Shownotes
What happened to the beer industry after Prohibition ended? Joel leads the gang through the fascinating journey of American brewing, exploring its struggles, innovations, and resurgence.
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TIMELINE
00:00 Welcome!
01:16 Prohibition Ends: A New Era for Beer
01:38 Exploring the Prohibition Room
04:41 The Temperance Movement and Prohibition
08:25 Post-Prohibition Challenges and Changes
13:12 The Role of Politics in Ending Prohibition
15:04 Low ABV Beer
17:35 The Mystique of Spotted Cow Beer
19:27 Prohibition and the New Deal
20:35 Rebooting Breweries Post-Prohibition
23:48 The Economic Impact of the Cullen Harrison Act
25:57 Consolidation and Technological Advances in the Beer Industry
27:04 Support us on Patreon!
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CREDITS
Hosts:
Joel Hermansen
Music by Sarah Lynn Huss
Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow
Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co
Transcripts
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer.
Gary Arndt:My name is Gary Arndt and I got the usual suspects with me again, we have Brewer extraordinaire, Bobby Fleshman, who is petitioning NASA right now that if Planet Nine is discovered, he just wants to name it Planet Beer.
Gary Arndt:Good luck with that.
Gary Arndt:All right, take a break from the Greek and the Roman gods and all that stuff, right?
Gary Arndt:And just, yeah, just reset that.
Gary Arndt:Derail it.
Gary Arndt:I'm into it.
Gary Arndt:Not a similar note.
Gary Arndt:We got Joel Hermanson here.
Gary Arndt:We just got back from a trip to Seattle where he petitioned the Boeing Corporation to name their next plane, the Boeing 5 47.
Gary Arndt:That's good.
Gary Arndt:Jury's still out on that.
Gary Arndt:And uh, also we got the good professor with us, Alison McCoy Fleshman, who's current project from what I read, is she's trying to develop cold fusion.
Gary Arndt:In an English ale.
Gary Arndt:I,
Allison Fleshman:I almost snotted a little unknown,
Gary Arndt:you know?
Gary Arndt:And then based on, on what I know, you should always, uh, go public with your findings before you publish it.
Gary Arndt:That's fair.
Gary Arndt:That always works.
Gary Arndt:Well.
Allison Fleshman:That is fair.
Allison Fleshman:Cold fusion.
Allison Fleshman:Hmm.
Allison Fleshman:Taste the difference.
Gary Arndt:So in this episode, we begin at the end of prohibition beer, alcohol is now legal.
Gary Arndt:The long national Nightmare is over.
Gary Arndt:And Joel things.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:We didn't just pick up where things left off at the start of prohibition.
Joel Hermansen:No.
Joel Hermansen:And in fact if, if we could just to refresh
Bobby Fleshman:and we're in the prohibition room right now, we're right.
Bobby Fleshman:I, I we're being stared at by all these people, all these, in these pictures.
Joel Hermansen:I, I, I love being up here talking about prohibition.
Joel Hermansen:This past Saturday, um, we had some fabulous people from Milwaukee and including my doppelganger, Mike.
Joel Hermansen:And we were going through some of the, the things here in the room.
Joel Hermansen:And there, there's just such an terrific collection up here.
Joel Hermansen:It's so easy to talk about this in this room.
Joel Hermansen:Just
Gary Arndt:outta curiosity, you've never mentioned it.
Gary Arndt:Where did you get all these pictures from?
Allison Fleshman:So, in, um, when we were building the, um, whatever it's called, the prohibition room Joel, Joel can, David was like pointing to you.
Allison Fleshman:Oh, not even noticing.
Allison Fleshman:Sorry.
Allison Fleshman:Anyway, so we're building the prohibition room.
Allison Fleshman:And uh, so we went into business with Bobby's parents.
Allison Fleshman:And his father-in-law was like, you know, it'd be really cool to have some, you know, pictures of some pretty ladies on the wall.
Allison Fleshman:And I'm quite a feminist.
Allison Fleshman:And I was like, okay, cool.
Allison Fleshman:So I got some pretty ladies on the wall.
Allison Fleshman:There's uh, some beautiful 1920s advertising or advertisements I guess of women in beer.
Allison Fleshman:And you can't see their ankles.
Allison Fleshman:They're covered up completely.
