Beer in Alabama

Breweries in Alabama produce a wide range of beers in different styles that are marketed locally and regionally. In 2012 Alabama's then 17 breweries, importers, brewpubs, and company-owned packagers and wholesalers employed 60 people directly, and another 12,300 in related jobs such as wholesaling and retailing. Including people directly employed in brewing, as well as those who supply Alabama's breweries with everything from ingredients to machinery, the total business and personal tax revenue generated by Alabama's breweries and related industries was more than $259 million. Consumer purchases of Alabama's brewery products generated another $205 million in tax revenue. In 2012, according to the Brewers Association, Alabama ranked 49th in per capita craft breweries with 10.

For context, at the end of 2013 there were 2,822 breweries in the United States, including 2,768 craft breweries. In that same year, according to the Beer Institute, the brewing industry employed around 43,000 Americans in brewing and distribution and had a combined economic impact of more than $246 billion.

Beer brewing was thriving in Alabama prior to 1909, when Prohibition laws banned the industry. As a result, for much of the 20th century, and until the law was changed in 2009, beer with an alcohol content greater than 6% (alcohol by volume) was unlawful in the state. The Brewery Modernization Act was signed into law in 2011, reforming many former restrictions on breweries' ability to provide a tap room and restrictive regulations regarding brewpubs. The Legal ABV limit of beer in Alabama is currently 13.9%. According to The New Yorker when discussing beer production, "from 2011 to 2012, annual production grew faster in the South than just about anywhere else, with the fastest-growing producers including Alabama (first out of all fifty states)..."

The Code of Alabama defines beer as being fermented malt liquor containing between 0.5% alcohol by volume (ABV) and 13.9% ABV. Before 2009, beer in Alabama was limited to 6% ABV or less. The only other states with similarly low limits were Mississippi and West Virginia.

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