RICKY: Boys, I got the best idea since they invented nachos. We’re gonna rent beer.
JULIAN: Ricky, what the hell are you talking about? You can’t rent beer.
RICKY: Sure you can, Julian. Think about it. If you rent beer instead of sell it, then it’s not technically selling alcohol, and it’s totally legal.
BUBBLES: Ricky, how in the frig does that work? People drink the beer and then what, bring it back empty?
Easy, they drink our good beer, pee in the bottle and bring it back for the deposit, and then we re-label it as Coors Light and sell it again. We're gonna be rich!
The beer just happens to be in there. Pesky stuff, gets everywhere. It's a nice favour that the renter does, that they get rid of that illegal stuff for us.
I remember a restaurant in town when I was a kid that had a keg and a donation jar set up in one corner. They didn't sell beer, there just happened to be beer there and people were happy to help support a local business.
Funny story
Many years ago when I lived in Russia it was illegal to deliver or sell alcohol after 10pm, so companies started to rent it. The rent was cheap like a few pennies if you return the bottle untouched, but if you drink it or open the bottle you will have to pay a fine which will cover the cost, delivery and hefty fee on top. They got away with it for a long time, even having segments on the news and tv commercials.
There was even a contract that people had to sign at the delivery
Didn’t some people sell all the ingredients to make alcohol as a kit with instruction that specifically said to not do these very specific things in this very specific order or you’ll get alcohol, or something like that?
I mean, if that's literally all you do and don't control the temp or microbial environment it'll produce a solution that is partially ethanol, yes, but I don't know if i would go so far as to call it wine.
The term I hear for that most often from people who do it is "hooch".
It's a pretty common thing for folks around here with fruit trees, since they end up getting a lot of fruit at once and you can only do so much with it before it starts to turn.
Honestly see if you have a home brewing store near you, or find one online. You can make 6 US Gal of wine from a kit that includes everything but the equipment, bottles & corks.
Source: I used to make beer and GF (wife now) said "If I'm going to help you with this, we are also going to make wine."
not quite. the blocks came with instructions on how to make juice, how to make vinegar; and warning about how long juce would last before you would have to go and make it into vinegar.
basically the same message, just a bit more subtle.
It looks like they weren't subtle at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine-Glo
> "After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine."
I bought a mail order switchblade once when I was a teenager. It came with the blade not attached and a warning that said installing this blade makes it illegal. Then it had instructions on how to install the blade.
I bought a novelty ID as a teenager that very clearly said it was not real and the clerk was sure to tell me to be very careful because acetone would remove that label very easily and then how would anyone know it wasn't a real ID?
The woman who was one of the most dominant and active prohibition enforcers was promised to be made attorney general. Then after the election they said "don't be silly. You're a woman. That would be silly."
She resigned and her first case was defending a company that sold exactly that product.
Am I remembering correctly that prohibition was largely the result of "temperance" activism that was mostly concerned with drinking being "anti-christian"? And then historians later spun the whole thing as being more about women's rights/health?
Prohibition passed with support from a lot of different and seemingly disparate groups: Christians sought temperance on religious grounds, corporate interests wanted a healthier and more efficient workforce that wasn't drunk on the job, hygienists thought households would spend their income on healthier foods instead of boozing, women's rights groups hoped it would curtail domestic violence, and even trade unionists and socialists supported it because they thought a more sober proletariat would be more receptive to organization efforts. It was a very unlikely coalition, and it succeeded mostly because no-one else would take it seriously.
I think it was because of the volume of liquor many people consumed. It wasn't unusual for men to consume half of a fifth, or more, in an evening. While some people still do that today, they are outliers and are considered to have a drinking problem. Not only did their wives hate it, when men would consume their paycheck and come home drunk, employers hated having a workforce of unreliable alcoholics who would show up drunk to work, or not show up at all, after drinking the previous night.
I worked in this shipyard in early 2000's for a dude in his 90's, he gave all the new hires the same speech, "now I'm not telling you you can't get drunk at lunch, but try to set up your work so you do power tools and finesse jobs in the morning, and more hand tools, mindless jobs like sanding in the afternoon. Was the best dang workplace safety speech I ever got, I was 20yo, and I realized only I had the power to keep all my body parts attached to myself in that work environment, lol. Same dude said your hand tools should be so sharp that the thought of getting a wound from them should make you nauseous. We did traditional wooden boat building, so we kept our tools wicked sharp, lol.
I've always heard it was a woman lead movement due to the amount of drinking. I heard drinking was incredibly high. Basically women were mad at their husband for drinking all the time.
Historians have effectively said that women had absolutely no agency in the time culturally and alcohol was about the only thing they could be hostile against that hurt them (due to alcoholism leading to abuse) and still was socially acceptable.
Alcohol was a massive problem at the time. The amount the average person drank in the USA at the time was bonkers. It was something that needed to happen to sober everybody up. Farmers out west would turn their whole crops into alcohol because it kept much better and was far more compact for shipping. And the low cost made it way too available.
> Alcohol was a massive problem at the time. The amount the average person drank in the USA at the time was bonkers. It was something that needed to happen to sober everybody up.
Which makes me wonder about places that had a temperance movement but no ban like the UK (which seemingly was more about the 'lower classes' drinking too much) or Canada, where prohibition ended right as the one in the USA started. Not to mention the many countries in Europe where there didn't seem to be a temperance movement. Did they drink less? I find that difficult to believe.
Does anyone have any good books about this?
Because droves of drunk husbands were beating their wives. I think that's why the temperance movement was largely led by women, at least from what I've been taught. The Christianity aspect, as it always is, was just an excuse.
This is the impression I got from the Ken Burns documentary. What a lot of people don't realize is that, before the temperance movement and Prohibition, Americans drank WAY more alcohol than we do today (like up to 3x as much). It was a serious public health issue and yes, it led to lots of domestic abuse.
I've always heard it in the frame of temperance and coming from a Christian movement. Never in my life have I heard anyone say anything about women's rights/health in regards to prohibition.
It’s the first widespread social movement of its kind in the U.S. primarily lead by women IMO which paved the way for women’s rights movements later on.