Allison Fleshman:It's lovely.
Allison Fleshman:But then I got to thinking this is the prohibition room.
Allison Fleshman:And so I found all of these Associated Press photographs.
Allison Fleshman:They're copyright free because they're, you know, a hundred years old on the women behind repeal.
Allison Fleshman:And so, and there's, if there was information with the photograph I cut out a little bit of that information.
Allison Fleshman:Um, so I'm looking over David's shoulder.
Allison Fleshman:There's one where the woman is holding the last bottle of beer pre-prohibition, and it's selling for like $10,000.
Allison Fleshman:But then there's also some women that were really key in getting the logistics to get legislation passed to get repealed to happen.
Allison Fleshman:And so yeah, all the
Gary Arndt:frothing Slosh, yes.
Gary Arndt:I dunno if you've ever seen it, is that this was a 1970s beer.
Gary Arndt:Oh my
Allison Fleshman:God.
Gary Arndt:And this was their, can I love her?
Gary Arndt:Is that a steel can?
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Oh my God.
Gary Arndt:Um, I used to collect beer cans in the seventies and we would go down to uh, what's the name of it?
Gary Arndt:Um.
Gary Arndt:It's right over here.
Gary Arndt:Flanigans.
Gary Arndt:Flanigans.
Gary Arndt:It's Flanigans.
Gary Arndt:Oh yeah.
Gary Arndt:And my dad.
Gary Arndt:'cause I always want the can, so he'd have to drink it.
Gary Arndt:And he got like a bunch of cans of old fro and slush.
Gary Arndt:Wow.
Gary Arndt:I
Joel Hermansen:love this.
Joel Hermansen:Wow.
Joel Hermansen:Um, um, Gary, I don't know if, uh, this is an appropriate time to mention this, but we also happen to have history classes in the prohibition room.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:Which is super exciting.
Joel Hermansen:That's true.
Joel Hermansen:And science.
Joel Hermansen:Science classes.
Joel Hermansen:And it's
Bobby Fleshman:also entertaining for people that take both Joel's and Allison's classes if people wanna compare.
Bobby Fleshman:That's just what they're gonna do.
Bobby Fleshman:Buy top, cont top, uh, right.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:I mean, there's mean, there's,
Joel Hermansen:there's been a number of people who have, have stated who they think is funnier.
Joel Hermansen:A number of people.
Bobby Fleshman:I got voted off the island.
Bobby Fleshman:You did you off like in the first term off.
Gary Arndt:You know, I think if you have the humanities and uh, the sciences represented, you maybe should get someone to do interpretive dance.
Gary Arndt:Oh.
Gary Arndt:Uh, like in the Big Lebowski.
Joel Hermansen:Could, would you be willing to do I. No.
Joel Hermansen:Anyways, prohibition.
Allison Fleshman:Prohibition.
Joel Hermansen:So yeah, I think, um, it's probably best to remind our audience of the fact that after 1850, uh, there is this moment in American history where German laggers explode onto the scene out of, you know, large, substantial breweries like Pabst and Anheuser-Busch.
Joel Hermansen:Pabst was the larger of the two at the time, and between really the end of the Civil War and the progressive age, beer was exploding.
Joel Hermansen:In the United States.
Joel Hermansen:There were more than 4,000 breweries.
Joel Hermansen:They were producing enormous tax revenue.
Joel Hermansen:They had tide houses which were small, local neighborhood.
Joel Hermansen:Uh, bars that would, you know, we've all driven down.
Joel Hermansen:You know, for example, Mason Street, there's still a couple bars here in Appleton that have the old signs, you know, Schitz or Papst or whatever.
Joel Hermansen:Those are kind of a reference point to the old Tide house
Bobby Fleshman:and, and connecting with.
Bobby Fleshman:A couple weeks ago when we talked with Lee from, uh, the, the beer blog, and with, in Oshkosh, I think the Oshkosh Beer company was doing their own, they, they, they, they decided not to expand too far, but to put million little tight houses out in their, in their own community.
Bobby Fleshman:Yep.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:It was the strategy of a lot of breweries at the time.
Joel Hermansen:And gradually what started to happen through industrialization, through the Gilded Age is that, you know, as a lot of people were, were fraternizing these tide houses.
