# When did hard liquor become affordable **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 16, 2012, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hard-liquor-become-affordable/644221 "2012-12-16T21:44:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2012, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hard-liquor-become-affordable/644221/1 "2012-12-16T21:44:17Z")
I get the impression hard liquor first became affordable in the mid 19th century. Was this when hard liquor became something almost everyone could afford? What advances led to that, and how much was hard liquor (rum, whiskey, vodka, gin, etc) in today’s dollars back in the 1850s? Is the Coffey still what led to hard liquors being mass produced? ---
**Author:** ![jbaker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/59ef9b/32.png) [@jbaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jbaker)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2012, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hard-liquor-become-affordable/644221/2 "2012-12-16T22:20:18Z")
I don’t know about other liquors, but gin became popular in England in the late 17th century. The key development, according to Wikipedia’s article on Gin Craze, was that the monopoly of the London Guild of Distillers was broken in 1690, thereby opening up the market in gin distillation. Its popularity was controversial for decades, as shown, for example, by Hogarth’s prints on Beer Street and Gin Lane (1751). ---
**Author:** ![MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2012, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hard-liquor-become-affordable/644221/3 "2012-12-16T22:33:11Z")
Hard liquors (whiskey, rum, brandy in particular) were a big staple of colonial America’s daily diet, and I don’t think that it was just the rich who were doing the imbibing, often at levels that would make most of today’s moderate drinkers look positively like teetotaler’s in comparison… ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2012, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hard-liquor-become-affordable/644221/4 "2012-12-16T23:05:36Z")
> [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > Hard liquors (whiskey, rum, brandy in particular) were a big staple of colonial America’s daily diet, and I don’t think that it was just the rich who were doing the imbibing, often at levels that would make most of today’s moderate drinkers look positively like teetotaler’s in comparison… I was under the impression that although alcohol was common during that period, it was pretty low alcohol content liquor, maybe 2-15% as opposed to the 40% seen in hard liquors. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2012, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hard-liquor-become-affordable/644221/5 "2012-12-16T23:33:01Z")
That’s not liquor. Distilled liquor has been around for a thousand years (well, almost), and has been an industrial product for about 400 years. Displays of public drunkenness were common enough by the mid-17th century for rum and whiskey to be the target of legislation. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2012, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hard-liquor-become-affordable/644221/6 "2012-12-16T23:51:47Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I was under the impression that although alcohol was common during that period, it was pretty low alcohol content liquor, maybe 2-15% as opposed to the 40% seen in hard liquors. Home distilling was a cottage industry long before the Revolution. Rum, made from molasses from the West Indies, was a staple of the Triangular Trade routes. Later farmers made whiskey from their surplus corn; it was easier to get to market in that form and more valuable. From[here.](http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/summer08/whiskey.cfm) > [@](#): > > Distilleries grew up in New England around the rum business. Rum was a link in a chain that dispatched ships freighted with rum to Africa to trade for slaves who were transported to the West Indies to grow sugar to make molasses to ship to New England to make rum . . . and so forth. Of course, rum was consumed at home as well. It was cheap and readily available in every tavern in every American colony. > [@](#): > > Any frontier farmer who raised more grain than he could eat or feed to his livestock could distill whiskey at home. If he didn’t own a still, he found a neighbor who did and gave him a portion of the whiskey as payment. A bushel of corn made about three gallons and was worth more in liquid form. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hard-liquor-become-affordable/644221/7 "2012-12-17T06:23:42Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Later farmers made whiskey from their surplus corn; it was easier to get to market in that form and more valuable. Hence the whole Whiskey Rebellion, because the attempt by the federal government to collect a tax on whiskey was ruinous to the farmers of western Pennsylvania, most of whom didn’t have hard currency and used whiskey as a medium of exchange. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hard-liquor-become-affordable/644221/8 "2012-12-17T06:46:42Z")
[Drinking in America: A History](http://www.hoboes.com/Politics/Prohibition/Notes/Drinking/) > [@](#): > > “While precise consumption figures are lacking, informed estimates suggest that by the 1790s an average American over fifteen years old drank just under six gallons of absolute alcohol each year. That represented some thirty-four gallons of beer and cider (about 3.4 gallons of absolute alcohol), slightly over five gallons of distilled liquors (2.3 gallons of absolute alcohol), and under a gallon of wine (possibly .10 gallons absolute). Because this is an average figure…, the level of consumption probably was much higher for actual drinkers. But even six gallons is a formidable amount. The comparable modern average is less than 2.9 gallons per capita.” > > “But America’s colonists were not problem drinkers—at least not if social policy directed at alcohol abuse is any indication…. the provincials heard little public outcry against alcoholism…. A general lack of anxiety over alcohol problems was one of the most significant features of drinking in the colonial era.” ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hard-liquor-become-affordable/644221/9 "2012-12-17T16:21:44Z")
Rum was absurdly cheap in pre-Revolutionary Colonial America. According to [history.org](http://history.org), a gallon of domestically produced rum cost 1s 8d, which is something like $8 in today’s dollars. I’m sure it was “hot, hellish and terrible”, but I don’t think you can get a gallon of the cheapest liquor for $8 anywhere in the US these days. > **[Colonial Williamsburg | The World's Largest Living History Museum](https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/)** > > Experience the largest outdoor educational living museum in the country, through immersive and authentic 18th-century programming for our guests. > **[Colonial Williamsburg | The World's Largest Living History Museum](https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/)** > > Experience the largest outdoor educational living museum in the country, through immersive and authentic 18th-century programming for our guests.