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An Ode to Snake Handler, Good Folks, and the Advocates Who Introduced Stronger Beer to Alabama

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Anyone who’s ever hung out in a bar in Birmingham, Ala., is aware of the identify Snake Handler. As certainly one of its most requested beers since its founding 15 years in the past, Good Folks Brewing Firm’s double IPA is steadily known as “dangerously drinkable.” At a hefty 10 p.c ABV, it goes down extra like caramel than its heavy hop (and alcohol) content material would recommend, and stands daring in its conventional roots among the many inflow of countless hazy, juicy IPAs.

When it may be present in a can, which is uncommon because of its small-batch releases, its imagery is difficult to overlook on a shelf — a tongue-in-cheek nod to the snake handlers of Sand Mountain, a bit of Alabama’s extra eclectic spiritual historical past. Good Folks Brewing Firm itself is a loving homage to its home state, a reference to a typical Southern phrase used to check with somebody who’s acquainted and trusted: “He’s good people.”

Adam Klein, Good Folks’s head brewer, believes that belief and familiarity are part of Good Folks and Snake Handler’s relative longevity. “We were basically the oldest operating brewery in Alabama, and I think it was the first double IPA on the scene when the craft beer movement kind of broke out,” he says. “So it has its own legacy in that sense. And the fact that the beer itself has been around for a while and the name has Alabama roots and this sort of religious undertone that a lot of people sort of identify with, I would say that that has been a part of the legacy-building.”

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Whereas Snake Handler can actually declare to be Alabama’s oldest double IPA, 15 years isn’t a very long time within the grand scheme of brewing — and even craft — historical past. However that’s as a result of brewing most kinds of craft beer wasn’t even legally doable in Alabama till 2008.

Slicing By means of the Crimson Tape

It’s well-known reality (and native joke) that Alabama has a comically giant structure — so giant that it’s thought-about the world’s longest doc of its type, clocking in at properly previous the size of a Dostoevsky novel and containing over 900 amendments, ranging in matter from facial hair in church and bear wrestling to the legality of carrying ice cream cones in again pockets. Oddly sufficient for a state stereotypically related to its love of weapons, beer, and deregulation, Alabama has maintained extremely tight legal guidelines on the creation, bottling, sale, and consumption of beer till somewhat just lately.

Birmingham resident Gabe Harris noticed in his travels that it appeared like different states had much more entry to craft beers than he did again home. It wasn’t till round 2005 that he realized why: Alabama’s authorized definition of beer solely allowed for brews as much as 6 p.c ABV, which severely restricted not solely homegrown craft beer efforts, however the import of merchandise from out-of-state breweries as properly. “It wasn’t because those breweries didn’t want to come and sell their products in Alabama, but the laws in Alabama prohibited such,” Harris says.

Harris joined the ranks of different like-minded beer lovers in 2005 to kind Free the Hops, a grassroots advocacy group that hoped to increase Alabama’s palate by working to vary the state’s restrictive beer legal guidelines. Regardless of a bevy of supporters, Free the Hops was up towards an abundance of misinformation, misconceptions, and moralism because the invoice battled its method to Montgomery.

Harris joked that he and the opposite reformists who supported the invoice needed to battle the notion that they had been “guys who just wanted to get drunk fast,” or in additional notable circumstances, Germans looking for to carry hoity-toity beers to take the place of American requirements like Budweiser — mockingly, a model began by a German immigrant in Missouri. A now-notorious video went viral regionally on Youtube in its nascent years, with an audio clip of Alabama Rep. Alvin Holmes asking with obvious fervor, “What’s wrong with the beer we got? I mean, the beer we got drinks pretty good, don’t it? I ain’t never heard nobody complain about the beer we have.”

Free the Hops discovered a extra sympathetic legislator in Rep. Thomas Jackson, who sponsored the 2008 Connoisseur Beer Invoice, along with a wide range of business house owners and neighborhood leaders who had been keen to vouch for the financial viability of a possible craft brewing trade, together with AlaBev, the state’s foremost beverage distributor, and Terrapin Brewing primarily based out of Athens, Ga., which had lengthy hoped to increase gross sales to its neighboring state.