Joel Hermansen:And spending, you know, significant amounts of their income, oftentimes on the day that they got it.
Joel Hermansen:And by the time they bring the income home back to the family in many cases often, uh, which is still sometimes happening the women were the, the voices of reason at the house and they started to openly wonder about where much of the income was going.
Joel Hermansen:And they began to lash out at Tide houses and, and things like that.
Joel Hermansen:And, and you start to get the Temperance Movement which ultimately produces the Volstead Act or as we call it, prohibition.
Joel Hermansen:But when prohibition was repealed, and there's been, there's been quite a bit of recent scholarship.
Joel Hermansen:On this, which is why we're kind of circling back to it.
Joel Hermansen:Uh, there's been a really good new book that's come out by Jason Taylor called How, uh, the Brew Deal, how Beer Helped Battle The Great Depression.
Joel Hermansen:And I think it was just a focus in one of the major brewing magazines.
Joel Hermansen:I'm not sure if it's Zimmer or, or
Bobby Fleshman:the, the new brewer.
Bobby Fleshman:The new brewer is the Zimmer for the, for the breweries and professionals.
Bobby Fleshman:I think that was
Joel Hermansen:what it was.
Joel Hermansen:But his work is is super exciting and it's kind of, you know, showing us a little bit about.
Joel Hermansen:Not necessarily what happened in the middle of prohibition.
Joel Hermansen:I mean, 'cause certainly breweries had to find a way to do different things.
Joel Hermansen:Some of 'em were making ice cream and some of them were making, you know, un non-alcoholic malt beverages.
Joel Hermansen:And some of 'em were even making yogurt and cheese, and Pabst was making a cheese spread.
Joel Hermansen:And, you know, all of those things were happening, but it's really what happens after prohibition or as you like to describe earlier, the, what was it?
Joel Hermansen:Long National Nightmare.
Joel Hermansen:The after after MASH and the Post after.
Joel Hermansen:What were you talking about?
Joel Hermansen:After mash?
Gary Arndt:Before after mash, yeah.
Gary Arndt:The family guy reference.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Right.
Gary Arndt:That, um, so after Prohibition, the number of breweries in the country plummeted.
Gary Arndt:Plummeted it was, I saw numbers like it went from thousands to a couple hundred.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:And, and we gotta think of this in terms of per capita, we can't just be thinking in terms of absolute number breweries.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:'cause that was a huge number, like it would equate to something like 20 or 30,000 breweries today.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:In, in those terms.
Bobby Fleshman:And one of
Gary Arndt:the reasons I can't but think Wisconsin, like Milwaukee was known as the beer city for so long, is that when we talked about this on, on, uh, the previous episode, prohibition was not strictly enforced in Wisconsin for the most part.
Gary Arndt:No, no.
Gary Arndt:It was loosely enforced.
Gary Arndt:And you look at the breweries that come outta prohibition, you got Schitz Paps, Anheuser-Busch, which comes from St. Louis, all very German cities.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Where you had a beer drinking culture, uh, in Wisconsin.
Gary Arndt:They were, they were able to produce near beer.
Gary Arndt:So they were at least making something to keep the, the lines moving.
Gary Arndt:So they were in a very good position coming out of this.
Gary Arndt:Whereas something in say, new England.
Gary Arndt:Probably got hammered because they didn't have that level of tolerance.
Gary Arndt:Like the dick year, right?
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Very influenced by the German in, in Wisconsin, the, the German immigrants.
Bobby Fleshman:And this building is home to a brewing company that opened officially in 1933, which is the year that prohibition ended.
Bobby Fleshman:But throughout that, we were doing the renovations on this, and we seemed to have found evidence from 1929 that there was beer happening.
Bobby Fleshman:This was a dairy company until it became a brewery officially in 1933.
Allison Fleshman:Well, we found all those receipts from, was it it was Schitz, or who was it?
Allison Fleshman:Schitz.
Bobby Fleshman:Schitz and Blatz.
Bobby Fleshman:But it was at Brewing company before it was those distributors.
Bobby Fleshman:That's right.
Bobby Fleshman:We found
Gary Arndt:the letterhead.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:So there was a lot going on here, and I think that as long as people were paying taxes, and I mentioned this several times, then.
Bobby Fleshman:It seemed to have gone unnoticed by the state of Wisconsin.
