Homebrew Sales Could be Legal to Sell With a Home Cottage Production License

What About Red Tape?

Early Opposition to the Bill

I have a friend who's really into politics, and more importantly, digging into what bills congress are voting on to see what they include. He found something on homebrew sales that might be pretty cool for us homebrewers. In fact, really cool.Apparently the Bill,has additions to the the Cottage Food Production licenses. Well technically it will legally allows amendments to be made so that states can vote to add them to their individual cottage production licenses (as each state has their own). If the bill passes, it could allow homebrew sales as early as 2018 in some states based on voting schedules.Of course there are always rules and regulations to these sorts of things. And this is certainly no exception. If you're selling alcohol, the government wants their cut for sure. But there are also a few other limitations.As it stands now, federal will be set at a current rate of 10$ / beer barrel (31 cents per gallon), plus your states rate/barrel. It will up to the brewer to report and pay those taxes to the city on a month to month basis. This is in addition to the Cottage License which must also be purchased first (price varies by state).Your label will be how the taxes are procured on a federal level, which makes things easy. A special sticker will be sold on ttb.gov that has a seperate Surgeon General warning for beer & wine produced under the cottage license. There will only be two sizes available at the moment (12oz and 22oz). By purchasing the stickers, you're paying your federal alcohol tax for those bottles ahead of time, which is why the two stickers will be priced differently (remember you're taxed on volume). There hasn't been any word on how these will differ.The brewing location and all actions and equipment related to the brewing process must be located in the resident's kitchen (similar to most regular cottage production regulations). Also it has to be a separate kitchen area, so sorry open concept folks. Lastly, also picked from a typical cottage license regulations, no pets should live on the premise because of allergy concerns for consumers.The amount of homebrew you can sell is actually limited to your standard 100 gallons / person up to 200 gallons /household (if two adults reside in the home). This limit would be shared with your standard homebrew limitations. So you can't sell 200 gallons and make 200 gallons for yourself. You can only produce 200 gallons in your home max, whether it's sold or consumed. Several craft breweries had concerns about flooding the market with lack of quality beer flooding the market, and the volume limit has put most of those concerns to rest.Those opposed to the "Homebrew Sales" bill have given the standard response, with concerns of consumers going blind, or catching some other rare illnesses such as botulism. Yeah, Someone said those things. Other concerns have been similar to those states which were picky about growler sales and what constitutes open containers. Beyond the typical bad apples, the bill as a whole has a good chance of passing given the current political climate, but if you want to really push it through you just need to let them know we mean business.Call your congressman today and tell them: