The deregulation of beer
and the rise of actually good beer, finally
Prohibition was a bad idea for too many reasons to list here, but even when prohibition lifted plenty of post-prohibition regulations remained in place. These limited what types of alcohol could be produced and by whom, and how alcohol was distributed. These state and federal laws also limited what days alcohol could be sold and what types of shops could sell it, as well as how late alcohol could be served at night and so forth.
Obviously, laws varied from state to state and still do. In some places, you can’t buy alcohol on Sundays because apparently God is not a fan of booze even though Jesus turned water into wine. No mixed messages there at all, God. Sheesh.
Some states, like Pennsylvania, have particularly bizarre laws. I remember going there long ago for a work thing and I discovered you could only buy beer from either a bar (to drink there or to take home) or a beer distribution center. Liquor was sold in liquor stores. Nothing on Sundays outside of bars.
Here in Arizona we can buy beer and liquor at gas stations and grocery stores 7 days a week, but we’re a bit stricter on things like open container laws and late night sales than Nevada. Anything goes in Las Vegas.
In any case, Freddie has a great post on beer and the good and bad sides of the rise of online connoisseurs and identity-fandom in which he writes:
When I first came of legal drinking age in 20021, if you went to a liquor store (affectionately known as a “packie” in my native Connecticut), your choices were Bud, Bud Light, Coors Light, Michelob, maybe Molson, Corona, maybe Heineken.
[…]
But now? Now I can get more variety in the average gas station than I could once get in a liquor store. It’s crazy. I can walk into a nondescript corner store here in the city and expect to find beer made by specific mid-sized breweries from Michigan. It’s not “will there be a stout?,” it’s “will there be one stout other than Guinness, or two?” The range of IPAs is crazy. I don’t worry “will there be an IPA,” I wonder “will there just be English and West Coast IPAs, or perhaps also a double and a session?”
Why is this?
What happened? Snobs happened. Nerds happened. Connoisseurs happened. For good and for bad.
This is certainly part of the picture. Trendsetters set trends. Beer-drinkers, desperate for beer that didn’t taste like a cross between water and piss, discovered craft brews or knew people who brewed their own beer and gradually craft brew spread from Portland and other hubs of the early craft industry to college towns across the country and now pretty much everywhere. Partly this was due to connoisseurs and beer evangelists spreading the good word1.
But it also has to do with states and the federal government deregulating the beer industry beginning in the 1970s and continuing throughout the 1980s.
Putting the kibosh on outdated beer production laws led directly to the rise of craft brewing and slowly gave way to the market landscape we have today. Remember those “bitter beer face” commercials? Those were a direct response from corporate beer companies to the rise of IPAs and the like. When that didn’t work, InBev and other massive corporate beer and drink companies started buying smaller brewers.
Carter made it legal for homebrewers to brew their own beer in the late 1970s (it’s still illegal to distill your own liquor, largely because liquor is taxed so high and the government wants that sweet, sweet tax money, but also for health reasons) and then in the early 80s’ states started legalizing micro-breweries and brewpubs. There’s still a web of distribution laws that favor huge beer corporations, but the climate for beer production has become much more friendly to small brewers and consumers.
All of which is to say that yes, there was a market for beer that wasn’t Budweiser and yes connoisseurs certainly helped spread craft beer to the masses and yes sometimes these types can be snobby and annoying, but really this is the direct result of the government backing off and allowing small businesses to compete with state-subsidized corporations at least a little bit. Not all deregulation is good for the world—environmental deregulation springs to mind—but it certainly can be, especially when it favors the little guy.
The story actually reminds me a bit of the Red Delicious apple and its bizarre history. It used to be the main apple you could find at grocery stores. No Galas, no Pink Ladies. Just Red Delicious and Granny Smith, the two most corporate of all apples. The Red Delicious is, of course, anything but, though its past predominance in the apple market was not because of regulations but because apple producers simply didn’t care to offer much variety to American consumers. It was such a hearty apple, after all, so resilient. Consumers didn’t know any better. Once they discovered what apples were supposed to taste like, the Red Delicious fell from its perch like an anvil in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
Take a moment to think about how much things have improved in so many ways, even as we bemoan the many other ways in which the world has gotten worse. There was a time, my droogies, when you were stuck with a weak, flavorless American pilsner and equally flavorless apples with too-thick skin that looked far tastier than they actually were. At least here we can find a silver lining. Yes, our children are rotting their brains on TikTok and Snapchat, but we have microbreweries and IPA and Honeycrisp and Fuji apples. There is hope, and rebellions are built on hope.
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Notably, in many other countries this beer revolution has not manifested. You can find craft brew in Mexico but it’s not easy. Same with Costa Rica and I’m sure plenty of other places.
Just an FYI: Pennsylvania changed that law a few years ago & beer is sold in most grocery stores. Liquor is still sold at state run stores however. And as someone who lives there, it was ridiculous from the get go & was glad to finally see it die in fire.
Interesting. In Europe there is a pretty widespread attitude that American beer is just poor-quality mass market stuff (not to say that I agree, I've never even tasted Budweiser). I'm surprised to hear that America actually went through a somewhat similar phase of regulation, in my country we even had prohibition for a while too! Nowadays we have a great selection even in grocery stores and, similarly, many small-scale breweries. Before covid I had to travel a lot and in a new city it's always great fun to visit brewery restaurants with colleagues.