If you thought soda bans were silly, Florida’s beer container laws are nothing short of outrageous.
In Florida, you cannot buy a 64-ounce growler, a reusable glass container popularly used by craft breweries. You can buy 32-ounce (quart) or 128-ounce (gallon) growlers, but only in a brewery–Florida also bans the sale of growlers in grocery stores or pubs. And breweries must depict themselves as selling their products to “promote tourism” in order to be in compliance with Florida law.
Now the Crafted Keg, a craft brewery in South Florida, is suing the state over its growler-size regulation, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reports. Florida is currently one of three states to ban the containers.
In other parts of the country, growlers are a trendy way to purchase craft beer, and they’re sold widely in grocery stores and brewpubs. The 64-ounce is the industry standard—a quart is too little, and a gallon often too much to get through before the beer goes flat.
The Crafted Keg’s suit claims that Florida law puts craft breweries at an unfair disadvantage, since they can’t afford to produce larger quantities of beer like a large brewery. The suit calls the law “irrational.”
“Growlers don’t drink and drive,” the suit from the Pacific Legal Foundation reads. “People who drink too much alcohol drink and drive. And there are laws on the books to address that concern. The growler prohibition does not address it.”
This is a long-standing fight in Florida, and bills have tried to repeal the ban in the past, although Anheuser-Busch distributors work to suppress them.
