It won some privileges already afforded the wine and spirits industry.

When that happened, craft brewing mushroomed. It brought national fame to some of the state's craftsmen. It brought some more tax dollars into the state.

One more quest is left, says Carie Partain, vice president of Free the Hops.

"We want craft brewers to have the opportunity to sell small amount of product to go from their breweries, like wineries here and like brewers do everywhere else," Partain says. "It would be a great thing for consumers and certainly supports us."

Beyond that, Partain says there is a goal now to educate and inform, to tell consumers what beers should be served with what foods, etc.

Personally, a designer beer is fine every now and again. I'm slightly more refined than the college days of $4 12-packs of Old Milwaukee or lugging cases of Schlitz to the Talladega infield, but my fridge tends to house familiar standbys, those 12-ounce soldiers standing attention in brown and green bottles.

(Note to some craft-beer aficionados: Bring your nose down a little closer to perpendicular. Haughty cheap shots at regular beer and regular-beer drinkers earn you no friends. Do you go into Baskin-Robbins and chastise the guy ordering chocolate?)

That said, I appreciate the artistry of the industry and how Huntsville has been an incubator for microbreweries. With new properties being planned, the city is at least aiming for the hype of "Napa Valley of breweries" that accompanied the announcement of two breweries at the old Stone Middle School property.

Carry-out permission for those and all the state breweries would be an appropriate next step. It's never made much sense to me that in some places you can't buy a six-pack at a convenience store to take home to watch a game on Sunday - but you can go to a bar and order six beers.

Craft beers are typically more potent. They're not designed (or priced) for a-beer-for-every-touchdown consumption. Newbies in the craft beer world need to know that and the brew pubs must stay diligent in monitoring customers.

There's intrigue in what the craft beer industry is doing. There is need for more common-sense legislation. But the industry and the consumers must also recognize that with more freedom comes even greater responsibility. The whole thing blows up if they don't accept that seriously.