Different Prohibition: U.S. Outlaws Whiskey c.1913

Well if beer is still legal one obvious effect is that you won't see so many recipes and brands dying off as breweries go out of business or switch markets. The recent rise of microbrewery/craft beers has done much to turn things around but here things potentially wouldn't have fallen to such a low point to begin with.
Given the anti-alcohol sentiment of the time and the failure of local legislative efforts, was there any reasonable way to get through the period without destroying brewing tradition and without the underworld/black market economy? About 1500 breweries were closed by prohibition and only half re-opened upon repeal. Over many decades, consolidation reduced the number to a mere 78 in 1978. Then, President Carter signed a sweeping alcohol reform bill to streamline the licensing of brewers and fuel alcohol producers. For years, liquor shelves changed little, packed with light American lagers and a few imports. It wasn't until the mid nineties before pub breweries began showing up in the U.S.

I started home brewing in the mid-eighties. I was invited to a Super Bowl party and offered to bring some home brew. Beer, Super Bowl, sounds appropriate. The host said "NO! That would empty out the party as people would leave."

I said "Oh, people who remember prohibition don't know home brewing is legal."

"That's right," he said. "And you can't tell them that. They will ask where the brew came from, whether it is safe, and whether the party might be raided." It was obvious that 75-year old men remembered the horror stories of exploding beer bottles or people going blind over booze contaminated by methanol.

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers

And they died off and IPA now fills the shelves and taps in America.
 
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