“We had to show we were legitimate — guys with careers and families,” Harris mentioned. “So getting stakeholders from distributors, restaurants, bars, and grocery stores to support us, not just with their dollars to help us with our mission and what we were trying to accomplish monetarily, but also just by their visibility and them speaking on behalf of us was another big part of that.”

Good Folks was additionally an early supporter of Free the Hops — companions Michael Sellers and Jason Malone integrated in 2006, not completely understanding the regulatory obstacles they had been up towards. A few of Good Folks’s earliest beers, together with Snake Handler and different staples like their Espresso Oatmeal Stout, had been inherently high-ABV brews, and their operation would have been finally fruitless with out some form of regulatory intervention.

“It was naivete,” says Sellers. “We were the first guys to get into [craft brewing] in our state, so we didn’t really have a great idea of what we were getting into. And at the time, nobody really did, because there weren’t a lot of people doing it. It was new territory.”

Rising Alabama’s Beer Tradition

The invoice ultimately handed to grow to be legislation, elevating the authorized ABV restrict to 13.9 p.c, and breweries shortly started to sprout up like weeds throughout Alabama within the years that adopted. That success was adopted in 2011 by a invoice that allowed for taprooms, and one other in 2012 that opened the door for 22-ounce bombers, paving the way in which for wholesaling. At the moment, Alabama has 52 breweries, and in 2021, craft brewing had a $777 million financial affect on the state.

Harris would ultimately go on to co-found Fairhope Brewing Firm in 2012. Sellers and Malone branched out to purchase Avondale Brewing Firm in 2011, which has additionally grow to be a distinguished outside music venue post-pandemic, internet hosting acts in 2023 like Mt. Pleasure and Wilco.

For Sellers, seeing breweries grow to be part of the tradition in Alabama cities has been one of the vital gratifying aspects of the state’s embrace of craft breweries. “I think somebody once put it to me that craft breweries are a kind of English pub, where it’s more of a family gathering place than it is a bar per se,” he says.

”It simply doesn’t carry the stigma that alcohol sometimes has within the South,” Sellers continues. “I think Free the Hops, and the way it happened, probably helped with that, because it was such a broad perspective and there’s so many people from different walks of life that were in that group, that I think may have helped ease everybody’s fear of [breweries].”

That’s a part of what makes beers like Snake Handler so particular in a spot like Birmingham — it has the capability to vary the narrative of what beer and folks’s notion of it may be, whereas additionally totally honoring its roots. Klein and Sellers each affectionately check with Snake Handler as a traditional beer that, even with its adherence to conventional hop combos, managed to problem Alabama’s palate, accustomed to its extra company gentle lagers.

As Good Folks has matured, so has its sensibility on what its taproom can seem like, whereas by no means detracting from what everybody has all the time beloved.

“We’ve always kind of brewed what we want to drink,” Klein says. “ We have always been a brewery that sticks to classic styles. I still enjoy the classic Snake Handler, all the old school like piney, bitter hops. But it’s fun to experiment and also produce some of the more juicy, hazy style beers, too.”

Snake Handler, in addition to its high-ABV contemporaries at Good Folks, paved the way in which for the recognition of heavier pours within the state, and people beers have began to slowly make their approach out previous the state traces. Good Folks’s beers could be discovered by way of center Tennessee and the Florida panhandle, and different manufacturers like TrimTab and Again Forty are discovering their footing in Atlanta, Arkansas, and different areas within the South.

Whereas the native fare has but to really grow to be any type of international phenomenon, it’s plain that Alabama loves its beer lately. Sellers says different out-of-state brewers have referred to Alabama as a “real tough nut to crack” due to its loyalty to its hometown brewers.

“We’re all still mom-and-pop shops. Nobody’s been bought out by big conglomerates,” Sellers says. “So typically, you’re gonna be in a brewery where you’re gonna see the owner in the brewery working, doing the thing. At the very minimum, there’s a lot of heart and soul in our breweries.”

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