The Brewery (Mostly) Vanishes

The coming of Prohibition had a calamitous effect on most of the nation’s 1400 breweries. Many of them quickly declared bankruptcy and their assets were sold for pennies on the dollar. Family legacies—many breweries were created by immigrants who came to the United States decades earlier—were destroyed. Some breweries soldiered on by making non-alcoholic “near beer,” while others transitioned to the production of something besides beer—ice, soft drinks, cheese, and ice cream were common landing spots. Still, a brewery’s peculiar attributes generally made it largely unsuitable for uses other than beer production. As a result, many brewery facilities sat vacant across Prohibition and the US brewing industry became a shell of what it had been. The chapter underscores the widespread economic impact Prohibition imposed on the brewing industry as well as the drastic measures brewery owners took to survive this tumultuous period.