America’s experiment with alcohol prohibition began Jan. 17, 1920, a year after the ratification of the 18th Amendment. Prohibition—which outlawed the production, sale and supply of “intoxicating liquors” in the U.S.—lasted 13 years, until the ratification of the 21st Amendment on Dec. 5, 1933. And what does the country have to show for it?
Those long, thirsty years changed American tastes, which in turn pushed brewers to make the bland, homogenized beers that have defined the U.S. for decades. Only recently has the craft beer revolution brought back the glorious variety of pre-Prohibition brews, with everything from Pilsners to pale ales.
Even before Prohibition, many states had banned alcohol. Voters in Ohio passed Amendment 2, a ballot measure on prohibition that took effect on May 27, 1919. By 1919, 29 other states had also imposed their own alcohol prohibitions. Yet since Prohibition didn’t yet exist at the federal level, people in dry states found it relatively easy to import beer from wet ones. That’s one reason why temperance advocates felt they had to push for a constitutional amendment.
In his book “Over-the-Rhine: When Beer Was King,” Michael D. Morgan describes the impact of prohibition on Cincinnati’s German neighborhood. Alcohol vendors weren’t the only ones to feel the effects. The local economy buckled under “the indirect loss of jobs in grain and hop storage, cooperage and related industries; as well as the loss of significant tax revenue, the impact on land values must have also been dramatic.”
In 1919 there were 669 breweries in the U.S. Many closed their doors during Prohibition, but others found inventive ways to stay open. Olt Brother’s Brewing Co. in Dayton, Ohio, started producing cereal beverages, cream and buttermilk, among other products. Toledo’s Buckeye Brewery churned out soft drinks such as ginger ale and root beer.
Malt extract was another popular alternative product for erstwhile brewers. The extract would ostensibly be used for baking bread; in reality, much of it was probably used in illicit beer production. The March 31, 1929, edition of the Lima News noted that in one week, the city’s residents purchased enough malt extract to make 16 loaves for every man, woman and child living in the city. Or perhaps they produced 400,000 pints of homebrewed beer.
Breweries proved remarkably resilient—in 1934, the year after Prohibition was repealed, there were 756 breweries in the U.S., 57 more than there were in 1919. But when these breweries returned to producing beer, consumers had lost their taste for the good stuff. Prohibition “helped dim consumer familiarity with traditional beer styles,” wrote David Choi of Loyola Marymount University and Martin Stack of Rockhurst University in a 2005 analysis. Thirteen years without access, or only limited access, to high-quality beer meant many American beer drinkers didn’t find interesting or challenging beers palatable anymore.
The popularity of soft drinks soared during Prohibition and Americans started their long love affair with sugary, carbonated beverages. Post-Prohibition, brewers had to produce beers that satisfied the country’s changed palate. A Brewers Digest article in 1938 expressed concerns about the ability of post-Prohibition drinkers to “discriminate regarding the quality of beer.” They were “unable to judge the fine points of beer with accuracy,” the magazine observed. “To the majority of them such things as body, aroma, taste, and flavor are nothing but words.”
Prohibition’s effects are still evident 100 years later. By robbing America of its taste for and appreciation of high-quality beer, Prohibition ushered in the boring mass-produced brews that ruled the domestic beer market for decades. The eventual backlash against these bland-tasting beers created an environment from which the continuing American craft beer revolution was born.
Mr. Reid is a professor of geography and planning at the University of Toledo.
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