Women cared quite a lot about it because their husbands would drink a lot, come home, and not properly take care of their families which was becoming a pretty serious social problem. A lot of other people also cared about it but women were a pretty key influence IMO
From what I remember about a paper I wrote ~25 years ago for school, there were some pro temperance/Quaker types like Mary Mclintock? as notables going back to the Seneca Falls Conference in 1848.
Temperance was part of the entire women's suffrage / rights from pretty early on, well before prohibition was passed.
As the other said, not really a kit. All you need is some form of sugar and yeasts in liquid able to support alcohol at a relatively warm temperature for 2 weeks.
/r/PrisonHooch.
It is ridiculously easy to make alcohol.
You can, for example, put three pounds of sugar in a bucket of water, add even bakers yeast, and in a couple weeks you have alcohol. (Kilju, specifically)
You can accidentally make alcohol. I've left fruit juice in the fridge too long and it smelled like wine. I didn't try it out though. I imagine people did a lot of discreet brewing at home.
I grew up in a small hick town, where basically if you had a job and weren't getting in trouble with the law all the time, you were considered old enough to buy alcohol, but when I went to college, other freshmen were getting into trouble all the time for having alcohol, or trying to get people to buy them alcohol. I was like, let me explain to you guys just how cheap and easy it is to make crappy alcohol, lol
There was a BBQ stand in Texas where a long line would form before they open, because they sell out pretty much every day. There's actually lots of BBQ joints in Texas like that.
But this one didn't have any kind of license to sell alcohol, so they just gave away beer for free instead. It was iced down in coolers outside so you could have a beer while waiting in line.
"1 per customer per day please" or something like that. Don't think the free beer came back after Covid, though. Tragic.
It was not illegal to make alcohol at home. You could legally make up to 200 gallons a year.
I believe this was limited to wine, and it had to be for personal use. I also believe you had to be male.
Same with Cuban products prior to the embargo.
Supposedly Kennedy being so fond of Cuban cigars purchased so many for the White House's humidor is still stocked with pre-ban Cubans.
Bad is a relative term here. Aging cigars is a thing and vintage cigars can sell for crazy amounts of money. Flavors become more complex, sometimes even change completely and the cigar generally becomes less harsh (very fresh cigars can have a distinct taste of ammonia). However, there are limits and at some point they start to lose more and more flavor until they become extremely bland. It depends on the individual cigar and a number of other factors, so the optimal point could be anywhere between three and 40+ years. I haven't had a pre-embargo in probably 20 years but even then, they weren't particularly good.
The cigar in question was the H. Upmann Petit, a relatively inexpensive machine-made short-filler, so nothing particularly fancy (discontinued in the early 2000s - not to be confused with the H. Upmann Petit *Corona*, also discontinued but there's still some occasional availability). It's hard to say without trying but I'd be rather surprised if it were still enjoyable. But yeah, assuming proper storage, it would likely still be smokeable.
I think the term you were looking for here, OP, is possession. It was surprising that possession of alcohol was not illegal (like it is for currently prohibited drugs). Just the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol was illegal.
Yup. They had a full amendment, so they didn’t even need to try to regulate it under the inter-state commerce clause like in the war on drugs. Except that in the war on drugs the Supreme Court ruled that growing and consuming your own somehow impacted commerce with other states.
Tbf thats Supreme Court precedent from 1942. Even if some actions have minimal impacts on commerce, the aggregated effects of the individual actions exert a substantial effect on interstate commerce. [Wickard v. Filburn](https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/supreme-court-case-library/wickard-v-filburn#:~:text=The%20Court%20upheld%20the%20law,economic%20effect%20on%20interstate%20commerce.)
I mean...if by that you mean that growing and consuming your own illicit drugs lowers the DEMAND for interstate transport of drugs, I agree with you. Sort of a disingenuous argument though. "Oh no! you're affecting the war on drugs by helping us! Better lock you up!"
Not even religions could manage to make Alcohol illegal! Take the middle-east for example, even during the peak of the Islamic Caliphates, taverns were still running and alcohol was still being consumed and sold. Even in Saudi Arabia, Alcohol was made illegal just recently in the 1950s and it's getting slowly overturned as now Alcohol can be sold to foreigners and diplomats.
The Volstead Act (at least as amended not too long after it came into force) permitted the making of communion wine, subject to certain procedural restrictions. Check out [this story about it](https://vinepair.com/articles/how-the-church-saved-the-wine-industry-during-prohibition/).
So after the resounding success of alcohol prohibition the government decided they should try again with drugs but this time add even *more* prohibition? Genius. Glad we have a totally drug-free society now where criminals have fewer ways to make money.
Is it really surprising that a law was written in such a way that the wealthy elite, and most likely the politicians too, wouldn't really be affected by it...?
Are you sure? Germany had a similar law when it came to weed before legalization. Posession was illegal but consumption was not. So if a cop caught you with 4 grams you had a problem, if a cop caught you high that was a ok as long as you didn't break other laws of course. Maybe it was the same with alcohol in the US during prohibition.
It says both "since 1920" and "more than 65 years" so I'm wondering if they last updated their slogan in 1985 or if they stopped making ice cream for four decades. Because 1920 was over a century ago.
Edit: Later it says close to 100 and the copyright on the page is 2019, so that tracks at least. 99 is close to 100.
It's a long story. The Yuengling brand is a family business, and many of the Yuengling heirs do not get along. My understanding is that when Dick Yuengling took over the business from his dad in the 80s, he gave his brother a "toy business" to keep him busy. That was Yuengling Ice Cream.
They indeed stopped making it for ages. Returning to it was a bit of a marketing scheme that has been rebooted a few times over by now.
Lol, what a mess. I wasn't aware that they bothered to track years not in operation for "been doing this for xx" years claims. I figure most of the people who might be impressed by the figure probably wouldn't also go out of their way to say "hey, but wait, I couldn't get any of this stuff in 1978." I applaud their honesty, I suppose.
I'll be honest, the only reason I know any of this is because a friend of mine did the PR for the most recent relaunch of Yuengling Ice Cream in 2012. As a born-and-raised Philadelphian, I don't think you could _pay_ me to give a shit about the Yuenglings and the nonsense they get up to.
