{"id":16684,"date":"2014-11-19T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.guysdrinkingbeer.com\/?p=16684"},"modified":"2018-02-06T14:16:23","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T20:16:23","slug":"makers-illinois-homebrew-alliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guysdrinkingbeer.com\/makers-illinois-homebrew-alliance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Illinois Homebrew Alliance and How They Changed Illinois’ Homebrew Law"},"content":{"rendered":"
Our “Makers<\/a>” series highlights the people who make the beer, the decisions and the policies that shape the craft beer landscape in Illinois.<\/em><\/p>\n A little over two years ago a pair of homebrewers spearheaded an effort to change Illinois’ homebrew laws. With the help of the American Homebrewers Association, Peter J Rzeminski II and Richard Placko, formed a coalition of Illinois homebrewers, began the exhaustive process of negotiating a bill from the inside out and worked to rally support once an agreement was reached.<\/p>\n Their plight began a few months prior, after the state began cracking down on homebrewers taking part in festivals — stating homebrewed beer can only be consumed in the home.<\/p>\n Today we pull back the curtain on the Illinois Homebrew Alliance, the lengthy negotiations on both HB 6299 and HB 630 and get a firsthand look at Illinois beverage industry politics.<\/p>\n Guys Drinking Beer: <\/strong>For starters, Richard and Peter, can you give us a bit of background into your homebrewing background; what club(s) you’re involved with, how long you’ve been homebrewing and the beer or beers your most proud of brewing? And can you also outline your roles with the Illinois Homebrew Alliance?<\/em><\/p>\n Peter J. Rzeminski II<\/strong>: I am a member of two clubs actually; the PALE<\/a> homebrew club and the Spent Grain Society<\/a>, both of which are serving the western suburbs.\u00a0 I first started making homebrew in 2002 and did it off and on for about 5 years before taking a short break.\u00a0 I picked it back up in 2010 and have not looked back since.<\/p>\n The beer I am most proud of is my Chocolate Porter.\u00a0 It was the third beer I had ever made back in 2002.\u00a0 Having no idea what I was doing, I grabbed a bunch of ingredients, all extract, some chocolate grains to steep, picked some random hops, and brewed it.\u00a0 To my surprise, it was “not bad.”\u00a0 I’ve been tweaking the recipe over the years as I got better at brewing and as my equipment changed. Today, it is hands-down my favorite beer and one that gets made at-least twice a year.<\/p>\n I did not have an official title in the IHA, but I was calling myself the “Lead Negotiator” on the mailing list to give a name to what I was doing.\u00a0 Richard was handling the conversations with the politicians and I was the one talking to the ABDI (Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois).<\/p>\n Richard Placko<\/strong>: I have been brewing off and on for 20 years. For the last ten years, I have been involved with the Silverado Homebrew Club in St. Charles, IL. We meet on the third Thursday of each month at the Tap House<\/a> in St. Charles. Currently I am helping the club with communications and helping to get projects up and running for the group.<\/p>\n The beers I’m most proud of brewing recently are different American IPA’s. Recently I’ve been using Citra, Amarillo, and different varieties of hops from New Zealand. In fact, I have a pound of Citra hops and a pound of New Zealand Rakau hops sitting in my fridge waiting to be used.<\/p>\n My role with the Illinois Homebrew Alliance was to communicate with the bill’s initial sponsor (Representative Keith Farnham) and work with him on timing as well as figuring out the next steps after we introduced the legislation.<\/p>\n GDB: <\/strong>It was a lengthy process to get to the point that this bill was signed into law, in the summer of 2013. So let’s go back to 2012 and create a timeline from there. The Illinois Liquor Control Commission starts cracking down — seemingly out of the blue — on homebrewers taking part in beer festivals. If I recall correctly, a festival in Peoria that April was the first to draw the ire of the commission. What was the initial reaction of the homebrew community when this crackdown began?<\/em><\/p>\n Rzeminski<\/strong>: My memory of that time is that there was a lot of anger and confusion among the homebrew community.\u00a0 I had joined PALE a few months prior and volunteered to run the booth for PALE at the second Midwest Brewers Fest<\/a>.\u00a0 The very first MWBF, in 2010, had a homebrew tent and PALE served homebrew to the patrons.\u00a0 So when the ILCC decision came down of homebrew being “for the home only and not the public” (paraphrasing), the news spread like wildfire.\u00a0 The Board of Directors for the MWBF spoke to the officials in Plainfield where the fest is held, and the decision was made to remove the serving of homebrew from the fest.\u00a0 We were not the only ones affected; fests across the state were making similar decisions, and the clubs were not happy.<\/p>\n Placko<\/strong>: When the crackdown on serving homebrew at beer festivals began in 2012, my homebrew club was puzzled and a little bit angry. We had been serving homebrew at a local fundraiser at Porter’s Pub<\/a> in Elgin in previous years and had positive feedback with no problems at all.