The 2014 Georgia legislative session ended with only one beer-related victory to speak of. Really, it’s only a half-victory, since the law that passed this year just fixes a law that passed last year. But I’m splitting hairs.

finally passed near the end of the session. It’s good that the homebrew competition law was clarified, but now it is up to local governments to enact their own regulations to actually make these competitions happen. Which means it’s up to the public to demand that their city governments enact these ordinances. As Captain Planet would say: The power is yours!

Sidenote: The icing on the cake of HB 737 is now it is legal to transport homebrew out of your home to drink elsewhere. While it would be naive to think that people aren’t already doing this, legalizing it does a lot to make this hobby more respectable in the eyes of the public.

The big failure of the session was HB 314. Once last year’s brewpub study committee released its asinine “Doggie Bag” recommendations, which failed to take into account how carbonation works, the craft beer community lost interest and the House Regulated Industries Committee had little reason to pay the bill any attention for the remainder of the session.

In the closing days of the session the House passed House Resolution 1599, which creates yet another study committee. This time, however, the study will look at the three-tier system as a whole and recommend possible changes to it. After last year’s study committee — who, again, seem unaware of the science of beer— I’m skeptical that any of its recommendations will be favorable to Georgia’s craft beer industry.

The House Regulated Industries Committee’s pockets are lined with campaign contributions from alcohol distributors and their lobbyists. According to Project Vote Smart, 15 of the committee’s 19 members received a total of almost $40,000 from distributors and their lobbyists last campaign cycle. The top five contributors were the Georgia Beer Wholesalers Association ($13,800), the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of Georgia ($8,245), distributor Diageo ($4,500), the Georgia Retail Spirits Council ($2,850) and Eagle Rock Distributing ($2,100).

What I’m getting at is that I have my doubts that this committee will recommend anything that is beneficial to Georgia’s craft beer community. What we’ll probably get is the tired old line that comes from distributors and lobbyists about how “the three-tier system is working fine.”

The three-tier system is not a sacred cow. It was originally created to stop breweries from creating tied houses that choked out competition. The problem is, from a craft beer perspective, distributors have become the new tied houses.

Distributors hold immense power over breweries, and if you disagree, read about what happened to Dogwood Brewery in the early 2000’s. It pretty much takes petitioning the state to get out of your distribution agreement, and even if you win, you’re probably still going out of business. I know a bar manager who has been forced to stop ordering certain Georgia craft beers because the distributor’s sales rep, who you have to order the beer from, is too difficult to work with.

This is why all craft breweries have to hire sales reps even though distributors are supposed to be their sales reps. No rep is going to bend over backwards to sell five kegs of craft beer when they can place one phone call and make their commission for the month off one order for Bud or Miller.

I’m not saying the three-tier system needs to be completely dismantled. But give craft breweries more latitude to sell limited amounts of their product directly to the public. Adopt an exception like in Montana, where taprooms can sell beer to the public but they can only stay open until 8 p.m. and they have a four-pint limit per person. Even better, make brewery taprooms subject to the same laws as Georgia wineries, which already can sell directly to the public. Why do wineries get more leniency where breweries do not? Wine has twice the alcohol content of your average beer. Is it a double standard as to the character of wine drinkers versus beer drinkers? Yeah, I just played that card.

I’m going to use these elected officials’ own argument against them. Beer tourism and craft beer is becoming big business. Breweries and their taprooms create jobs. Stifling the growth of craft beer in Georgia is costing us jobs. North Carolina landed the East Coast expansions of New Belgium, Sierra Nevada and Oskar Blues, and the rumor is that at least one of those breweries bypassed Georgia explicitly because of our restrictive alcohol laws.

I challenge the House Regulated Industries Committee to not bend to lobbyist pressure and use this new study committee to take an honest look at Georgia’s three-tier laws and how they can be improved. I’ll gladly volunteer my expertise to testify in favor of our breweries. I’m a guy who took one political science class in college and who has a blog that’s read by literally dozens of people. What more do you need?