New bill aims to repeal Prohibition-era bottle ban

TALLAHASSEE – 

Home brewing has become a nationwide fad. It’s a way of making quality beer for a lot less than you’d spend on a six pack.

It can also be a fun hobby with the power to build new friendships.

However, it’s how you decide to store all those homemade suds that can technically land you in trouble with the law.

It’s a recipe Keith Mille and his buddies had to learn on their own.

But now they know hops and malt, a dash of yeast and a whole lot of love equal beer.

They’ve been home brewing for years now, and they’ve gotten good at it.

They make it all, including IPAs, stouts and even the occasional lager, and in large quantities.

One batch will yield over 30 gallons, which is about 350 bottles.

“We’ve been collecting bottles for quite some time and we see it as a good thing to reuse these bottles that may otherwise have ended up in the trash or whatever,” Mille said. “Granted, there’s certain ones that hold the caps better.”

But, until we told them, they had no idea every one of those empty bottles is technically illegal if you plan to re-fill it with alcohol.

The penalty for keeping them is up to five years behind bars.

Now, a new bill would repeal that law.

The bottle ban goes back more than 70 years to a time when they were viewed as a threat to morality and home brewing was a crime.

It was a reaction to the end of Prohibition, when many southern states, including Florida, wanted to keep drinking to a minimum.

That was then, and home brewing has been legal for 30 years.

Skylar Jeffery’s hoping the bottle ban won’t get bottlenecked in the political process, especially by critics who attack bottling homemade brews as another pathway to alcohol abuse.

“I’d say it’s better than going out to a bar and paying a lot of money for beer, usually bad beer, and then having to drive home or pay for a taxi or anything like that,” Jeffery said.

Now that the issue’s on tap at the capitol, it may be time to open the tap to toast what may be the beginning of the end of a bygone ban.

The bottle ban was originally created to crack down on the illegal transportation of moonshine, which is homemade liquor that became popular during Prohibition.