The House Business and Labor Committee of the Montana Legislature has scheduled HB 326 and HB 336 for hearings on Friday, February 6, at 8:00 a.m. The bills represent different approaches to an issue facing the brewing industry. HB 326, dubbed the “Montana Brewers Act” is supported by a coalition formed between the Montana Tavern…
The text of the bill to raise the 10,000 barrel cap for on-premise sales at brewery tap rooms is now available. You’ll find the text of the bill, currently known as LC2093, at this link. (Or click on the bill itself below.) The bill will receive a new designation once it is introduced in the…
At long last, the text of the Montana Tavern Association’s and Montana Brewers Association’s collaborative bill was released late Friday. Industry members in all tiers (and craft beer fans) can finally judge the potential effect of the bill, something not previously possible despite months of press releases and other media correspondence touting broad based support.…
The game of politics is one filed with points and counterpoints. For 2013, the Montana Tavern Association stayed under the radar before launching an all out offensive against the craft brewing industry. When that effort was defeated, the various alcohol industry groups spent the next 1.5 years searching for common ground in Montana’s alcohol licensing…
The Montana Beer and Wine Distributors Association (MBWDA) announced today it has withdrawn from a coalition of alcohol industry groups over a disagreement with the Montana Tavern Association’s and Montana Brewers Association’s plans to seek changes to alcohol licensing requirements during the 2015 Montana Legislative Session. For background on the proposed “license stacking” bill, see…
An “historic coalition,” as its being billed, took center stage at the Montana Brewers Association Fall Conference in October in Missoula to discuss a proposed bill to allow license stacking in the alcohol industry. The bill, expected to be introduced at the 2015 Montana Legislative Session, would effectively allow breweries to directly purchase a retail…
We like to complain about our brewery laws here in Montana (often for good reason), but it is easy to forget Montana does have it better that some. Montana breweries have long been allowed to fill growlers of any size and type for off-premise consumption. Even the sale of beer for on-premise consumption has been…
It is safe to say Montana’s beer fans don’t care much for our state’s on-premise limitations at our local breweries (48 ounces/person/day; only open between 10:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.; only breweries between 100 and 10,000 barrels). Attempts to add additional restrictions during the 2013 Montana Legislature created one of the most watched and most…
On March 21, we ran a post congratulating Mississippi grass-roots organization Raise Your Pints on their successful multi-year effort to make homebrewing legal in their state, leaving Alabama as the only state left prohibiting it. Today, the Governor of Alabama signed legislation legalizing homebrewing in Alabama, also the result of a grassroots efforts of “regular,…
The Montana House Business and Labor Committee took executive action this morning on House Bill 616, which many have dubbed the “brewery killing bill.” At the request of the sponsor, Rep. Roger Hagan, the Committee voted unanimously to table the bill, thus effectively ending its consideration during the 63rd Legislative Session. Friday is the transmittal…