I’ve been loosely following along with the Raise Your Pints campaign in Mississippi, whose goals are to legalize homebrewing and to amend their state’s beer laws to raise the allowable alcohol content from 5% by weight to 8% by weight (6.25% to 10% by volume), since being introduced to it at last year’s Beer Bloggers Conference, and this week they’ve had excellent news to report:

House Bill 1422, which is the raising of the alcohol limit, has completely cleared their state House of Representative and has moved on to the Senate, which in most ways is half the battle (it still has to clear the Senate and then not get vetoed by the Governor). In fact it passed on the 1st, survived a Motion to Reconsider, and was sent to the Senate just two days ago, on the 6th.

There is also a “backup bill” in the Senate, SB 2878, which proposes the same thing though is still waiting to be voted on. That may happen today.

For some more detail, there’s a decent writeup in the Picayune Item, a local Mississippi newspaper, that offers some additional background (and try to not cringe too badly at “Indian Pale Ale”).

Let’s hope HB 1422 passes through the Senate without any trouble and gets signed into law! In fact I’ll drink a strong beer tonight to toast Mississippi.