At 5:32 in the afternoon 80 years ago on Thursday, Prohibition ended as the 21st Amendment was ratified. It's a wonderful excuse to get zozzled, ossified, or positively spifflicated -- and celebrate that you're totally not sipping methanol -- but before you do, let's consider how the Noble Experiment changed the way a nation drinks.
It wiped out 85 percent of U.S. distilleries and 100 percent of breweries putting out full-strength beer. Legal liquor retailers went down in number by 90 percent. The breweries and distilleries that stayed open switched to making non-alcoholic "near beer," industrial alcohol, or other products entirely.
By all accounts they were pretty grimy places dedicated to excess drinking and working-class social life. Now we call those dive bars.
Some cities, like Pittsburgh, didn't even abide by the new ban. It just wasn't enforced, and anyone who thought differently was booted out.
Hardly anyone at a speakeasy drank beer. With their higher alcohol content by volume -- and, let's face it, getting drunk is all that mattered -- distilled spirits were a better moneymaker and easier to transport.
Like how you chased vodka with literally whatever other drink you could find during your freshman year of college. But classier.
The Volstead Act, which nailed down a definition of "intoxicating" beverages, neglected to mention anything about grape concentrate, which can be rehydrated and fermented into alcohol.
LAME.
"Bathtub gin" got its name because the bottles used to mix it in were too tall for regular sinks and had to be filled under a bathtub faucet.
By one estimate, just one-fourth of this variant was composed of actual whiskey. Distilleries that opened right after therRepeal also opted to sell blended variants to stretch their supply of the straight stuff -- which, needing to be both produced and aged, was dangerously low.
Rum was sold cheaper and therefore not as lucrative a bootleg trade, however.
While the vast majority were drinking straight whiskey a few years prior, Prohibition forced them to get creative with that and other liquors. Except vodka, which hadn't yet caught on. Or tequila.
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