A lot of them, Yuengling included, also survived by…making beer.
It was legal under the Volstead Act to sell “near beer”, ie non-alcoholic or minimally alcoholic (in the same way that you can’t really have truly decaffeinated coffee but you can have coffee with trace amounts of caffeine that barely have any effect).
And it was common for heartier beers to be prescribed and given to pregnant and nursing women in this way, near beers being advertised as a health tonic of sorts, having a benefit to the baby’s diet as well as helping the mother produce more and better milk.
Unsurprisingly, however, “near beer” products did not sell as well as the pre-Volstead brews, and brewers were not sitting on a windfall from them.
The refrigeration equipment for making vats of lager can be turned down a few degrees to make vats of ice cream and they have industrial mixers for mashing.
In my youth I had worked both as a baker and at a brewery. While the ingredients for bread and beer are very similar the equipment and processes used to make them are vastly different.
A small amount of distilleries stayed in business by getting permits or licenses to produce alcohol for medicinal purposes. You could get a prescription for whiskey.
True, but what's not talked about as often is just how much the quality dropped off after their market almost went away. First they sold through their backstock, so early prohibition whiskey was probably fine, but then they started cutting costs and using inferior grain and adding in adjuncts. The stuff being illegally made generally wasn't better, and all the talented bartenders left for Cuba or Europe, so everyone got screwed.
Younger me was really excited to try some whiskey bottled in the late 1920's. Younger me was severely disappointed.
> You could get a prescription for whiskey
which sorta makes sense, alcohol withdrawel is on of the few withdrawels that is actually physically dangerous
they didn't even have to distill. There were tons of them with warehouses of pre-prohibition whisky that could only legally be sold for stuff like this. It was legal to hold onto them too.
George Remus (who the great gatsby is based on) was a pharmacist who started doing fake prescriptions to smuggle booze, then he started buying warehouses full of bourbon (legally), then when he was doing so much volume he couldn't disguise it as pharmacy use he started having his guys hijack his own shipments so he could claim they were lost and reship them where they were sometimes stolen again ;p
My grandfather made lots of money then selling moonshine made from corn on his farm. Later, during WW2 gas rationing, he would add it gasoline to make it last longer. High quality moonshine.
Also medicinal purposes. A surprising number of people developed a chronic cough that could only be cured by a bottle of whiskey. Oddly enough that cough would return every week or so.
Another way around the law was that some people would set up a tent with some barnyard animal inside. People would pay admission to see the animal and their ticket stub could be traded for a free beer in the tent.
My grandparents were just married back then and purportedly had trouble conceiving. They went to a doctor who prescribed whisky, for them both, after dinner.
They had Uncle Randolph, mom, and Aunt Martha all in a row after that.
It would be amusing if it wasnt our lived reality how alcohol is treated compared to other drugs.
Prohibition doesnt work, regulation and providing healthcare education and services does.
Alcoholism was RAMPANT and the cost to human life and the economy at large was incalculable right before Prohibition. I dont fault the people of 1920 for wanting a general prohibition because they were desperate and there was no real evidence back then that it wouldnt work. But knowing what we know now of how Prohibition turned out and how it single-handedly fueled the rise of organized crime in the US, you would think we would know better than to believe prohibition of other drugs wouldnt do the same.
Legalize drugs that dont have a serious risk of addiction/abuse, decriminalize drugs that do, and start funding science based health and education resources for addicts that the courts can assign people to when they are caught with a decriminalized drug instead of prison.
Preface: I'm anti-prohibition, both for alcohol and hard drugs...but I've also read a lot of history about it.
"Healthcare education" regarding alcohol was ubiquitous in the years leading up to prohibition. Every single state in the union had mandated anti-alcohol education in public schools. The failure of these efforts to even slow rates of drinking was one of the major stated reasons for the push for bans.
The idea that prohibition was an unmitigated failure is a popular one but modern historians have started to push back on that. As you mentioned, rates of alcohol consumption had exploded--prohibition succeeded in bringing those rates down significantly (the initial drop was massive before people learned to skirt the laws; rates still never rose anywhere near pre-prohibition levels). Prohibition likely saved tens of thousands of lives--even accounting for a rise in crime-related violence, even accounting for the thousands of people who died from tainted moonshine.
Well, canned heat is exactly what it is: jellified alcohol fuel in a can that you light for heat. During prohibition, it was a cheap way to generate heat or cook food without having to start a raging bonfire. So what did homeless alcoholics do? They strained the jelly a cloth and drank the alcohol that came out of it. Potent stuff that made some of them blind.
When you’re homeless, broke, unemployed, your country is going through The Great Depression, and have severe alcoholism from all of the above, I guess it just hits the spot!
During prohibition, WR Hearst kept his liquor locked in a vault in the basement at Hearst Castle and did not allow guests to overindulge. They could consume, for sure, and have a good time, but it was controlled.
JFK signed the Cuban embargo on February 3, 1962, banning the purchase of any product made in Cuba as of February 7. On February 2, he just happened to buy 1200 Cuban cigars, clearing out most cigar stores in the DC area
Miller Brewing had a product that was just all the ingredients of beer and then had a warning label that was basically “absolutely don’t pour this in your bathtub and add yeast and hops and water and let it ferment for exactly 36 hours at room temperature! That would create beer and be illegal!”
Embassies were immune to this law, so they could still serve alcohol to Americans on their grounds.
Congress tried to close this loophole but it was considered a violation of diplomatic immunity.
that's the funny thing about Prohibition, it prohibited production and distribution, but possession and consumption was still legal. It was basically a formula for "How to create organized crime"
Not true in every state.
South Dakota, for example, can consider the trace amounts of a drug in your blood as internal possession. Had a buddy of mine get charged for possession of marijuana when he failed a drug test (after getting questioned for why his dorm room reeked of weed).
People don't believe me when I say this because it sounds ridiculous, but it's absolutely true.
https://www.swierlaw.com/library/what-you-need-to-know-about-drug-possession-in-south-dakota.cfm
You hire my (100% illegal) business that's sends drug possessing ninjas to administer the drugs at just the right time; leaving you in the clear and high as heck
Im gonna go out on a limb and say the wealthy people did not do this so that they could drink it all.