<\/p>\n I was so frustrated with this, that I contacted my local representative in September 2012 about getting a bill drafted. I also sent an e-mail to Gary Glass at the American Homebrewer’s Association<\/a> for help. Gary then put together an e-mail group of Illinois homebrew clubs as well as homebrew shops so that we could communicate about the legislation.<\/p>\n GDB<\/strong>: In the fall of 2012 State Representative Keith Farnham tells the Southtown Star he is going to draft legislation to address this crackdown and make it legal again for homebrewers to partake in festivals. Had you guys formerly assembled the Illinois Homebrew Alliance at that point or did a lawmaker taking some initiative encourage homebrewers to organize?<\/em><\/p>\n Rzeminski<\/strong>: I believe that Silverado had already been in contact with then Rep. Farnham about getting the law changed, so those actions came before the IHA had really done anything.\u00a0 Richard joined the IHA as Silverado’s representative, and we ended up combining forces.\u00a0 Rep. Farnham submitted his bill<\/a> while the IHA was still working on fixing the language of his draft.\u00a0 That submission is what became HB 6229 and we worked to try to “fix” it in that early session.<\/p>\n Placko<\/strong>: Farnham was using legislation that was based on Wisconsin law. He ended up submitting the early draft of the bill because he explained that getting a bill through the Illinois legislature required that we first get it on the schedule and then it would be modified in later sessions. Peter and I both found out later that different associations and trade groups always get involved when a bill involving alcohol is submitted in Springfield.<\/p>\n The Illinois Homebrew Alliance was assembled in September 2012 by Gary Glass and the next few months involved a lot of communication via e-mail. Peter was instrumental in assembling all concerns and working to get a bill drafted that would fit the needs of as many clubs and stores as possible. The clubs and the AHA were fired up about the legislation and took the initiative of working through the legislation updates.<\/p>\n GDB<\/strong>: How did you two wind up running the policy and communications side of things for the organization?<\/em><\/p>\n Rzeminski<\/strong>: Richard and I just kinda stepped forward and starting organizing things.\u00a0 I was talking to the lawyers on the side and was feeding them all the requests the IHA members had regarding the law.\u00a0 Andrew Kriz used to be a legislation drafter in Springfield, and he used those skills to create the initial version of the IHA sponsored draft bill.\u00a0 Now, this draft was separate from what Rep. Farnham had submitted as HB 6229.<\/p>\n Placko<\/strong>: Communication just started via an email group that was set up. There were a number of clubs that were frustrated with what the Illinois Liquor Control Commission was doing to eliminate homebrew at festivals. Because of that, the clubs had a lot of passion and ownership over the issue and were all seeking to get the law changed.<\/p>\n GDB<\/strong>: The Fall Veto Session came and went with no action on the bill. When did it occur to you, or did it, that the initial path for this bill wasn’t progressing as you had hoped?<\/em><\/p>\n Rzeminski II<\/strong>: It was our intention to get HB 6229 replaced by the IHA draft, and submitted that Fall, but we had not accounted for a few things; politics, political power, and special interest groups.\u00a0 We had not realized that attempting to change the law in Illinois, particularly the Liquor Control Act, meant that you needed to deal directly with the *other* groups that had an interest in the liquor industry in Illinois.\u00a0 It was at this point that Rep. Farnham asked us to speak to the representatives of the Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois<\/a>, Wine and Spirits Distributors of Illinois<\/a> and the Illinois Licensed Beverage Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n We really had no ideas about how to go about contacting them.<\/p>\n We spoke to Rep. Farnham who told us who to contact, but it was you that did the actual introduction between myself and Bob Myers<\/a>; then VP of Government Relations for the ABDI.\u00a0 It was with the ABDI that I did 99.9% of my negotiations.<\/p>\n GDB<\/strong>:\u00a0Speaking of, when you worked with Bob Myers, he was VP of Government Relations at the ABDI and Bill Olson<\/a> was President. How were your dealings with Bob and Bill?<\/em><\/p>\n Rzeminski<\/strong>: I did not have any direct dealings with Bill; everything I did was with\/through Bob.<\/p>\n My dealings with Bob went extremely well.\u00a0 They were interested in ensuring that their Three Tier System stayed in tact, and that anything we were seeking did not disrupt that.\u00a0 Seeing as homebrew cannot be distributed or sold in any commercial manner, there were not many issues at contention.<\/p>\n Through Bob, we were able to get the WSDI to take a “neutral stance” if we dropped any mention of the word “wine” in the draft.\u00a0 Bob also spoke to the ILBA behind the scenes and relayed their wishes to us.