Today’s Exploding Craft Beer Scene – Thanks to Prohibition of the 1920s

Today’s Exploding Craft Brewery Scene – Thanks to Prohibition of the 1920s

Historical foresight fostered the great local breweries we enjoy today.

Beer is an amazing drink. People have been drinking it happily for thousands of years and today we have better quality beer and breweries than anytime in human history. Equally remarkable, carefully made craft beers and micro breweries, are part of a business trend that is confounding almost all other businesses trends in the United States.

While local businesses are dying across America and being replaced by big box stores that look and feel the same from city to city, beer is going the opposite direction. The giant breweries are struggling and the small local breweries are thriving and every day more of them open their doors all across America.

You and I are the beneficiaries. We don’t have to drink Coors Beer any more like we did in the 1980s, a beer that tastes like water with a hint of yellowness. We don’t have to drink Budweiser any more, a headache producing sweet swill made in giant factories. Now we can drink beer made by our neighbors in Santa Fe or Buena Vista, Colorado and that beer is GOOD! And if we don’t like one local brewery, there’s a new one down the block to try. These breweries are little communities that employ people and focus on having fun.

Fifty years ago there were fewer than 100 companies brewing beer in America. Today there are more than 2000. The micro brewery scene is exploding! At the same time the mega corporate breweries continue to consolidate. In 1981 there were 48 major breweries, today there are two. These are Anheuser Busch and Coors Miller.

So what’s going on? Why are small breweries diversifying and thriving and bottling and selling their product in many different stores while the rest of American business is consolidating to fewer and fewer products in fewer stores?

We’ve all heard of Prohibition, the time starting in 1919 when production and sale of alcoholic beverages was made illegal by the federal government. It seems many people were disgusted by drunkenness and sought to ban booze to stop people from getting drunk or even mildly inebriated. (Sound familiar marijuana lovers?)

Prohibition produced a black market for alcohol (just has it has for marijuana). The public reacted very badly to the black market and booze was legalized in 1933 but the public insisted that large business not be able to control the alcohol market to prevent organized crime and corrupt practices from picking up where the black market left off. States were allowed to regulate the liquor market. Imagine that.

Every state decided on a three tier system of liquor regulation. There would be the distillers and brewers, there would be the wholesalers, and finally the retailers. The result has been to keep large liquor producers like Coors Miller from dominating and controlling the alcohol market. This has made it possible for the local brewpub to open up without being squashed by the giant beer manufacturers, AND that brewery can bottle its products and sell them in any licensed store. The wholesalers and retailers have every incentive to sell these small brands because you and I buy them!

Bonus! The trick has been that the wholesalers have stayed independent of big business with the help of state regulators. That’s why you can buy Santa Fe Brewing Company, Eddyline, or Ska beer in Trader Joes or Kroger as well as in the small liquor store on a side street like Cliffs or Kelly’s in Santa Fe or Wagon Wheel Liquors in Durango.

Even so, in the age of big business rolling big government we have to be watchful. The giant beer manufacturers are working hard to disrupt the local wholesaling system so they can restrict the sale of locally made beers which are doing major damage to the large company’s beer sales. In the Trump era, should these mega beer manufacturers succeed in gaining control of local distribution, we could see a time come when we have to go directly to the local brewery to buy their beer.

The best thing we can all do is to go to your local brewery and enjoy their beer. Buy the beer in bottles or cans (be sure to recycle those) or go to a place like REI and get an insulated growler to carry your beer out to the great outdoors. Sit by a stream or on the rim of a cliff and enjoy your local brewery beer.

For more information go to this link.

by Tom Ribe