I assume it was because they realized they would be able to profit on the black market resale once prohibition was passed.
If you were wealthy enough in 1919 to proactively stock your mansion's wine cellar and bar with enough alcohol to effectively indefinitely survive an alcohol prohibition while simultaneously throwing absolute ragers until the end of time... flipping some whisky for profit likely wasn't even on your radar.
I've toured old mansions with wine cellars bigger than my entire property and bars/saloon spaces bigger than my house. Those people knew how to party.
Eh, I'm sure plenty of people did it so they could drink it all. If I heard that alcohol was about to be outlawed but I could keep what I already had I would absolutely buy years worth of alcohol with zero intention of selling any.
Mr. Burns: “Alright Smithers, prohibition started 2 years ago. What do we have left from the old liquor store we bought?”
Smithers: “A bottle of Absolut Radish, some Tom Collin’s mix, and the decorative Ace of Spades bottle you filled with dirt and used to try to grow a seed you found in a watermelon.”
Burns: “Hmm…Do you think the last bottle has any alcohol in it?”
Smithers: “…mmm, no, I don’t think so, sir.”
You could also make your own alcohol so homebrew was on the table still.
Medical alcohol was still a thing during prohibition. I am sure many had undeserved prescriptions but it was necessary. Alcohol withdrawal can kill so people so alcohol is needed to manage withdrawal.
It's also the reason we have an income tax. 30% of the budget was funded though alcohol taxes so they needed a way to make up for that. Fuck you prohibition.
Wonder if there was a loophole like with the weed laws in DC where you can gift it which resulted in people buying a trinket and getting a gift of weed with it.
We have this today with cigarettes. It's illegal to give or sell cigarettes to someone underage, but it's legal for someone underage to possess and smoke cigarettes.
Sounds like JFK. He sent an aid to go to every tobacco store the guy could find to buy up all the Cuban cigars they had - right before the embargo was signed.
Some of the earliest bootlegging operations were luxury hotels because they could hoard alcohol and sell it discreetly to the wealthy.
Wealthy hotels also never got raided because they could pay off the police.
General Smedley Butler was hired to enforce Prohibition in Philadelphia. He started by raiding small speakeasies and shutting down bootlegging operations. He was hailed as a hero because he shutdown hundreds of operations. But then he started raiding luxury hotels and ballrooms and the newspapers and politicians immediately attacked him. He quit not long after because he made so many enemies by forcing the rich to abide by Prohibition laws.
That’s why they also sold grape juice with specific instruction not to drop the included yeast into it and then forget about it under a cupboard for a few months. Yeah don’t do that with our product we just sold you.
There is a bar in Wisconsin that operated through prohibition. How? Bitters is 90 proof and was considered a medicine at the time. A doctor owned the bar, and he could prescribe bitters to his "patients".
That bar still consumes more angostura bitters than any other bar in the world supposedly
My family's winery stayed in business making wine as they had a license to produce Catholic sacramental wine.
Maybe made a bit extra, I dunno. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Similar to John F. Kennedy placing a large order for Cuban cigars, shortly before announcing the embargo on Cuba.
Must have learned from his father who sent boats full of whiskey to Ireland just before the Volstead act took effect.
To Ireland?
Yes because alcohol was about to be illegal and he wanted to get rid of it because he was an upstanding and moral citizen
Will no one rid me of this turbulent boatload of whisky?
But to Ireland? Not from?
Yes, he was sending it back because it was an immoral and illegal drink no longer to be consumed but upstanding Americans
I’m guessing they all fell off the boat and didn’t make it?
He sent boats full of whisky to a country famous for its whisky?
You don't buy beer, your honor. You rent it. Case dismissed.
RICKY: Boys, I got the best idea since they invented nachos. We’re gonna rent beer. JULIAN: Ricky, what the hell are you talking about? You can’t rent beer. RICKY: Sure you can, Julian. Think about it. If you rent beer instead of sell it, then it’s not technically selling alcohol, and it’s totally legal. BUBBLES: Ricky, how in the frig does that work? People drink the beer and then what, bring it back empty?
Easy, they drink our good beer, pee in the bottle and bring it back for the deposit, and then we re-label it as Coors Light and sell it again. We're gonna be rich!
I will not stand by and let urine be mocked and ridiculed by being compared to Coors Light. How dare you!
We could put it in jugs boys.
The way of the road, bubs.
Then just drill the fuckers out onto the highway!
You gotta take care of the guy in the chair bubs.
And the best thing? THEY CALL IT AN IMPROVEMENT!
You rent the glass. The beer is on the house.
The beer just happens to be in there. Pesky stuff, gets everywhere. It's a nice favour that the renter does, that they get rid of that illegal stuff for us.
Like every good Catholic block party you sell “tickets” which can be exchanged for free beer.
I'm selling pebbles for $300, each one comes with a free ticket for the show at this arena that we're in front of.
They could put a deposit down to be repaid when they return the full beer. If they can't we'll keep their deposit.
I remember a restaurant in town when I was a kid that had a keg and a donation jar set up in one corner. They didn't sell beer, there just happened to be beer there and people were happy to help support a local business.
Tsunami Tommy taught me this trick. Though we used bartenders that are lazy unless tipped.
Does that mean they all drank Heineken?
> Heineken? Heineken? FUCK THAT SHIT! PABST, BLUE RIBBON!
uuuuhhhhh.... baby wants to fuuuuuuuck.....
Funny story Many years ago when I lived in Russia it was illegal to deliver or sell alcohol after 10pm, so companies started to rent it. The rent was cheap like a few pennies if you return the bottle untouched, but if you drink it or open the bottle you will have to pay a fine which will cover the cost, delivery and hefty fee on top. They got away with it for a long time, even having segments on the news and tv commercials. There was even a contract that people had to sign at the delivery
Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Guinness
You hear about the rotten food trial? It got thrown out
I didn't buy beer. I bought the bottle the beer came in. The beer itself was free.
