BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- In just a few short years Alabama has gone from being a state without any home-grown craft beer to being one where brewers are cued up like the thirsty at a busy bar.

Since the passage of the so-called "free the hops" law in 2009, Good People Brewing Co., Avondale Brewing Co. and Cahaba Brewing Co. all have opened breweries in Birmingham, and they've been joined by Back Forty Beer Co. in Gadsden and Huntsville's Straight to Ale, Yellowhammer and Blue Pants, among others.

While it may seem that the market has been flooded with hoppy gold, relatively speaking, the brewers and distributors said that what we're seeing likely is just the beginning of a much larger Alabama beer boom

"Look at Portland, Ore., where craft has over a 30 percent share of all beer ," said Matt Kilpatrick, specialty and imports manager at distributor Birmingham Beverage Co. "And that number might be dated now, it might be closer to 40 or 50 percent. We're at about a 10 percent share here in Birmingham. So we'd have to sell three times as much craft beer to match their trend. There's a long way to go."

Solid, statewide data breaking down beer sales by brand or segment is not available, because supermarket scan data and distributors' sales data is proprietary. But according to distributors, brewers and trade groups, Alabama and the South as a whole largely missed out on two big craft beer booms. The first was in the 1970s, and the second in the 90s, according to the Brewers' Association, a Boulder, Colo.-based trade group representing small and independent brewers.

The biggest gains were posted in the 90s, when craft brewers on the coasts - think Sam Adams and Anchor Brewing - started getting sizable chunks of the national market. The volume of beer produced by independents increased 35 percent in 1991 alone, and 58 percent in 1995, with steady growth in the years in between, according to the association. Today, it says, the segment is growing much more slowly, at between 1 percent and 5 percent a year. But because it was so far behind, Alabama's got some catching up to do.

Eric Meyer, a managing partner at Birmingham's new kid on the block, Cahaba Brewing Co., said there's more to it than just liberalized beer laws. The advent of free the hops and its associated laws came at a time when the "locavore" trend was really getting hot. People who are willing to spend a little bit more or go out of their way to buy locally-sourced foods are ready-made converts to the local beer scene.

"People want to eat local. They want to drink local. They want to do everything local," Meyer said. "There's still a very big (local) push."

Executives with two of Alabama's biggest distributors, Birmingham Beverage and Birmingham Budweiser, had different takes on where the new sales are coming from. Birmingham Beverage's Kilpatrick said people's tastes in beer are getting more sophisticated as they're exposed to craft beers, so the new craft sales are cannibalizing mass market beer sales.

But Jay Dobbs, president of Birmingham Budweiser, said many craft beer drinkers are people who enter the market having never been regular consumers of the mass market brands. That's in part, he said, because craft beer has made inroads at the upper end of the market, being served at events that previously offered only wine.

It's also gaining new customers because of old-fashioned marketing, he said.

"We spend a lot of time in grocery stores sampling our craft beers, where the law allows," Dobbs said. "Many times, people walk away from a sampling as a first time buyer of a craft beer."

Dobbs also places craft beer's share of the Alabama market considerably lower than Kilpatrick. But the one thing on which everyone agrees, is that it will grow, and grow quickly.

"We (Alabama) are on the back side of this" trend, said Cahaba Brewing's Meyer. "Good People is doing very well. Avondale (Brewing) is doing great. There's enough room for us to slide in there. I think there's room for Birmingham to have 10 breweries."