KC Star: If you're enjoying a craft beer right now, say a word of thanks to Jimmy Carter - Opinion

[Dennis Donovan]

KC Star - (archive: https://archive.ph/swDIV ) If you’re enjoying a craft beer right now, say a word of thanks to Jimmy Carter | Opinion

By David Mastio
Updated December 29, 2024 7:59 PM



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Today with his death, you’ll be hearing about a Nobel Prize, peace between Egypt and Israel, the Panama Canal and the greatness of his post-presidency. You’ll hear about the near eradication of Guinea worm. You’ll hear less about stagflation and his defeat by Ronald Reagan who heralded a new birth of freedom and conservatism in America. But in an important way Carter got the ball rolling on something that still touches my life to this day.

Beer freedom.

Nearly 50 years after Prohibition ended, Jimmy Carter noticed that a thicket of federal laws and regulations still remained for what was once a cottage industry across the land: home brewing.

He encouraged a Democratic-controlled Congress to pass legislation in 1978 that legalized home brewing. At the time, there were fewer than 100 breweries in America, most of them making the same tasteless schlock. Today it is not uncommon to find big cities that have 100 breweries on their own.

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The brewing economy boomed. Today microbrews are a $28 billion business with nearly 10,000 breweries across the country (1,100 in California alone), employing 190,000 people.

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I did not know that!

[Aristus]

1. In the thirty or so years since I discovered micro-brews,

I’ve only had mass market pisswater a couple of times since, just to be polite, at parties where the host had no more taste in beer than his beer itself had.

Thank you, President Carter! For helping America find its way back to high-quality beer.

[mopinko]

2. my ex called them 'girlie beer', cuz they were meant to appeal to women.

brewers at the time were probably surprised men drank them, but after prohibition, i guess ppl forgot what good beer tasted like.
german styles fell out of favor over the war. i think most homebrews were likely light for cost reasons.

my gramps brewed his own beer. my mom wd put the bottling sugar in. that’s the rebel limb of the family tree.

[mopinko]

3. i knew this, but forgot. ty for reminding me.

[WOLFMAN87]

4. I'm a home brewer and I knew this - that is why

I make a toast at the first taste of a new batch to Jimmy Carter.

May he rest in peace.

Don't forget brother Billy who may have inspired Jimmy to do this.

[radical noodle]

9. Who could forget Billy Beer?

[AverageOldGuy]

5. Now if only . . .

. . . the feds will get off "moonshiners" and let us brew good corn likker.

[Mr.Bill]

6. My family owned a brewery in Baltimore

over 100 years ago. This wasn't home brewing, it was a large commercial brewery serving the greater Baltimore area. There were two German brothers who came to the USA in 1852. One of them was a brewmaster and the other was a Cooper or barrel maker. The made 80,000 barrels of beer a year and delivered it to taverns on hourse-drawn carts. They sold the place to a larger conglomerate around 1910. I still have one of their beer bottles from the old brewery.

[IronLionZion]

8. Did Prohibition shut them down?

That was a major tipping point in the US where a lot of them went out of business.

[Mr.Bill]

11. No, but I bet they were glad to sell it when they did.

Prohibition came about ten years later. A larger brewery bought up about five brewerys in the Baltimore.

[IronLionZion]

7. Good to know. I enjoy visiting microbreweries and trying different types.

[LisaM]

10. Interesting, though there was plenty of beer in the 70s that wasn't "tasteless schlock".

Before the big companies swooped in and bought up local breweries, plenty of it was good. Then Miller and Anheuser Busch, etc. started their grabs. In Michigan we drank Strohs and it was good. They even came out with a boch in the spring.

Not that I have anything against Carter's initiative, which, of course, brought us the infamous Billy Beer!

[Blue Owl]

12. Thanks Jimmy!