Dump the permit, keep the law

How many homebrewers are there in New Jersey?

Good question.

The state's Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, the agency that now regulates both commercial and amateur brewers by way of licensing and permits, can only tell you that it granted permission to 386 homebrewers in 2010.

But the American Homebrewers Association, the Colorado-based organization that promotes homebrewing and watches those brewers' backs as far as trends and regulations go, says its paid membership from New Jersey likely tops the number of homebrewing permits issued last year by the state.

In fact, those 386 permits from last year are the most New Jersey has issued in the past six years, with the lion's share of them going to patrons of brew-on-premise establishments. You have to go back to 2007, when 359 homebrewer permits were granted, to find a similar peak within that time period.

Why are there more homebrewers than the state can account for? Probably because most people who jump into homebrewing in the Garden State don't know they're supposed to get a permit in the first place. Homebrew supply shops aren't obligated to play cop and enforce the permit rule, and many shop owners say that if they did, they'd lose more customers to Internet sales.

So it's a good thing that there's a bill in the Legislature, A4012, that proposes dumping the 20-year-old permit requirement, plus its restrictions against making or serving homebrewed beer anywhere except the address put down on the permit application, not to mention the provision that allows the ABC to carry out spot checks on permit-holders to ensure compliance.

There's also the matter of the permit's cost – 15 bucks. "The money that they charged to get that, administratively, I can't imagine that it was cost-effective," says JoEllen Ford, owner of The Brewer's Apprentice, a brew-on-premise and homebrew supply shop in Freehold. "What were they hoping to accomplish? I don't understand what the objective was to begin with, what were they trying to stop or prevent."

To many, the introduction last month of A4012 was indeed welcome news. However, the AHA notes a caveat about just tossing the permit regulation. The way the bill sponsored by Middlesex County Assemblyman Craig Coughlin is written, the AHA says, it appears to just rely on the federal legalization for homebrewing. That is to say, you can legally brew up to 200 gallons per adult per household per year.

The federal standard may seem safe, but the AHA says it doesn't leave on New Jersey's books some stipualtion that homebrewing is a legal practice and that the product of homebrewers' efforts will not be taxed. The AHA recommends that states expressly say homebrewing is legal and not subject to taxation. (Coughlin did not respond to several messages left with his office seeking comment on his bill. His district, by the way, is ground zero to the WHALES homebrew club of Woodbridge.)

Homebrewing, once the province of Prohibition-era drinkers thirsty for a beer, was legalized by the federal government in 1978. New Jersey followed suit 13 years later. Exactly why the state decided that Garden State homebrewers would also need a permit each year to strike a mash in their garage has sort of been lost to the mists of time.

But Joe Bair, owner of Princeton Homebrew (along Route 29 in Trenton), says the permit ended up being included in the state's codification of backyard beer-making because of some tradeoffs between homebrewing proponents, notably the late Ed Busch, a former member of the AHA governing committee, and the Legislature.

At the time, there was considerable opposition from restaurant and bar groups concerning craft brewing and homebrewing.

"He (Busch) had to sign off on all this ridiculous stuff," Joe says. "In order for him to get the thing passed, he had to eat that. At the time, he was a member of the AHA governors, and one by one, all the states were making homebrew legal. He didn't want to delay it anymore, he wanted results, so he compromised on that.

"He had to do whatever it took, and the result is he passed the law. That's not to say it's the law he wanted to get passed," Joe says.