<\/p>\n Now, the ILBA had a number of things they wanted, so we needed to do most of our “hard” negotiations with them through Bob.\u00a0 The main result to come out of that was the judging section regarding who can and cannot judge a beer (we passed it by the Beer Judge Certification Program<\/a> to ensure it not break their system).\u00a0 The other major piece affected by the ILBA was not allowing homebrew to be sampled on a “retail licensed premises.” That is “word art” for any location with a commercial liquor license.\u00a0 This gives us the weird situation where you cannot give homebrew samples away at a bar, tavern, or grocery store, but you can give them away at someplace like Solemn Oath because they do not have commercial taps; they only sell their own product.<\/p>\n Chicago Brew Werks<\/a> was originally blocked from being able to offer homebrew samples to their patrons because they had commercial taps.\u00a0 Once they dropped those commercial taps and switched over to only serving their own product, they are now open again, should they choose to do so.<\/p>\n In the year since the passage of Public Act 98-55, Bob has helped the IHA out a few times when a specific circumstance came up and we needed clarification as to how it pertained to the law.\u00a0 He either gave us advice or put is in direct contact with one of the ILCC Attorneys to discuss the matter with them.<\/p>\n GDB<\/strong>: As the bill was being negotiated and revisions were being made, how were those proposed changes relayed to members of the Illinois Homebrew Alliance and were members able to vote up or down those proposed changes?<\/em><\/p>\n Rzeminski<\/strong>: At the beginning, I did not communicate a lot back to the larger IHA group.\u00a0 This was not because I wanted to exclude them, but because the changes were being made so quickly, and because these were items we had no room to negotiate on.\u00a0 Once we got past that first round, I was able to bring the modified draft back to the group, get their feedback on it, and then go back to the ABDI and find a compromise on the issues we in the IHA wanted changed.<\/p>\n GDB<\/strong>: Can you guesstimate how many email exchanges and phone conversations you had with the ABDI in hashing out the finite details of this bill?<\/em><\/p>\n Rzeminski<\/strong>: Taking a look at my email history, it seems to be about 200 emails with the ABDI and easily that many between myself and the IHA.\u00a0 There were, maybe, 20 phones calls between me and Bob Myers that I can recall.<\/p>\n GDB<\/strong>: And did you ever hit a point you didn’t think a compromise would be reached?<\/em><\/p>\n Rzeminski<\/strong>: At the very beginning, yes.\u00a0 The ABDI and other groups had only seen the version Rep. Farnham had written by himself, so in their minds, they were thinking the IHA wanted something very different from what eventually became HB 630.\u00a0 It took a few rounds of emails and phone calls to clarify what exactly we were looking for and for us to not be seen as adversaries, but a group that could help us get what we wanted.<\/p>\n Placko<\/strong>: There were also times late in the negotiating process in which clubs expressed disappointment with parts of the legislation. For example, I believe the ABDI (Peter can confirm this) insisted that the legislation say that only 3 samples of homebrew could be given to each event attendee. Nobody wanted this in the legislation, but it wouldn’t get sponsored unless we kept this in.<\/p>\n Rzeminski<\/strong>: Richard is correct, there was an insistence that 235 ILCS 5\/6-31<\/a>\u00a0be enacted in the new law to control how much homebrew was given away.\u00a0 ILCS 235 is a Control Act, meaning that anything not deemed legal is considered “illegal.”\u00a0 So based on that and how 5\/6-31 was written, outside of a residence, any liquor given away without cost is limited by the language of that part of the Act.\u00a0 Since we were giving away homebrew for free, the volume given away is limited.<\/p>\n I do not agree with that restriction and would like to see it increased, but I do understand why it was done with the homebrew law.<\/p>\n“Learn who the gatekeepers are in Springfield for the legislation that you’re submitting. Then, decide whether you want to work with them or work around them.”<\/span><\/h2>\n
– Richard Placko, Illinois Homebrew Alliance<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div><\/div>\n
Richard and I just kinda stepped forward and starting organizing things.\u00a0 I was talking to the lawyers on the side and was feeding them all the requests the IHA members had regarding the law.\u00a0<\/span>Peter Rzeminski II, Illinois Homebrew Alliance<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n
“Taking a look at my email history, it seems to be about 200 emails with the ABDI and easily that many between myself and the IHA. There were, maybe, 20 phone calls between me and Bob Myers.”<\/span><\/h2>\n
– Peter J. Rzeminski II
\n<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div><\/div>\nIt took a few rounds of emails and phone calls to clarify what exactly we were looking for and for us to not be seen as adversaries.<\/span>Peter Rzeminski II, Illinois Homebrew Alliance<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n