Didn’t some people sell all the ingredients to make alcohol as a kit with instruction that specifically said to not do these very specific things in this very specific order or you’ll get alcohol, or something like that?
Bricks of grape concentrate iirc? DO NOT dissolve in a gallon of water and leave to ferment for 2 weeks because that would produce wine
BRB, buying some grape concentrate.
But you’re not going to dissolve it in a gallon of water and leave to ferment for 2 weeks right? Because that would produce wine
I mean, if that's literally all you do and don't control the temp or microbial environment it'll produce a solution that is partially ethanol, yes, but I don't know if i would go so far as to call it wine.
It's a special type of wine... Prison wine
Make it in a toilet for that little something extra
The term I hear for that most often from people who do it is "hooch". It's a pretty common thing for folks around here with fruit trees, since they end up getting a lot of fruit at once and you can only do so much with it before it starts to turn.
No oj there is after pruno
[удалено]
Honestly see if you have a home brewing store near you, or find one online. You can make 6 US Gal of wine from a kit that includes everything but the equipment, bottles & corks. Source: I used to make beer and GF (wife now) said "If I'm going to help you with this, we are also going to make wine."
not quite. the blocks came with instructions on how to make juice, how to make vinegar; and warning about how long juce would last before you would have to go and make it into vinegar. basically the same message, just a bit more subtle.
It looks like they weren't subtle at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine-Glo > "After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine."
I bought a mail order switchblade once when I was a teenager. It came with the blade not attached and a warning that said installing this blade makes it illegal. Then it had instructions on how to install the blade.
I bought a novelty ID as a teenager that very clearly said it was not real and the clerk was sure to tell me to be very careful because acetone would remove that label very easily and then how would anyone know it wasn't a real ID?
How nice of the clerk to make sure you wouldn't accidentally do something illegal.
Wonder if that works on mail order bride.
I feel like installing blades on your new mail order bride is just asking for trouble.
Hey you do you and I'll be doing my knifewife
knaifu. it is a knaifu.
Hey man I don’t judge, enjoy your dangerous handjob.
Edwarda Scissorhands
Knifebride sounds like an all-female Black Metal band.
Don't assemble, otherwise you'll have a fully-functional illegal immigrant?
The new Frankenstein movie is weird.
Thanks, I had real trouble keeping a pokerface while reading that during a video call.
The woman who was one of the most dominant and active prohibition enforcers was promised to be made attorney general. Then after the election they said "don't be silly. You're a woman. That would be silly." She resigned and her first case was defending a company that sold exactly that product.
Mabel Walker Willebrandt, a.k.a. the First Lady of Law, Deborah of the Drys and Mrs. Firebrand.
Strange, wiki says she didn't support it but also was so fierce in prosecuting it that it basically became her brand.
Pretty baller "fuck you" to take that as her first case though.
Am I remembering correctly that prohibition was largely the result of "temperance" activism that was mostly concerned with drinking being "anti-christian"? And then historians later spun the whole thing as being more about women's rights/health?
Prohibition passed with support from a lot of different and seemingly disparate groups: Christians sought temperance on religious grounds, corporate interests wanted a healthier and more efficient workforce that wasn't drunk on the job, hygienists thought households would spend their income on healthier foods instead of boozing, women's rights groups hoped it would curtail domestic violence, and even trade unionists and socialists supported it because they thought a more sober proletariat would be more receptive to organization efforts. It was a very unlikely coalition, and it succeeded mostly because no-one else would take it seriously.
I think it was because of the volume of liquor many people consumed. It wasn't unusual for men to consume half of a fifth, or more, in an evening. While some people still do that today, they are outliers and are considered to have a drinking problem. Not only did their wives hate it, when men would consume their paycheck and come home drunk, employers hated having a workforce of unreliable alcoholics who would show up drunk to work, or not show up at all, after drinking the previous night.
I worked in this shipyard in early 2000's for a dude in his 90's, he gave all the new hires the same speech, "now I'm not telling you you can't get drunk at lunch, but try to set up your work so you do power tools and finesse jobs in the morning, and more hand tools, mindless jobs like sanding in the afternoon. Was the best dang workplace safety speech I ever got, I was 20yo, and I realized only I had the power to keep all my body parts attached to myself in that work environment, lol. Same dude said your hand tools should be so sharp that the thought of getting a wound from them should make you nauseous. We did traditional wooden boat building, so we kept our tools wicked sharp, lol.
I've always heard it was a woman lead movement due to the amount of drinking. I heard drinking was incredibly high. Basically women were mad at their husband for drinking all the time.
And then beating them I assume .
and wanting to feed children.
I have personally never heard anyone portray it as the latter.
That's because you haven't studied the history of prohibition, silly.
We've been on this revision for quite a while, I think I'll just wait for the next one at this point.
Historians have effectively said that women had absolutely no agency in the time culturally and alcohol was about the only thing they could be hostile against that hurt them (due to alcoholism leading to abuse) and still was socially acceptable.
Alcohol was a massive problem at the time. The amount the average person drank in the USA at the time was bonkers. It was something that needed to happen to sober everybody up. Farmers out west would turn their whole crops into alcohol because it kept much better and was far more compact for shipping. And the low cost made it way too available.
> Alcohol was a massive problem at the time. The amount the average person drank in the USA at the time was bonkers. It was something that needed to happen to sober everybody up. Which makes me wonder about places that had a temperance movement but no ban like the UK (which seemingly was more about the 'lower classes' drinking too much) or Canada, where prohibition ended right as the one in the USA started. Not to mention the many countries in Europe where there didn't seem to be a temperance movement. Did they drink less? I find that difficult to believe. Does anyone have any good books about this?
Because droves of drunk husbands were beating their wives. I think that's why the temperance movement was largely led by women, at least from what I've been taught. The Christianity aspect, as it always is, was just an excuse.
This is the impression I got from the Ken Burns documentary. What a lot of people don't realize is that, before the temperance movement and Prohibition, Americans drank WAY more alcohol than we do today (like up to 3x as much). It was a serious public health issue and yes, it led to lots of domestic abuse.