Allison Fleshman:The other thing, um, so we're sitting in the prohibition room, but there's an attic above us, which I've never been in, had right through there.
Allison Fleshman:We we're sitting
Bobby Fleshman:five feet, 10 feet from the see the door, from the hole in the, in the ceiling.
Joel Hermansen:Gary has decided we're gonna make another stairwell up into there,
Bobby Fleshman:to that, to that hole.
Bobby Fleshman:And we found 300 crates of the, this is getting off into the dairy history, but yeah, we found 300 crates that they delivered milk bottles from.
Bobby Fleshman:Mm-hmm.
Bobby Fleshman:There's no lot
Gary Arndt:there.
Bobby Fleshman:No, we took 'em down.
Bobby Fleshman:No, they were, um, and she made me get rid of most of them because they were falling apart and they were burned.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:I'm kind of a pack rat.
Allison Fleshman:But we, um, but the fire that happened there on the building next door came over somehow.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:There was some damage that came over and that's, I think they just were like, Nope.
Allison Fleshman:Scorched whatever it's done.
Allison Fleshman:And so they just kind of sealed it off.
Allison Fleshman:But yeah, that's, I think a prohibition also storage.
Allison Fleshman:But yeah, we're living
Bobby Fleshman:in a building.
Bobby Fleshman:I mean, we're, we're, we're recording in a, in a building.
Bobby Fleshman:That was part of this whole story too, for sure.
Joel Hermansen:This building.
Joel Hermansen:And I had several conversations with people on Saturday about this.
Joel Hermansen:This building has a tremendous amount of history.
Joel Hermansen:Mm-hmm.
Joel Hermansen:And people can, I mean, it's not that we
Allison Fleshman:gutted it completely
Joel Hermansen:well.
Joel Hermansen:Oh, no.
Joel Hermansen:I think you've done a very respectful restoration of it.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:When you look at it, it was a building that was on its way to being leveled mm-hmm.
Bobby Fleshman:Before we took it on.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:And, and that's, that's where we, we, we have a steel spine that holds it together now and all these things.
Bobby Fleshman:But yeah, I think we've done well with it.
Bobby Fleshman:The ceiling's original
Allison Fleshman:up here.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Our banker actually helped us paint that best.
Bobby Fleshman:The best compliments are when people argue with you on the age of it when they walk into the tap room.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:That's, that's the other
Allison Fleshman:earlier on our, um, q and A podcast, the one of the questions was, what's an un like something that goes unnoticed that you wish people would notice?
Allison Fleshman:I think it's, that's all, that's not, that's all new.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Except for the back bar.
Allison Fleshman:But that's not original.
Allison Fleshman:Right.
Allison Fleshman:Like
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:You have to, you have to, you have to anchor your, your, your, uh, the tap room with something.
Gary Arndt:The only place you can tell the age of the building is the brickwork up here.
Gary Arndt:I think where you can really, yeah.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:It's not covered up.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, for sure.
Bobby Fleshman:And on the, on the front facade and on the side, but yeah, I get you.
Joel Hermansen:And then we have a beautiful set of stairs coming up here.
Joel Hermansen:Can you go into the origin story of the stairs to get up here?
Bobby Fleshman:Well, we've taken a long route here.
Bobby Fleshman:This is when Gary scolded us and he was like, you should have a staircase
Gary Arndt:there.
Gary Arndt:This is all Patreon stuff.
Gary Arndt:Let's go.
Gary Arndt:All right, so not only are breweries decimated Oh
Allison Fleshman:right.
Allison Fleshman:Prohibition.
Allison Fleshman:But that's back
Gary Arndt:to this.
Gary Arndt:You basically have a generation of people who either didn't drink or.
Gary Arndt:They were going to speak Easys, where it was more cost effective to drink spirits than it was beer.
Gary Arndt:'cause it's easier, you know, you get, you pack a lot of alcohol in one keg than you could say beer.
Gary Arndt:Sure.
Gary Arndt:So it was more efficient for smuggling and, and everything else.
Gary Arndt:So what happens then once this, you know, prohibition's lifted?
Joel Hermansen:Well, I, I think we need to back up just one year.
Joel Hermansen:I think you need to really look at the election of 1932.
