Legislative Leaders Offer Hope For Cold Beer's Future (After 2018)

Legislative leaders confirm that a push to allow grocery and convenience stores to sell cold beer is dead for the 2018 session. But those same leaders offer supporters hope for the future.

Shortly after a cold beer expansion bill failed in a Senate committee, convenience store owner Jay Ricker had this message.

“We’re gonna be back,” Ricker said. “We’re not gonna give up on this.”

House Speaker Brian Bosma (R-Indianapolis) says he hopes to legalize Sunday alcohol sales this year – and then deal with other issues, like cold beer, in the future.

“A lot of these things take time. Gradualism is a part of legislative achievement,” Bosma says.

Senate President Pro Tem David Long (R-Fort Wayne) says issues around cold beer need to be figured out – notably, he says, a disparity in license costs between liquor stores and restaurants.

“That should be the goal of the advocates, is to give us a good idea how to do it and a time parameter to do it and I think it can get done,” Long says.

Cold beer advocates had such a plan but the Senate committee chair did not allow amendments to the bill.