I've always heard it in the frame of temperance and coming from a Christian movement. Never in my life have I heard anyone say anything about women's rights/health in regards to prohibition.
It’s the first widespread social movement of its kind in the U.S. primarily lead by women IMO which paved the way for women’s rights movements later on. Women cared quite a lot about it because their husbands would drink a lot, come home, and not properly take care of their families which was becoming a pretty serious social problem. A lot of other people also cared about it but women were a pretty key influence IMO
From what I remember about a paper I wrote ~25 years ago for school, there were some pro temperance/Quaker types like Mary Mclintock? as notables going back to the Seneca Falls Conference in 1848. Temperance was part of the entire women's suffrage / rights from pretty early on, well before prohibition was passed.
As the other said, not really a kit. All you need is some form of sugar and yeasts in liquid able to support alcohol at a relatively warm temperature for 2 weeks. /r/PrisonHooch.
It is ridiculously easy to make alcohol. You can, for example, put three pounds of sugar in a bucket of water, add even bakers yeast, and in a couple weeks you have alcohol. (Kilju, specifically)
You can accidentally make alcohol. I've left fruit juice in the fridge too long and it smelled like wine. I didn't try it out though. I imagine people did a lot of discreet brewing at home.
I grew up in a small hick town, where basically if you had a job and weren't getting in trouble with the law all the time, you were considered old enough to buy alcohol, but when I went to college, other freshmen were getting into trouble all the time for having alcohol, or trying to get people to buy them alcohol. I was like, let me explain to you guys just how cheap and easy it is to make crappy alcohol, lol
Reminds me of [this.](https://youtu.be/gnPnEvy4e70?si=k3Zt3O9GQhhXRt_D)
Oh no i added to much water when trying to make bread...what ever will i do
There was a BBQ stand in Texas where a long line would form before they open, because they sell out pretty much every day. There's actually lots of BBQ joints in Texas like that. But this one didn't have any kind of license to sell alcohol, so they just gave away beer for free instead. It was iced down in coolers outside so you could have a beer while waiting in line. "1 per customer per day please" or something like that. Don't think the free beer came back after Covid, though. Tragic.
The sort of still do that today with stills were i'm from. You can buy stills for making distilled water or decorative stills.
It was not illegal to make alcohol at home. You could legally make up to 200 gallons a year. I believe this was limited to wine, and it had to be for personal use. I also believe you had to be male.
Same with Cuban products prior to the embargo. Supposedly Kennedy being so fond of Cuban cigars purchased so many for the White House's humidor is still stocked with pre-ban Cubans.
Wouldn’t they have gone bad by now if true? I know nothing about tobacco or cigars but even if kept moist wouldn’t they have gone bad?
Humidors can preserve cigars indefinitely.
if store correctly cigars and tabbaco go forevet. cigarrets on other hand will go bad relativ fast because of the filter and chemicals used in them
Bad is a relative term here. Aging cigars is a thing and vintage cigars can sell for crazy amounts of money. Flavors become more complex, sometimes even change completely and the cigar generally becomes less harsh (very fresh cigars can have a distinct taste of ammonia). However, there are limits and at some point they start to lose more and more flavor until they become extremely bland. It depends on the individual cigar and a number of other factors, so the optimal point could be anywhere between three and 40+ years. I haven't had a pre-embargo in probably 20 years but even then, they weren't particularly good. The cigar in question was the H. Upmann Petit, a relatively inexpensive machine-made short-filler, so nothing particularly fancy (discontinued in the early 2000s - not to be confused with the H. Upmann Petit *Corona*, also discontinued but there's still some occasional availability). It's hard to say without trying but I'd be rather surprised if it were still enjoyable. But yeah, assuming proper storage, it would likely still be smokeable.
I think the term you were looking for here, OP, is possession. It was surprising that possession of alcohol was not illegal (like it is for currently prohibited drugs). Just the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol was illegal.
Yup. They had a full amendment, so they didn’t even need to try to regulate it under the inter-state commerce clause like in the war on drugs. Except that in the war on drugs the Supreme Court ruled that growing and consuming your own somehow impacted commerce with other states.
Tbf thats Supreme Court precedent from 1942. Even if some actions have minimal impacts on commerce, the aggregated effects of the individual actions exert a substantial effect on interstate commerce. [Wickard v. Filburn](https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/supreme-court-case-library/wickard-v-filburn#:~:text=The%20Court%20upheld%20the%20law,economic%20effect%20on%20interstate%20commerce.)
I mean...if by that you mean that growing and consuming your own illicit drugs lowers the DEMAND for interstate transport of drugs, I agree with you. Sort of a disingenuous argument though. "Oh no! you're affecting the war on drugs by helping us! Better lock you up!"
Not even religions could manage to make Alcohol illegal! Take the middle-east for example, even during the peak of the Islamic Caliphates, taverns were still running and alcohol was still being consumed and sold. Even in Saudi Arabia, Alcohol was made illegal just recently in the 1950s and it's getting slowly overturned as now Alcohol can be sold to foreigners and diplomats.
How did catholics do communion during prohibition anyway? I don't think Tang can be convincingly transubstantiated into the Holy Lord..
Sacraments wine fell into the same exemption as medicinal alcohol. I suspect a lot of parishes ordered a LOT of sacramental wine during prohibition.
People literally started bogus churches just to legally get ahold of booze
The Volstead Act (at least as amended not too long after it came into force) permitted the making of communion wine, subject to certain procedural restrictions. Check out [this story about it](https://vinepair.com/articles/how-the-church-saved-the-wine-industry-during-prohibition/).
Well that would inconvenience the elites as well, can't have that. Imagine throwing out million dollar bottles of relic-booze.
Yeah driving around with a case of vodka bad sitting next to a case on the sidewalk technically legal.
So after the resounding success of alcohol prohibition the government decided they should try again with drugs but this time add even *more* prohibition? Genius. Glad we have a totally drug-free society now where criminals have fewer ways to make money.
Is it really surprising that a law was written in such a way that the wealthy elite, and most likely the politicians too, wouldn't really be affected by it...?
