It sucks if we can’t have homebrew in the banquet. Hopefully there are ways zoning and licensing and the rest can be swung to work.
After last year’s fight to get homebrew at a “festival” event legalized, the AHA sure as hell can’t thumb their nose at the rules laid down by the legislature and hope to ever get anything passed in the state again.
Want to know who’s to blame? After all - the ABC really couldn’t care less about homebrewers in general. We’re not a big enough potential issue to worry about with all the other crap they have to deal with in our state. But you know who they deal with when they do deal with homebrewers? The guys who are pretending to be commercial breweries and pouring at a beer festival or bar. Maybe their local really loves their beer and wants to put it on tap - doesn’t matter, it’s a no-no. Maybe they’re in the midst of a kickstarter campaign to open a brewery and what better way can there be to drum up funds than through a festival tasting? Still really doesn’t matter. But those are the two classes of homebrewers that the ABC deals with on a semi-regular basis. Hence the explicit stipulations in the law concerning separating homebrew from commercial beer. Normally for a day long beer festival, not a big deal - the conference is it’s own special beast with extra complications.
Thanks for the background info. Have any of those types you mentioned gotten their hands slapped for those actions? Curious due to some local thing that are borderline.
Of course, it’s obvious that that AHA did not cause the situation with the law. The law is what it is and we have to comply. But I would hope that in the future more consideration would be given to something like this when selecting a conference site. I fully realize that due to the growing size of the conference there are increasingly limited choices about where it can be held. But I hope that accessibility of homebrew becomes a more major concern in the future. And I can say that because I’m not on the GC any more and YOU guys have to deal with it!
Just curious, the conference was in San Diego a few years ago (was unable to make that one). Have the CA beer laws changed since then to cause this sticky commercial/homebrew situation? I will be at this year’s conference and forum meet-up, BTW. I hope some sort of compromise can be worked out.
Yeah, the laws have changed. And in fairness to the AHA, I have discovered that this law was implemented after the conference had been booked. I should have known better, huh? I let my fever (Brazilian crud) and prejudices (favoring homebrew over commercial beer) cloud my thinking. It’s an unfortunate situation this year that we’ll all deal with one way or another and hope that it doesn’t happen in the future.
What happened was two years ago a non-profit group (non-beer or wine affliated) up in the Bay Area decided to check with the CA ABC to make sure they were in the clear to auction off homemade beer and wine from members at a charity auction to benefit Firefighters. The ABC said “wha? no, that’s an illegal sale of an unsaleable product”. So, the group worked with the CA Legislature to change the law and make it allowable for the benefit of a non-profit to auction/offer your beer to members of the organization/event.
Problem is - the law that got passed explicitly forbade organizations mostly made up of homebrewers or for the promotion of homebrewing from taking advantage of the new law. It was, in effect, to prevent someone from setting up a non-profit like “Drew’s Cure for His Wallet” and then selling my homebrew via the law as a loophole to avoid all the commercial controls on brewing.
So - that killed the Southern California Homebrewer’s Festival because the ABC said “nope, you’re a homebrewing organization and this would be a felony.” (Seriously, criminal charges were threatened.)They had been looking for a reason to shut down the fest because it rubbed someone the wrong way. It would have shut down the AHA conference as well. The ABC also clarified that to their interpretation of the law - these events would have always been illegal, they just hadn’t commented on it before.
New law passed last year - allows homebrew orgs to host festivals and tastings, etc with some restrictions - largely around clear separation and labelling of homebrew from commercial brews.
Homebrew will be plentiful at the National Homebrewers Conference!
We do have to deal with an unfortunate law that was passed after we booked the conference, but it’s not a huge issue, and I still think that San Diego is a great place to host the National Homebrewers Conference.
The legal issue is that homebrew and commercially produced beer cannot be served in the same place. Either can be consumed anywhere within the conference. For the Homebrew Expo, half the hall will be dedicated to vendors serving professionally brewed craft beer, the other half will house the Social Club and vendors serving homebrew. You can walk between them with beer in your glass no problem, it’s just a matter of what gets serve where.
Likewise with seminars, we will have seminar rooms where homebrew will be served and other rooms where commercially-made craft beer will be served. What is in your glass when you walk into those rooms is your business.
We are looking into the situation for the banquet. As Denny mentioned, there’s no way we can manage a multi-course beer paired meal for 1600+ people solely with homebrew. With Lagunitas sponsoring this year’s conference I’m confident there will be great tasting beer served during the banquet. While I am doubtful that California ABC will be amenable, we are looking into whether attendees bringing their own beers to share with their friends (i.e. not serving to random attendees as with Club Night) during the banquet is okay.
Every state has laws that create challenges for hosting a conference that is all about beer and where both commercially made beer and homebrew are served. No state will allow us to do everything we’d like to do if we could. We can deal with that.
Seriously, San Diego is going to be awesome. The logistical issues we have to deal with due to California law will be minor and I really don’t expect it to have much if any impact on the great time attendees are going to have at the conference.
Makes you wonder if at some point there will be folks sitting around firing up the bong and commenting on the sketchy dude with the pager who is obviously trying to score a 12er of home brewed RIS
