All you want for Christmas is a crowler to go? It probably won’t happen that quickly, but an administrative judge’s recommendation could move the state a step closer to letting bars and restaurants sell takeaway beer in the sealed, 32-ounce aluminum cans that sparked a passionate debate last year when officials cracked down on retailers who used them.
“I’m ecstatic,” said Todd Hayden, owner of Hop Scholar Ale House in the Spring area. ” … We sold a ton of beer in crowlers.”
Until last fall, that is, when Texas alcohol regulators ordered bars simply to stop using crowler-filling machines or risk losing their sales licenses or facing thousands of dollars in fines. Seven retailers, including three in the Houston area, received written warnings.
Selling beer for off-premise consumption in growlers, typically glass or stainless-steel bottles that are capped by hand, remained legal for retailers with the proper sales license. But the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission declared the crowler machines require a manufacturing license to operate. Only licensed brewpubs that make beer and can sell it to-go were allowed to continue using them.
Hayden and others put the machines in storage, but Cuvee Coffee of Austin challenged regulators by continuing to sell crowlers. TABC agents seized its equipment in September 2015. The company eventually sued in state District Court, but it was ordered to go through the administrative hearings process first.
Round 1 goes to Cuvee. In a decision dated last week, administrative judge John Beeler sided with the retailer on all counts and recommended that TABC return the equipment and change its rules.
See here for the background. Basically, the administrative judge agreed that crowlers are not usable in a manufacturing process and thus should not be subject to this requirement. The TABC can accept this ruling and adjust accordingly, or it can file an exception in the hope of getting the judge to change some part of his ruling. The deadline for that is December 2. It may still be awhile after that before the crowler machines come out of storage, but barring anything unusual this is a great result for Texas and everyone who drinks beer. Austin 360 and the Current have more.