Joel Hermansen:Like Roosevelt campaigned hard to lift prohibition, and it was for revenue reasons.
Joel Hermansen:I mean, the federal government was being starved of an enormous amount of revenue.
Joel Hermansen:And, you know, Herbert Hoover and FDR were complete like polar opposites when it came to their perspective about what the government needed to do for people during the Great Depression, you know?
Joel Hermansen:Yeah, Herbert Hoover was, was all about you know, that it was, it should have been privatized, it should have been charitable organizations.
Joel Hermansen:And FDR, you know, had the workings of the alphabet soup programs, you know, with the Triple A and the Triple C and the WPA and, and so on and so forth.
Joel Hermansen:He had all of these ideas.
Joel Hermansen:Well, one of the ways you're gonna fund that is by lifting this enormous, you know, I would call it an anchor on tax burden and all of the historical studies that have been put into place right after the elimination of the Volted Act, even when they went to the, kind of, uh, intermittent point, which is the Cullen Harrison Act, which allowed for the sale of 3.2% beer and Bobby, no, you're not off the hook.
Joel Hermansen:'cause you're gonna talk about this in a second.
Joel Hermansen:But this was an enormous boon in tax revenue.
Joel Hermansen:Because they initially decided that they would ease back into this and they would produce something called near beer, which is a 3.2% product that was viewed as non intoxicating.
Joel Hermansen:So basically this was kind of this middle ground, the
Allison Fleshman:invention of the lawnmower beer,
Joel Hermansen:right?
Joel Hermansen:This was like this middle ground to satisfy the angry temperance, and yet also to fulfill the Democratic party's vision in 1932 of using brewing as a, a, a mechanism to raise revenue.
Joel Hermansen:So they come up with 3.2% beer.
Bobby Fleshman:Where did, can you, I don't know where that number came from.
Bobby Fleshman:No, that
Joel Hermansen:number is completely arbitrary.
Joel Hermansen:I think they asked a number of.
Joel Hermansen:Medical and scientific personnel, what would be a non intoxicating level of beer that they could still have alcohol revenue attached to so that they could still fund the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the works progress administration, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Bobby Fleshman:And this hits and
Joel Hermansen:they come up with 3.2, which I'm thinking is a really hard beer to make.
Bobby Fleshman:It's, I mean, it's hard to make a beer like that with flavor and body and to make it interesting.
Bobby Fleshman:Nevermind the alcohol.
Bobby Fleshman:It just, it's just, uh, we do it.
Bobby Fleshman:I mean, we make some of those beers in that category, but, I mean, but it is challenging.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:And na
Joel Hermansen:is is
Bobby Fleshman:point 0.5
Joel Hermansen:or less.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:And those are hard to make.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:That, that's all.
Bobby Fleshman:It's a whole different conversation.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:And
Joel Hermansen:now you're, you only have 2.7% Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:To try to add mouthfeel.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:And taste and aroma.
Joel Hermansen:And there's other, I mean, this must be daunting
Bobby Fleshman:not to get in the science of brewing or of fermentation, but there's a lot that goes on there besides alcohol.
Bobby Fleshman:And you're losing out on all that.
Bobby Fleshman:And that's why Nas suffer so much because there's so much that happens beyond the production of alcohol that, that you're missing out on that makes, gives the beer its soul.
Bobby Fleshman:But as far as that, that hits home for me and Allison, that the 3.2.
Bobby Fleshman:Mm-hmm.
Bobby Fleshman:That was our entire life in Oklahoma.
Bobby Fleshman:I mean, that didn't change until after we moved here.
Bobby Fleshman:My condolences.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:I know.
Bobby Fleshman:So you could buy three, two beer.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Cold.
Bobby Fleshman:Uh, you can buy anything else.
Bobby Fleshman:Not cold, but everything that was cold was three, two.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:And we, because I guess, what's the logic there?
Bobby Fleshman:Dumb.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:None.
Bobby Fleshman:Not only is the beer suffering, the logic
Joel Hermansen:is what?
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:There is no logic there.
Allison Fleshman:Right.
Allison Fleshman:So
Bobby Fleshman:the beer, the beer is suffering on the shelf.
Allison Fleshman:But no, we had, my mother lived in Houston and she would come up to visit and she would do beer runs for us.
Allison Fleshman:She would bring, um, new Belgian fat tire.
