That seems to fit into the “capped and closed before retail sale” rule. Seems like retailers could just facilitate the bottle exchange with the brewery, even if it is stupid, inefficient and expensive to add a wholesaler in the middle and prevent the brewery from selling them themselves.

However, we also have a provision that states, “No retailer shall purchase any alcoholic beverage from any person other than a wholesaler licensed under this chapter.”

The beverage is the beer, in this case in a keg. If a retailer buys the keg from a distributor, it has complied with this provision. This provision, as stated here, isn’t violated if the retailer fills a bottle from that keg and sells it.

Ms. Merriss continues:

So if a retailer for consumption off premises wanted to sell “growlers”, they might be able to do so as long as they purchase those through a wholesaler and not directly from a manufacturer and they are labeled as a unit for individual sale.

If she means the growlers have to be purchased from the distributor, I don’t agree. The “beverage” has to be purchased from the distributor, not necessarily the vessel in which it is contained. Again, in the case of a retailer, the keg would be purchased from a distributor (as opposed to Twain’s selling its own beer in a growler, which maybe is a grey area).

The only issue left would appear to be packaging. There, Ms. Merriss writes:

We define package as a “bottle, can, keg, barrel or other original consumer container as labeled and provided by the manufacturer for single unit sale.” So to the extent the “growler” is not capped and closed before retail sale, then it would not be able to be sold in the City of Decatur.

Certainly a growler can be capped and closed by a retailer before it is sold — a screw-on cap should suffice, since that is how many beers are presently sold anway. The issues are “original consumer container provided by the manufacturer for single unit sale.” So it would seem that Ale Yeah can’t manufacture the growler — it would have to be provided and labeled by the beer manufacturer.

If any manufacturers make growlers, then I think there is a very good argument that a retailer could (a) purchase the growler, (b) fll them from kegs purchased from distributors, (c) screw on a cap before sale, and (d) sell the growler to you or me. I’d even add that if you have a growler manufactured by Sweetwater, for instance, the reatiler couldd fill it with ANY beer purchased from a distributor and then sell it at retail, so long as it screws on a cap before handing it across the counter.

Maybe I am wrong about this — again, there may be more to the analysis that this. But if the City takees the position that this is illegal, I would love to know why, and whether they are stretching current law to prohibit it. It would seem to me that the distributors’ lobby should have no opposition to this. They just want to sell beer, and if the kegs have to be purchased from them, they’re stillmaking a sale. How the beer is sold to the end user should be of no concern to them.