Are you sure? Germany had a similar law when it came to weed before legalization. Posession was illegal but consumption was not. So if a cop caught you with 4 grams you had a problem, if a cop caught you high that was a ok as long as you didn't break other laws of course. Maybe it was the same with alcohol in the US during prohibition.
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The refrigeration equipment to make vats of lager can be turned down a few degrees to make vats of ice cream.
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You’re right it would probably be actual ice cream instead of frozen dairy dessert
[They still make it](https://yuenglingsicecream.com/home/)
It says both "since 1920" and "more than 65 years" so I'm wondering if they last updated their slogan in 1985 or if they stopped making ice cream for four decades. Because 1920 was over a century ago. Edit: Later it says close to 100 and the copyright on the page is 2019, so that tracks at least. 99 is close to 100.
It's a long story. The Yuengling brand is a family business, and many of the Yuengling heirs do not get along. My understanding is that when Dick Yuengling took over the business from his dad in the 80s, he gave his brother a "toy business" to keep him busy. That was Yuengling Ice Cream. They indeed stopped making it for ages. Returning to it was a bit of a marketing scheme that has been rebooted a few times over by now.
Lol, what a mess. I wasn't aware that they bothered to track years not in operation for "been doing this for xx" years claims. I figure most of the people who might be impressed by the figure probably wouldn't also go out of their way to say "hey, but wait, I couldn't get any of this stuff in 1978." I applaud their honesty, I suppose.
I'll be honest, the only reason I know any of this is because a friend of mine did the PR for the most recent relaunch of Yuengling Ice Cream in 2012. As a born-and-raised Philadelphian, I don't think you could _pay_ me to give a shit about the Yuenglings and the nonsense they get up to.
Yup. I grew up on Stroh’s ice cream
They also made malt and malted milk powder
I got a yeast infection just from reading that.
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We're in the middle of a heat wave, don't judge me.
A lot of them, Yuengling included, also survived by…making beer. It was legal under the Volstead Act to sell “near beer”, ie non-alcoholic or minimally alcoholic (in the same way that you can’t really have truly decaffeinated coffee but you can have coffee with trace amounts of caffeine that barely have any effect). And it was common for heartier beers to be prescribed and given to pregnant and nursing women in this way, near beers being advertised as a health tonic of sorts, having a benefit to the baby’s diet as well as helping the mother produce more and better milk. Unsurprisingly, however, “near beer” products did not sell as well as the pre-Volstead brews, and brewers were not sitting on a windfall from them.
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The refrigeration equipment for making vats of lager can be turned down a few degrees to make vats of ice cream and they have industrial mixers for mashing.
In my youth I had worked both as a baker and at a brewery. While the ingredients for bread and beer are very similar the equipment and processes used to make them are vastly different.
Big mixers
Pabst went full cheese.
A small amount of distilleries stayed in business by getting permits or licenses to produce alcohol for medicinal purposes. You could get a prescription for whiskey.
Winston Churchill got hit by a car and was prescribed 8 ounces of whiskey a day when he visited America during prohibition
I need a better doctor....
For more info https://historycollection.com/winston-churchill-got-drink-america-prohibition/
True, but what's not talked about as often is just how much the quality dropped off after their market almost went away. First they sold through their backstock, so early prohibition whiskey was probably fine, but then they started cutting costs and using inferior grain and adding in adjuncts. The stuff being illegally made generally wasn't better, and all the talented bartenders left for Cuba or Europe, so everyone got screwed. Younger me was really excited to try some whiskey bottled in the late 1920's. Younger me was severely disappointed.
> You could get a prescription for whiskey which sorta makes sense, alcohol withdrawel is on of the few withdrawels that is actually physically dangerous
My grand grandpappy was in constant withdrawal from 1920 to 1933.
Prescription whiskey is how Walgreen's grew their business during Prohibition; raked it in hand over fist.
they didn't even have to distill. There were tons of them with warehouses of pre-prohibition whisky that could only legally be sold for stuff like this. It was legal to hold onto them too. George Remus (who the great gatsby is based on) was a pharmacist who started doing fake prescriptions to smuggle booze, then he started buying warehouses full of bourbon (legally), then when he was doing so much volume he couldn't disguise it as pharmacy use he started having his guys hijack his own shipments so he could claim they were lost and reship them where they were sometimes stolen again ;p
My grandfather made lots of money then selling moonshine made from corn on his farm. Later, during WW2 gas rationing, he would add it gasoline to make it last longer. High quality moonshine.
The original E-85
OG-85
Seems odd to add gasoline to your moonshine during rationing, but you do you pops.
You could purchase wine for “religious” purposes. Many people got religion at that time.
Also medicinal purposes. A surprising number of people developed a chronic cough that could only be cured by a bottle of whiskey. Oddly enough that cough would return every week or so.
Also, alcoholism. Quitting alcohol cold turkey can literally kill if the alcoholism has advanced enough.
Another way around the law was that some people would set up a tent with some barnyard animal inside. People would pay admission to see the animal and their ticket stub could be traded for a free beer in the tent.
President Warren Harding even snuck some into the white house
My grandparents were just married back then and purportedly had trouble conceiving. They went to a doctor who prescribed whisky, for them both, after dinner. They had Uncle Randolph, mom, and Aunt Martha all in a row after that.
It would be amusing if it wasnt our lived reality how alcohol is treated compared to other drugs. Prohibition doesnt work, regulation and providing healthcare education and services does. Alcoholism was RAMPANT and the cost to human life and the economy at large was incalculable right before Prohibition. I dont fault the people of 1920 for wanting a general prohibition because they were desperate and there was no real evidence back then that it wouldnt work. But knowing what we know now of how Prohibition turned out and how it single-handedly fueled the rise of organized crime in the US, you would think we would know better than to believe prohibition of other drugs wouldnt do the same. Legalize drugs that dont have a serious risk of addiction/abuse, decriminalize drugs that do, and start funding science based health and education resources for addicts that the courts can assign people to when they are caught with a decriminalized drug instead of prison.