Allison Fleshman:She would bring, she'd load up the car and bring it up to us because it was so sad.
Bobby Fleshman:These are blue laws that, do you
Allison Fleshman:remember when our friend from grad school would bring down this beer called Spotted Cow?
Allison Fleshman:Spotted
Bobby Fleshman:Cow, and I would ask for their cherry sour.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh my God.
Bobby Fleshman:Which I, you know, I, it was so rare.
Bobby Fleshman:Give, I will give props where it's due.
Bobby Fleshman:That's one of the best beers in the entire United States.
Bobby Fleshman:The, the, the serendipity.
Bobby Fleshman:No, it's not serendipity.
Bobby Fleshman:That's the apple.
Bobby Fleshman:It's that the Belgian Red, yeah, the Belgian Red.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh, the one, yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:That is phenomenal.
Bobby Fleshman:It's one of the best in the entire United States.
Bobby Fleshman:Give it where it's due.
Bobby Fleshman:They do things that are, anyway, so that, that's a commodity down south.
Bobby Fleshman:You can do, you can buy anything with that in the beer world down south.
Allison Fleshman:But yeah, we had a mule for a
Joel Hermansen:while.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:From Milwaukee.
Joel Hermansen:It was
Allison Fleshman:great.
Joel Hermansen:Do you think, do you think there's strategy of not selling spotted cow out of Wisconsin has, I mean, it's obviously produced a mystique.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:But has, do you think that that's a lucrative approach?
Bobby Fleshman:I do, especially in this market.
Bobby Fleshman:'cause I think, uh, most, most breweries have realized you cannot overextend.
Bobby Fleshman:And I think by saying that I'm gonna put air quotes here, that I'm only going to take over one state is not the worst strategy.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:I don't think, particularly this state Yes.
Bobby Fleshman:Where we, where a lot of freaking beer, it's, it's a pretty good marketing.
Bobby Fleshman:It's
Gary Arndt:basically what Coors did in the seventies.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, yeah,
Gary Arndt:yeah.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:They, they were more than a state, but you could not get it in some places, which meant that people in those places wanted it.
Joel Hermansen:I met a guy at a dead show in 2018, who knew I was from Wisconsin.
Joel Hermansen:It was a show out of the state, and he kept, we kept in touch and he was begging me to bring him a case of spotted cow.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:Like that was, it was like I was bringing the arc of the covenant across it.
Joel Hermansen:State it, it's great
Bobby Fleshman:liquid, but the marketing is just level 11.
Bobby Fleshman:It's, it's ridiculous.
Bobby Fleshman:Well, I think the name also, that's what, that's what I meant and it evokes Wisconsin.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, that's what I meant by that.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:That really resonates.
Bobby Fleshman:Prohibition.
Joel Hermansen:Right.
Joel Hermansen:3.2. Colin Harrison Act raise revenue to produce uh, a mechanism of steady revenue so that you can implement.
Joel Hermansen:What was eventually the first new deal?
Joel Hermansen:Now, if you recall from your history classes, and if you can't, this is one,
Bobby Fleshman:it's a Wayne's world moment, right?
Bobby Fleshman:Where we like do the flashback thing, right?
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:So there were two new deals.
Joel Hermansen:There was one in 1933, which was that first a hundred days period where they stabilized the banking system and they, you know, put forward the three Rs relief, recovery reform.
Joel Hermansen:And then the second one was in 1937, which was to try to fill in some of the gaps, you know, of that program.
Joel Hermansen:And, and the greatest legacy of the second new deal is social security.
Joel Hermansen:And in order to fund, and we're not going to go through an alphabetical listing of, well maybe we'll do that on Patreon.
Joel Hermansen:Um, no to have, don't have an alphabetical listing.
Joel Hermansen:What an
Bobby Fleshman:advertisement.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:No.
Allison Fleshman:Wow.
Allison Fleshman:If you sign up for Patreon, you won't have to listen to wait.
Allison Fleshman:Joel will also read
Bobby Fleshman:the phone book.
Bobby Fleshman:Wow.
Bobby Fleshman:Wait, what's a phone book?
Bobby Fleshman:Wow.
