Growler law boosts microbrewing industry1 min read

A bartender fills a growler full with beer Tuesday, Sept. 25, at a brewery. An new Arizona law makes it legal to take home beer from breweries as long as the container is sealed and has government warning labels.
Tom Hood/Larson Newspapers

Get your growlers, beer taps in Arizona are now able to fill more of them at more places.

The new Arizona Growler Law went into effect in August as House Bill 2606, allowing any “bar, beer and wine bar, liquor store, beer and wine store, or domestic microbrewery licensee” to dispense beer into a growler or resealable bottle with a screw-on top or Grolsch-style swing top.

Nanobreweries — those extremely small licensed brewing operations with fewer than four barrels on hand — are also able to dispense beer under the new law.

A growler is a large, reusable takeout beer bottle with a screw-on top and generally a handle. Although sizes vary, growlers are usually 64 ounces, holding about the same volume as a six-pack. Growlers are sold by craft brew pubs, microbreweries and nanobreweries to permit beer aficionados to fill up from the tap rather than purchasing one-time use bottles or a keg. Many growlers are sold with a nominal glass deposit to the brewery, refundable when the user returns the bottle.

For the full story, see the Friday, Sept. 28, edition of the Sedona Red Rock News.

Christopher Fox Graham

Christopher Fox Graham is the managing editor of the Sedona Rock Rock News, The Camp Verde Journal and the Cottonwood Journal Extra. Hired by Larson Newspapers as a copy editor in 2004, he became assistant manager editor in October 2009 and managing editor in August 2013. Graham has won awards for editorials, investigative news reporting, headline writing, page design and community service from the Arizona Newspapers Association. Graham has also been a guest contributor in Editor & Publisher magazine and featured in the LA Times, New York Post and San Francisco Chronicle. He lectures on journalism and First Amendment law and is a nationally recognized performance aka slam poet. Retired U.S. Army Col. John Mills, former director of Cybersecurity Policy, Strategy, and International Affairs referred to him as "Mr. Slam Poet."

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