Free the Growlers

Craft breweries apart of the Alliance of Minnesota Craft Breweries have been working hard to get a bill passed and signed that will allow growlers to be sold in small breweries. Castle Danger Brewery along with Fulton, Indeed, Surly, Schell’s, Lift Bride, and other members, have been working together on the bill that will allow them to sell growlers in their establishments. For some, they will be reselling them once again. On Friday, May 20th, the Minnesota House and Senate passed the bill that is waiting on Governor Walz’s signature.

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The bill would increase the cap to 150,000 barrels a year. "Back in 2012, a group of breweries, including us and some of the other alliance members, got together and got the law changed to twenty thousand barrels, says MacFarlane. At that point, we did want it to be two hundred and fifty thousand barrels; that is what the taproom level is. There was a lot of opposition to that, and twenty thousand was an arbitrary number that was select, and come back when you get to that point is what we were told!" Jamie MacFarlane is the Co-Owner and Chief Financial Manager at Castle Danger Brewery.

When growlers were prohibited from being sold, MacFarlane said that Castle Danger took a big hit. "We lost about thirty percent of our taprooms revenues. It was pretty significant.

With Governor Walz signing the bill into law late Sunday evening, more work will be need to be done inorder to sell growlers again. "It will go into effect the following day, and then we will need to get our off-sell license reinstated by the state. So, it will take a little bit of time, and we do not know what that time is yet; but once we get that off-sell license, we will turn around and sell growlers immediately after that,” MacFarlane explained.