Students interested in brewing their own beer may soon have an easier time transporting beer from their homes to festivals or competitions.
More than 30 years after Congress passed a law legalizing at-home beer production, the Louisiana House of Representatives is now considering a bill that would explicitly define home brewing in the state.
The House began legislative session Monday and will consider House Bill 503. If passed, the bill would define and regulate what’s legal in the state.
Home beer brewing became federally legal in 1978 with Public Law 95-458, but individual states were given the option to enact a law either concurring with or different from federal law. Home brewing was illegal in Utah until March 2009 and is still illegal in Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma.
“Home brewing is getting to be a bigger industry,” said Rep. Patrick Connick, D-Marrero, who is sponsoring the bill along with Rep. Michael Danahay, D-Sulphur. “It would make it so local officials would have an idea that this is allowed under state law instead of having to search other laws.”
But home brewing has been a hobby for some for years. George Parr, a member of the Covington-based home brewing association Mystic Krewe of Brew, regularly brings his beers to festivals and competitions for public tastings.
“I’ve been brewing since 1983, and it never gets old,” the 68 year old said. “I’d never want to turn something like this into a job.”
But some have just began turning home brewing into a hobby. Jacob Talley, a 28-year-old home brewer from Baton Rouge, got the idea to begin home brewing after tasting a homemade beer he didn’t enjoy.
“We were drinking a strawberry beer one time and said to ourselves, ‘We can do better than that,'” Talley said.
Mike Nealy, president of the Shreveport home brew club Malt Munching Mash Monsters, said the club approached Danahay last year about putting legislation together.
“There weren’t any statutes governing home brewing in Louisiana, and we’re interested in trying to grow the hobby in the state and show people what’s possible if you brew your own beer,” Nealy said. “We’d like to show the public what craft beer’s all about — this bill would be good to help us in that.”
The bill designates the amount of beer brewers can bring to festivals, family gatherings and other events.
John Church, a professor at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center, said passing a law would allow the state to explicitly limit how much beer home brewers can produce and bring to events.
“By adopting the limits, they’re essentially allowing it now and sanctioning it but regulating it at the same time,” Church said.
A home brewer can bring up to five gallons of homemade beer to a “bona fide local exhibition, contest, competition, fair or festival where homemade beer is being tasted and judged by the general public at no cost to the person tasting the beer,” according to the current bill.
That number goes up to 20 gallons if the home brewer is bringing the beer to a national event. The event is required in all cases to have been issued a special-events permit by the commissioner of the Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control.
“We don’t know when to tell somebody ‘no’ unless we know what’s going on,” said Murphy Painter, commissioner of the Louisiana Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control.
Home brewers would be permitted to bring two gallons of beer to an event not holding a special-events permit, according to the proposed law. Homemade beer could not be sold for profit, and home brewers could not receive compensation for presenting their beer at festivals.
“Home brew is exactly what it says: People have a right to consume beer for their personal consumption, inside their home and in limited quantities and for limited benefit,” Painter said. “Once it expands from there, there are plenty of laws that make it illegal.”
Contact Ben Bourgeois at [email protected]