What happened to all the breweries and distilleries during prohibiton in the 1920’s. Did many close down , go out of business ,never to reopen ?. Or did they mothball the places , keep on minimum staff and hope that they would reopen eventually. What about the workforce , did many people lose thier jobs because of this?.
Well, a lot of them went out of business, and the others managed to survive by manufacturing other things.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n1183/a02.html
And…
http://www.gliah.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=441
Stroh’s made ice cream. It’s actually pretty good.
America’s oldest brewery, Yuengling, (a place near and dear to my heart) survived by making near beer and dairy products.
Ummmm…Celebrated Pottsville Dark-Brewed Porter.
Slightly related; I believe in Canada the Bronffman (sp?) family kept manufacturing various alcoholic beverages, in some instances under the guise of “for medicinal purposes only” even when some regions of Canada had locallized prohibition. I seem to remember hearing of a …prolific…doctor writing over 10,000 prescriptions per month.
Thanks for those answers. As a follow up :- the breweries that survived , were they the producers who produced the best beer or was it only because they had the deepest pockets?. My guess is that some that went to the wall probably produced better quality beer but just could not survive the shutdown.