*UPDATE* – Governor signs Illinois bill allowing craft distillers greater freedom, self-distribution, and distilling “pubs.”

It’s officially a public act. As we wrote about before on this bill, many new rights (in line with those available to wineries and breweries) are in store for Illinois craft distillers now that Governor Pritzker has signed this amendment to the Illinois Liquor Control Act.

These include creation of two new classes of craft distillers – a class 1 and class 2 that can:

Class 1 Craft Distiller

• Ability to self-distribute
• Increase from 2500 to 5000 gallons that can be used for self-distribution or direct sales to consumer from your tasting room for on or off premise consumption
• Reduced production limit to 50,000 gallons
• Ability to obtain a warehouse permit
• Ability to obtain a tasting permit (already exists)
• Ability to purchase vermouth from a licensed distributor for use in tasting room

Class 2 Craft Distiller

• Production limit remains 100,000 gallons
• Increase from 2500 to 5000 gallons for direct sales to consumer for on or off premise consumption
• No self-distribution
• Ability to obtain a Still Pub-license at manufacturing site and up to 2 additional Still Pub licenses within 80 miles of your manufacturing site. This will allow for the purchase of other wine, beer and spirits from licensed distributors.
• Ability to transfer up to 5000 gallons from manufacturing site to each Still Pub location
• Ability to obtain a warehouse storage permit

As we wrote before, the bill that ended up passing the Illinois House recently was HB 2675, you can see the current status which should be updated on Monday to show it’s a public act here.

As we said it our prior posts, this is sure to offer a spot of relief to small businesses and is a welcome bill to foster a distilling culture that Illinois is lacking.