Joel Hermansen:But yeah, I mean, so this was really instituted to pay for a lot of these programs, but one of the stories that is not told about this time period is, so you go from 1919 to 1933, you're either producing illegal beer, you're producing near beer, you're producing, you know, non-alcoholic malt beverages.
Joel Hermansen:You're producing yogurt, ice cream, or cheese out of these, the, the technology of the time.
Joel Hermansen:So all of a sudden you can't just be expected to flip a switch and all of a sudden we're a brewery again.
Joel Hermansen:You know, there, there was a lot of.
Joel Hermansen:I mean 15.
Joel Hermansen:Let, let's, I would say unless you privy it up, I mean that's 15 years of not brewing.
Joel Hermansen:What if
Bobby Fleshman:you're privy though to the timeline ahead?
Bobby Fleshman:There may have been big breweries that were understanding where they're going, so they may have hypothetically, brew, not been brewing.
Bobby Fleshman:Brewing.
Bobby Fleshman:That would've been a
Joel Hermansen:violation of the volstead 'cause it said manufacture and sale up.
Allison Fleshman:But I'm just saying you can't see inside these tanks.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:It's yogurt.
Bobby Fleshman:I promise it all happens kind of outta sight, outta mind.
Bobby Fleshman:True.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Although,
Allison Fleshman:let's be thankful.
Bobby Fleshman:I do think it's interesting that, that as soon as the prohibition ended, there was a lot of beer.
Bobby Fleshman:I mean way more beer than the la the production of laggers should have allowed.
Bobby Fleshman:Out, out in the market.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:Well, and let's be
Allison Fleshman:thankful as, as these companies are making, I'm thinking of a small business, you know, and it's, it's just all us on, you know, hands on deck.
Allison Fleshman:So we don't have a, an army of people to do a lot of this work.
Allison Fleshman:That if we had to all of a sudden switch or shift well, much like we did in COVID, that there's not, um, back then Google reviews or any other Facebook reviews or that sort of thing.
Allison Fleshman:Just go back those times, you know, there's a kindness.
Allison Fleshman:It's like, it's so hard to shift gears.
Joel Hermansen:Right.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:So I think one of, one of the great challenges is, is dusting off the gear and you're producing beer again.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:Like if you shut down.
Joel Hermansen:I mean, and just thinking from your perspective, man, if you shut down production for three months,
Gary Arndt:whew.
Joel Hermansen:And you can't do it.
Joel Hermansen:I mean, it's a living organism.
Joel Hermansen:I mean, all of your, all of your supply chains.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:All of your employees who are producing the expertise.
Joel Hermansen:I mean, you work with some awesome brewers down there.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:They're the best.
Joel Hermansen:And, and all of a sudden if they had gone somewhere else and, and yeah.
Joel Hermansen:All of a sudden coolers out there making string cheese somewhere, you know, and then, and then let's, let's get cooler on here.
Joel Hermansen:He's gonna respond to that.
Joel Hermansen:And then you expect to get him and Aaron, you know, back Yeah, yeah.
Joel Hermansen:You know, rolling at, at a hundred percent.
Bobby Fleshman:No, it's not possible that that is a significant obstacle.
Bobby Fleshman:Some, and I don't think we ever acknowledge that some people have explored the idea of a seasonal brewery, and they've actually tried to implement it.
Bobby Fleshman:And for reasons like that, it's impossible.
Bobby Fleshman:It nevermind, you know, the employees, but the supply chain, the equipment, and there's too much cadence and we're kind of over overlap or we're disregarding the, the, the role of the yeast in this, and they have their own cadence.
Bobby Fleshman:Mm-hmm.
Bobby Fleshman:But yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Before we move on too far, Joel, where does income tax and property tax fall into this?
Bobby Fleshman:Glad you asked that question.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Why would you ask that
Joel Hermansen:question?
Joel Hermansen:Seven and a half million dollars was raised in tax revenue on day one of the Cullen Harrison Act.
Joel Hermansen:Now we're back in 1933.
Joel Hermansen:Cullen Harrison is a partial.
Joel Hermansen:Repeal of prohibition, allowing for the production of 3.2% beer, seven and a half million dollars.
Joel Hermansen:Bless you.
Joel Hermansen:Sorry.
Joel Hermansen:Goes into the federal coffers on day one, that like that in 1933.
Joel Hermansen:That is an enormous Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:Sum of money.
