Article about how 8 breweries survived prohibition

"And in a traitorous move, <Anheisser-Busch> produced police vans used to pick up illegal booze producers and distributors."

Man, they're lucky there weren't 'message boards back then.

Also, I had no idea that Minhas dates all the way back to 1845.

 

The 18th Amendment only banned "...the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors..." - nothing about allowing people to drink alcoholic beverages.

They must have big hands over there at Vinepair. According to Brewery Age magazine in March 1933 there were "... 146 licensed near beer breweries..." still operating. Another 300 (likely those which were making malt syrup, liquid malt or other NA beverages) were ready to brew beer at Repeal and a similar number were renovating their breweries in hopes to start brewing again soon after Repeal (NEA wire service story). In March '33, The New York Times claimed the Feds had already given 158 breweries permits to market 3.2 beer beginning the next month in states which had also legalized it.

Probably the most significant aspect of Pabst's history during the late-Pro>Repeal era was that they merged with the Premier Malt Products Co. in 1932, to become (for a short time, changed back in 1938) the Premier Pabst Corporation.

"Subsidiary" ? Stroh no longer exists as a brewing company - just another 'dba' name Pabst uses for contract-brewed beer.

Pretty sure Matt's 'Saranac' brand name didn't exist until the 1980s.

Well, the brewing company that Minhas bought in the 1990s, Jos. Huber Brewing Co., could trace it's origins back that far under several different owners, but it's a stretch to claim Minhas had anything to do with it in Prohibition era.

 

I understand there was also an uptick in the California winemakers business who simply turned their grapes into raisins and shipped them East with the admonition "do not add water and yeast to this product because it will turn into wine".

 

So what you're saying is this article is total shit.

 

"Total" ? Nah, I'd put it at around 37- 43%.

What it stated wasn't too bad (could have used more indepth info on the breweries they did cover)- it just left out a lot and was kinda vague about some other aspects.

Needless to say, the US Prohibition Era was a pretty complicated period, it was 2 decades of constant change - "2" 'cause I'm including the WWI period of Wilson's "war prohibition" and individual state prohibition laws. Just examining the brewing industry segment of it - inc. malt syrup, near beer, illegal breweries, Canadian beer smuggled over the border, etc.- would take more than that sort of brief intro.
( @NeroFiddled headline for this thread was a lot more accurate a description than the author's own title.)

Sounds like a lot of work (esp. since you wind up with wine, and likely bad wine at that). As a [lazy] beer drinker, think I'd have just gone with buying a 5 gallon can of "Liquid Malt" (aka "Brewer's Wort") and let the yeast do all the work - until bottling day, anyway. Then the kids can earn the allowance.