Jack Daniels has been making whiskey since the 1860s. Anheuser- Busch introduced Budweiser in 1876. Pabst won a blue ribbon for its beer at the 1893 world’s fair. Coors first opened a Colorado brewery in 1873.
All thrive to this day.
How did these, and other venerable American alcohol makers, survive prohibition, which lasted from 1920 to 1933?
I’m seeing this in Jack Daniel’s wiki page:
Because of prohibition in Tennessee, the company shifted its distilling operations to St Louis, Missouri, and Birmingham, Alabama. None of the production from these locations was ever sold due to quality problems.[16]
and that footnote takes us here:
By 1929, all supplies of whiskey made before Prohibition had been tapped out and the U.S. government began allowing Brown-Forman (and other companies with the special licenses to sell medicinal whiskey) to make new whiskey at a Louisville distillery operated by the federal government.
It seems the general answer to the question is that they sold it as medicine:
Doctors were able to prescribe medicinal alcohol for their patients. After just six months of prohibition, over 15,000 doctors and 57,000 pharmacists received licenses to prescribe or sell medicinal alcohol. According to Gastro Obscura,
Physicians wrote an estimated 11 million prescriptions a year throughout the 1920s, and Prohibition Commissioner John F. Kramer even cited one doctor who wrote 475 prescriptions for whiskey in one day. It wasn’t tough for people to write—and fill—counterfeit subscriptions at pharmacies, either. Naturally, bootleggers bought prescription forms from crooked doctors and mounted widespread scams. In 1931, 400 pharmacists and 1,000 doctors were caught in a scam where doctors sold signed prescription forms to bootleggers. Just 12 doctors and 13 pharmacists were indicted, and the ones charged faced a one-time $50 fine. Selling alcohol through drugstores became so much of a lucrative open secret that it is name-checked in works such as The Great Gatsby. Historians speculate that Charles R. Walgreen, of Walgreens fame, expanded from 20 stores to a staggering 525 during the 1920s thanks to medicinal alcohol sales."
Basically they diversified and sold other stuff.
Anheuser-Busch developed non-alcoholic beverages (like Bevo).
Coors established Coors Porcelain Co. and sold malted milk.
Pabst made a processed cheese.
And so on.
Here is an article you may find interesting:
Yuengling did a combination of medicinal Porter (a near beer) and Ice Cream.
Thanks!
From your cite
And apparently Coors spun off a company that is still going strong
My bold
And then there’s the connections between Pabst and Harley Davidson, and Kraft cheese
Fascinating!
I went to a winery in the Catskills once, and they said they stayed open by being able to sell wine to churches for communion, which seemed to be allowed during Prohibition.
I’ve been told that some of the wineries sold grape juice.
And that some of the grape juice came with labels saying something along the lines of “do not leave this container with a loosened cap in this carefully specified temperature range for such and such a period of time or it may become alcoholic.”
(I’ve never seen such a label and don’t know whether it’s true.)
[now I’ve looked it up and now I’ve seen a couple of such labels!
Vine-Glo - Wikipedia – one of the labels is for that product, which was a concentrate; there’s another in that article, somewhat vaguer, for grape juice.]
Many brewers switched to near beer, which was legal.
My grandfather once mentioned some teetotaler “front row Methodist” (his words) that he worked with who would finish their lunch break with a few tablespoons of “medicinal tonic” that was like 120 proof.
Likewise, I recall an article about a distillery in 90s (so very Taliban) Afghanistan that was licensed for pharmaceutical purposes.
Likewise,
Even when I was a kid (and maybe even today) you could buy special sacramental wine at a synagogue. There are very special rules for kosher wines that do not apply to any other foods.
I once invited a rather orthodox man and his wife to dinner. He understood that we did not keep kosher, making some noises about modern dishwashers. I invited him to share my wife’s delicious fish stew and he was happy about that. Until it came to wine. It was just an ordinary white wine and he would not touch it.
Near beer was mentioned. I believe it was around 2%. Both that and the sacramental wine would appear to violate the plain wording of the 18th amendment.
The 18th Amendment didn’t actually start Prohibition; it just enabled the government to pass the much more detailed Volstead Act, which did. The Volstead Act included a variety of exceptions, such as religious and medicinal use.
Out of interest, for what conditions and diseases was alcohol prescribed, or was it far looser, like ‘New Tylenol, now in a special preservative fluid’ 'Children’s cough syrup *not suitable for children)?
It is a historical fact that Yuengling Brewery never stopped. They are the oldest continuing brewery in the United States.
I’ve taken the tour. What they did was wicked smaht, as they say in Sam Adams Country. ( Yuengling is located in Pottsville, PA )
The brewery was/ is at the foot of a small mountain. The kegs were kept cold, just above freezing, in caverns dug out of the rock. Naturally occurring very cold water ran down inside the mountain. A trough cut from “top” to “bottom” of the room, which of course ran downhill, kept the cold water moving 24/7.
When Prohibition hit, they got smart. They continued brewing in secret and diverted some of that water to “hidden” caverns. They also got proper by running a thriving dairy business. The milk and other products were kept cold in the areas formerly used to cool the beer.
I shot my thesis film quite close to the brewery in 1984. We took the tour on our way back to New York City. At the end you went into a beautiful old wooden-paneled bar. Behind the bar? Old man Yuengling. True story. No clue who tends the bar now- he must be long gone.
Here is the wording of the 18th amendment:
"## Article [XVIII] (Amendment 18 - Prohibition of Intoxicating Liquors)[16](file:///C:/downloads/usconst.html#n16)
1: After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
2: The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
3: This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress."
It does not appear to make any allowance for exceptions. I assume the second clause merely authorizes congress to enable enforcement.
I don’t know, but alcohol can sneak into a lot of places. I went to a restaurant where the vanilla-flavored coffee creamer was marked as having alcohol. I don’t think it was to protect anyone, but more for those in religions prohibiting all alcohol.
Winston Churchill famously had one such doctor’s note.
Mr Churchill had been hit by a car in December of 1931, while crossing the road in New York City.
When I lived in Massachusetts in the late 80s there were pharmacies in Boston which advertised “medicinal alcohol” in the window, presumably because medicinal alcohol was exempt from the blue laws which prohibited alcohol sales on Sunday.
Of all of the stories I like this one the most. Somehow it is fun my childhood mac & cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches originated in a brewery.
So near beer, by law, had to be less than 0.5%. You will have seen movies depicting people adding spirits to their drink from a flask: it wasn’t all lemonade. In any case, beer with a chaser was an American tradition.
Many people in the United States did not agree with the Volstead definition of “intoxicating liquor” anyway. They thought that beer was food. Enforcement only became really effective towards the end, when it became a contributing reason to repeal.
A brewery in Detroit called Stroh’s switched to making non-alcoholic drinks and ice cream, which they continued making after prohibition, and still exists in name to this day, though the name was sold to another company. It was pretty good ice cream, if I recall.