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For the past five years, people across Alabama have been building a grass-roots effort to legalize the hobby of making beer and wine at home for personal, non-commercial use. Homebrewing was a popular activity across the country until Prohibition nearly a century ago made it illegal. In 1978, President Carter signed the bill that re-legalized homebrewing federally. Since then, 48 states have followed suit, leaving only Alabama and Mississippi needing to repeal the Prohibition-era laws. Due to information being widely-available on how to brew small quantities of beer, most Alabama homebrewers got into the craft without even realizing that it is illegal here!
The American Homebrewers Association estimates at least 5000 homebrewers live in Alabama, out of the 1 million homebrewers in the entire United States. It is critical to the state's homebrewers that this legalization effort be successful, because otherwise the threat of prosecution will always be present. Good, productive citizens who otherwise are completely law-abiding are technically considered criminals today, with implications that could cost them their jobs, homes, and families.
Alabama Bills have been reintroduced this year to legalize this hobby.
If one passes, Alabama homebrewers will have the same privileges as
citizens in most other states to make and possess homemade beer and
wine. The only way
the Alabama lawmakers will pass the bill is if enough of their
constituents contact them in support of the bill to alleviate their
fear
of voting in favor of any alcohol-related bill
in Alabama.
In 2009, Utah legalized homebrewing. In 2010, Oklahoma successfully
passed its own homebrewing legalization law. This year, Mississippi has
homebrewing bills pending in its legislature legalized homebrewing by passing a new law on March 18. If you agree that
Alabama should not be left behind as the only state in which the
homebrewing hobby remains illegal, then
please call or write your state legislators to let them know.
