Taking home 1-3 liters (and maybe up to 5 gallons) of your favorite San Diego beer may soon be a bit less cumbersome. For far too long, the Alcoholic Beverage Control board (ABC) insisted that California law mandated that breweries could only fill growlers bearing their own distinct logo, i.e. a different growler bottle for every brewery. With over 70 breweries in San Diego county, all those bulky bottles could take up a lot of cabinet space for the avid beer fanatic. Fortunately, this year, ABC revised its interpretation of the law to permit outside growler fills...but the requirements were still hazy. Would you have to obscure the old label, or could you just cover it up with, say, duct tape? Due to the confusion, most California breweries continued their refusal to refill outside/non-native growlers. Recently a law has been passed to clarify the growler confusion, and with that, Stone Brewing Co. revised its policy and will now fill blank and "completely obscured" growlers at all of their locations (no, not at the airport). Will the rest of San Diego's breweries follow suit?
.jpg)
