The Georgia General Assembly passed a bill in 2017 that greatly expanded the ability of local, craft beer brewers to sell their product. While the number of craft breweries has grown greatly over the past six years because of the changes to Georgia law, craft brewers say that their hands are tied because of nuances to existing laws that favor corporate breweries and beer distributors.
Right now, a craft brewer can sell all the beer they want on-premise, but can only legally sell what amounts to one case per-day off site. Georgia is one of only of a handful of states in the South that restricts craft brewers ability to sell their products off-site to the public. A bill (Senate Bill 163) that was introduced in 2023, remains alive for consideration in 2024. The bill would repeal a provision in the 2017 law that limits craft brewers to selling no more than 288 ounces of beer per day. Craft brewers in the state say that the beer distributors and wholesalers lobby kept the bill from passing this year, but are hopeful that could change next year.
The bill has a supporter in Northwest Georgia’s Senator Chuck Hufstetler who said, ““We are free-enterprise capitalist people,” he said. “That’s what this is.”
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