The Washington Beer Blog is hosting this month and here is the topic du Jour
“These days people take growlers for granted. In my neck of the woods, growlers are a relatively new phenomenon. I don’t recall exactly when they appeared on the local beer scene but it could not have been more than eight or ten years ago. Maybe they existed in obscurity before. My memory fails me. Today growlers are everywhere. I think. Growlers are very common around the Pacific Northwest, anyway. I cannot speak to their popularity elsewhere. I’d love to know.”
Boy does this topic come at an awkward time. Or maybe it is destiny.
I have been blogging about the growler situation in California for awhile to the point where I even put a petition widget on my website. I got some interest and some offers of help but the wheels have been spinning in the same spot until earlier this month when someone influential in the Twitter-sphere mentioned it and I suddenly got a massive (for me) influx of signatures on the petition.
Which is great but I have a new-ish job and the time to work this issue the right way is just not there for me. But I do not want this momentum to wane and blink out. So here is an unpaid job opportunity for the California beer lover with connections to breweries and the tourism arm of the State of California as well as the people who govern liquor laws in the Golden state. Maybe that is one person or three (or more).
Here’s the deal: The State of California does not allow plain growlers to be filled by breweries. The growler must be purchased from the brewery who is filling it. So, you can’t take your Eagle Rock Brewery growler to Golden Road and get it filled. Or vice-versa. And you can’t have a mason jar or any other container filled with your favorite beer like they can in Portland. That means some people have second homes filled with growlers from all the different California brewers or they have to pick and choose which growlers to buy and only get fill-ups at those places.
My proposal is simple. Have a statewide “Brewed in California” growler that can be filled at participating breweries from north to south and all points in-between.
This project needs someone to take the helm and drive.
That’s a sad state of affairs, is it still the same law now? I love growlers and they have come ahead in leaps and bounds since this post… check out the ones at http://www.ikegger.com they are double walled so stay cold for up to 24 hours and they have a tapping system that will let you enjoy and your leisure, staying fresh and frothy for up to a month! Awesome stuff but a very expensive habit if you have to buy one for every brewery you want to go fill it at!