In our spotlight on Business report.

A last minute bill to ease restrictions on breweries in the state could soon be headed for the governor's signature.

Lawmakers and brewery owners appear to be on the same page with the new guidelines outlined in the measure, which has been a pain point for the industry.

But even as the compromise bill moves forward, some worry without liquor license reform, it falls short of what Governor Murphy's requested.

Ted Goldberg reports.

With a brewery bill on the fast track for passage in Trenton, New Jersey's breweries smell like hops and optimism.

We really are confident that this one is going to get passed by both houses of the assembly and it's going to be signed by the governor.

Tim Pewitt is the head brewer of wet ticket brewing in Rahway.

He says life will be much easier if Trenton passes a bill that would ease regulations on breweries.

Pewitt had previously told us about the concerns of being forced by law to give a tour to every paying customer.

When we spoke last.

Year, now we potentially are paying a $2500 fine.

That's $2500.

That's not going to employee salaries, you know, raw materials.

That was actually a settled rather amicably with the ABC, who I think through all these regulations, they have also been put in a somewhat difficult situation.

Pewitt likes giving tours when customers ask for them and time allows.

I think it's a great opportunity to talk to our customers and sell what we're about.

You know, and fortunately, you know, sometimes it gets pretty busy in here.

The fact that we can miss one of these tours and be potentially fine like we were, you know, it's just kind of unsettling.

I think this is a game changer for not just our brewery industry, but also for modernizing New Jersey's archaic liquor laws.

Senator Troy Singleton is a sponsor on the bill, which also removes caps on the number of events breweries can host and allows breweries to coordinate with food trucks.

And as part of a compromise with the governor's office.

It also adds in measures that are aimed at getting more liquor licenses into the market.

What we've done is tried to thread a pretty unique needle here in the state of New Jersey, and I think we've done a pretty good job of doing that.

I haven't heard a lot of naysayers tell us that this is a wrong approach.

It is 100% of what we were looking for in our previous legislation.

Eric Orlando leads the Brewers Guild of New Jersey.

While he's happy to see this bill get a hearing yesterday, he wasn't thrilled to see brewers become a bargaining chip.

We got to this situation because of restrictions that were put in place by this administration.

We also sent the governor a bill back in June that would have take care of this six months ago.

But here we are right now.

And, you know, we're we're happy to support a bill that once again is going to, you know, fix the restrictions on breweries and state.

What is proposed here is a minimal win at best.

Courtenay Mercer leads the nonprofit downtown New Jersey and likes parts of the bill.

She says the changes for breweries are terrific, but she's not optimistic that the bill will successfully move around inactive licenses for restaurants the way it's supposed to.

In the bill, it says that if a license does transfer, it has to be bought at kind of the prevailing rate of the last three licenses, the last three licenses sold that, you know, between a half a million and $1,000,000.

This license will have to be sold between a half a million and $1,000,000.

So we're still not hitting affordability.

The bill gives inactive license holders two years to sell before licenses expire and municipalities can sell them to neighboring municipalities.

Mercer says that's an improvement over the old use it or lose it method, which was rarely enforced.

If the municipality tells them you got to lose it or you lose it and they have more licenses than their population cap allows, the municipality also loses that license.

So they're never going to enforce that.

The bill also carves out new licenses for restaurants attached to malls.

Trenton has until Tuesday at noon to pass the bill and get it to the governor's desk to be signed in Rahway, I'm Ted Goldberg.

NJ Spotlight News.