Surly is currently presenting it's case in front of the Senate Commerce Committee (right at this very moment) for the ability to serve beer at the restaurant in their proposed Brewery of Awesome . Representatives of Surly Brewing, LiftBridge Beer Company, Fulton Beer, Vine Park and Four Firkins Liquor have all showed up to challenge the law (the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association is opposed to any change in the law, natch).
If we lose this, we lose Surly (and the jobs they will provide) to Wisconsin (and create an unfavorable environment for future start-ups). Any politician that is serious about getting Minnesotans back to work will support this bill. Cross your fingers.
I'll like to do more thorough write-up on this later (if I did, it would replace this post). But in the meantime, if you are interested (and you should be), follow @ScottPampuch on Twitter, because he's live-tweeting the whole debacle.
Update: Yay! One hurdle cleared! The MLBA scaled back their opposition based on a few reasonable requirements. So long as they are sincere in this compromise I see no reason why this bill won't sail easily through Congress. I actually wonder if they folded on this one in order to come out stronger in regards to the bill currently going through congress that would allow liquor sales on Sundays. Two downers in such a short period of time would make the MLBA look overly-fussy, and the Surly Bill had such strong public support (not to mention, was proposed when the country is obsessed with job creation, something Surly has promised will happen) that they would look pretty bad if they fought this one tooth and nail. I have a feeling that they made the decision to put all their efforts against the Sunday sale bill instead, as they claim this would result in a loss of revenue for them (the same argument cannot really be made about allowing companies like Surly to serve their own beer at the Brewery of Awesome).
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