St. Louis Beer Blog: Happy National Beer Day!

Happy National Beer Day

By Nate Brinson

April 7 is celebrated as National Beer Day in the United States, but why this day? Many believe this celebrates the end of Prohibitionin 1933, however, Prohibition would not be successfully repealed until December 5^th of that year. Rather, April 7, 1933 was the day the Cullen-Harrison Act took effect.

This law was an amendment to the Volstead Act of 1919. While the 18^th Amendment banned “intoxicating liquors”, it did not actually define what constituted such beverages. In addition to detailing enforcement of Prohibition, the Volstead Act would clarify “intoxicating liquors”. Many Americans, including Prohibition proponents, hoped that beer would be spared from Prohibitions, but such wishes were dashed when the Volstead Act defined “intoxicating liquors” as anything with an alcohol contentover 0.5%!*

This created massive unintended consequences, including the rise of organized crime, lack of respect for the law, and economic upheaval for alcohol manufacturers and their employees. With the Great Depression raging, opponents of Prohibition looked to beer to stimulate the economy and provide millions of jobs for the unemployed. While amending the Constitution is rather time-consuming, amending the Volstead Act could be done soon after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration. Representative Thomas H. Cullen and Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi proposed amending the law to allow beverages of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight (4.0% alcohol by volume)**, allowing the brewing and sale of beer. The bill was introduced on March 14 1933, and flew through Congress with FDR signing the bill on March 21. The law would take effect on April 7, with wagons and trucks flying out of breweries at midnight.***

And now, if you don’t mind, I plan on celebrating with a Zwickel. Happy National Beer Day!

*As Ken Burn’s Prohibition noted, this would technically mean items like sauerkraut, Worcester sauce, and even many fruit juices could now be considered “intoxicating”

** Alcohol is not as dense as water so measuring its weight will give a lower number than its volume, therefore providing ABW for theCullen-Harrison Act made beer seem even more temperate to skeptics of beer rather than the higher ABV number

*** Breweries were able to get beer flowing so quickly because they were still brewing non-alcoholic beer. Their method of doing so was to brew beer, and then removing alcohol by heating the beer to 173.1°F(78.37°C), alcohol’s boiling point.

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