Bobby Fleshman:It's gotta be, you have to, how many fold?
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:You know?
Joel Hermansen:Well, what would that look like today?
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:Or, or whatnot.
Joel Hermansen:I don't know.
Joel Hermansen:The exchange rate.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:I'm not that good at math, I think, I think Gary's typing right now.
Joel Hermansen:Gary's on it.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:But I mean, seven and a half million dollars.
Joel Hermansen:Do you
Gary Arndt:have the number?
Gary Arndt:The total receipts for the United States in 1933 was 2 billion.
Joel Hermansen:So seven and a half million on one day is a significant amount.
Joel Hermansen:So
Bobby Fleshman:0.3% in one day.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:Did you just do that math in your head that fast?
Joel Hermansen:I
Bobby Fleshman:don't know if I did or not.
Bobby Fleshman:I think I may have missed it up.
Bobby Fleshman:Was I Right?
Bobby Fleshman:What 0.3%?
Bobby Fleshman:Gosh.
Bobby Fleshman:There you go.
Bobby Fleshman:I'm the dumbest person on this
Joel Hermansen:podcast by far.
Joel Hermansen:I'm like number five.
Joel Hermansen:'cause David's way sharper than I am too.
Joel Hermansen:But I mean it, but that, that is a huge amount of money in one day.
Joel Hermansen:Yeah.
Joel Hermansen:And you know, FDR himself, you know, was, was somebody who enjoyed, uh, a, a drink.
Joel Hermansen:And I think that there were certainly selfish motivations for doing this.
Joel Hermansen:But the biggest, and when the, when the Cullen Harrison Act was signed in March of 1933, this was all about revenue.
Joel Hermansen:And it was an enormous challenge to reboot breweries after 15 years of either inactivity or different activity, yogurt, cheese, ice cream.
Joel Hermansen:I don't know what Paps was making this spreadable cheese.
Joel Hermansen:I've seen pictures of it.
Joel Hermansen:It looked horrible.
Joel Hermansen:Were these
Gary Arndt:episodes, one of the things we talked about was a consolidation of the beer industry.
Gary Arndt:That kind of went through, say the, the seventies and eighties and this was kind of the big Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Drop off.
Gary Arndt:This was the start of that.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:It was,
Bobby Fleshman:it was the extinction level.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:But then there was also, yeah, that's a good way to look at it.
Gary Arndt:A change in beer taste and beer consumption.
Gary Arndt:Another thing we've talked about in the past how refrigeration technology became popular.
Gary Arndt:Yep.
Gary Arndt:And from the start of prohibition to the end of prohibition, a lot happened in this country in terms of technology.
Gary Arndt:And you had refrigerated cars that went from, they were there to being pretty much ubiquitous and.
Gary Arndt:What I did, the brief readings I did on this, is that when things started back up, the light lager really took off.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:And when you go to a a, a grocery store today, it's all light laggers, almost every major brand you can think of as a light lager.
Gary Arndt:And this seems like it.
Bobby Fleshman:This is kind of the point where that started.
Bobby Fleshman:Yes.
Bobby Fleshman:It's a split personality.
Bobby Fleshman:You see that in one cabinet and the other one's got marshmallow barrel eggs, whatever.
Bobby Fleshman:But how much of
Allison Fleshman:that was because of the rice and the, like, the rationings from the war?
Allison Fleshman:And then once you learned that you could ferment rice, that that's not
Gary Arndt:a bad point.
Gary Arndt:Well, that went to come until later.
Joel Hermansen:Well, but in as early as 1941, we're having weightless days in the United States.
Bobby Fleshman:But I think we're, we're, I wrote down this word marketing.
Bobby Fleshman:'cause I think marketing's a big part of this story.
David:That's gonna wrap up this episode of Respecting the Beer.
David:Make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast player, like Spotify or Apple so you can get the second half of this conversation next week about beer after prohibition.
David:Respecting the beer is produced by me.
David:David Kelso, with music by Sarah Lynn Huss.
David:Be sure to join the Facebook group to get social between episodes.
David:And if you really love beer.
David:Support the show over on Patreon.
David:You can get episodes a week ahead of time and access to beers brewed exclusively for Patreon members links to everything in the show notes.
David:And until next time, please remember to respect the beer.