Preface: I'm anti-prohibition, both for alcohol and hard drugs...but I've also read a lot of history about it. "Healthcare education" regarding alcohol was ubiquitous in the years leading up to prohibition. Every single state in the union had mandated anti-alcohol education in public schools. The failure of these efforts to even slow rates of drinking was one of the major stated reasons for the push for bans. The idea that prohibition was an unmitigated failure is a popular one but modern historians have started to push back on that. As you mentioned, rates of alcohol consumption had exploded--prohibition succeeded in bringing those rates down significantly (the initial drop was massive before people learned to skirt the laws; rates still never rose anywhere near pre-prohibition levels). Prohibition likely saved tens of thousands of lives--even accounting for a rise in crime-related violence, even accounting for the thousands of people who died from tainted moonshine.
Ever heard the term “canned heat?”
Only in reference to music
Well, canned heat is exactly what it is: jellified alcohol fuel in a can that you light for heat. During prohibition, it was a cheap way to generate heat or cook food without having to start a raging bonfire. So what did homeless alcoholics do? They strained the jelly a cloth and drank the alcohol that came out of it. Potent stuff that made some of them blind.
Ewww that’s up right up there with drinking hand sanitizer 😑
When you’re homeless, broke, unemployed, your country is going through The Great Depression, and have severe alcoholism from all of the above, I guess it just hits the spot!
Andromeda Strain.
During prohibition, WR Hearst kept his liquor locked in a vault in the basement at Hearst Castle and did not allow guests to overindulge. They could consume, for sure, and have a good time, but it was controlled.
JFK signed the Cuban embargo on February 3, 1962, banning the purchase of any product made in Cuba as of February 7. On February 2, he just happened to buy 1200 Cuban cigars, clearing out most cigar stores in the DC area
Miller Brewing had a product that was just all the ingredients of beer and then had a warning label that was basically “absolutely don’t pour this in your bathtub and add yeast and hops and water and let it ferment for exactly 36 hours at room temperature! That would create beer and be illegal!”
rich ppl privelege; nothing new n usa
Rules for thee, but not for me.
Wealthy people here also being U.S. Senators and government officials at the federal all the way down to the local level.
And the Kennedy family’s fortune came from illegally running booze and then selling when it became legal again.
Embassies were immune to this law, so they could still serve alcohol to Americans on their grounds. Congress tried to close this loophole but it was considered a violation of diplomatic immunity.
that's the funny thing about Prohibition, it prohibited production and distribution, but possession and consumption was still legal. It was basically a formula for "How to create organized crime"
JFK did something similar. Just before he put the embargo on Cuba, he sent an aide out to buy several thousand Cuban cigars.
technically it isn't illegal to take drugs either. Just possessing them or selling them are prohibited.
Not true in every state. South Dakota, for example, can consider the trace amounts of a drug in your blood as internal possession. Had a buddy of mine get charged for possession of marijuana when he failed a drug test (after getting questioned for why his dorm room reeked of weed). People don't believe me when I say this because it sounds ridiculous, but it's absolutely true. https://www.swierlaw.com/library/what-you-need-to-know-about-drug-possession-in-south-dakota.cfm
If were talking technicalities for fun, how does one take drugs without (for even a moment) possessing it?
You hire my (100% illegal) business that's sends drug possessing ninjas to administer the drugs at just the right time; leaving you in the clear and high as heck
Somebody injects it to your body, and let's say you were unconscious during that.
Ask someone to put the pill in ur mouth
Dart guns.
Someone spikes your drink without your knowledge.
You could buy alcohol with a prescription. Rabbis could buy alcohol for religious purposes. What could go wrong?
It was also legal to brew your own. Some beers sold homebrewing kits.
Kennedy didn’t make the Cuban embargo effective until (I forgot who he sent) came back with a lot of cigars
This is a package of concentrated grape juice. Please don’t do this because you will make wine.
Im gonna go out on a limb and say the wealthy people did not do this so that they could drink it all. I assume it was because they realized they would be able to profit on the black market resale once prohibition was passed.
If you were wealthy enough in 1919 to proactively stock your mansion's wine cellar and bar with enough alcohol to effectively indefinitely survive an alcohol prohibition while simultaneously throwing absolute ragers until the end of time... flipping some whisky for profit likely wasn't even on your radar. I've toured old mansions with wine cellars bigger than my entire property and bars/saloon spaces bigger than my house. Those people knew how to party.
Eh, I'm sure plenty of people did it so they could drink it all. If I heard that alcohol was about to be outlawed but I could keep what I already had I would absolutely buy years worth of alcohol with zero intention of selling any.
Mr. Burns: “Alright Smithers, prohibition started 2 years ago. What do we have left from the old liquor store we bought?” Smithers: “A bottle of Absolut Radish, some Tom Collin’s mix, and the decorative Ace of Spades bottle you filled with dirt and used to try to grow a seed you found in a watermelon.” Burns: “Hmm…Do you think the last bottle has any alcohol in it?” Smithers: “…mmm, no, I don’t think so, sir.”
You could also make your own alcohol so homebrew was on the table still. Medical alcohol was still a thing during prohibition. I am sure many had undeserved prescriptions but it was necessary. Alcohol withdrawal can kill so people so alcohol is needed to manage withdrawal.
It's also the reason we have an income tax. 30% of the budget was funded though alcohol taxes so they needed a way to make up for that. Fuck you prohibition.
Wonder if there was a loophole like with the weed laws in DC where you can gift it which resulted in people buying a trinket and getting a gift of weed with it.
That's a great article! Lots of things that I didn't know about prohibition in there. Thanks for the post.
That’s when my granddad learned to make it
Look up George Cassiday if you want a good laugh at the hypocrisy of the U.S. government.
I did this when they banned ephedrine. Got me through many college courses. Try that today and I'd probably be having my door kicked in.
Yeah now you have to show ID to buy cold medicine that actually does anything.
The US doesn't even try to hide the fact that rich and poor people have different laws
We have this today with cigarettes. It's illegal to give or sell cigarettes to someone underage, but it's legal for someone underage to possess and smoke cigarettes.
Is no one else getting sick of the rich doing this over and over and over?
Rules for thee but not for ye
Sounds like JFK. He sent an aid to go to every tobacco store the guy could find to buy up all the Cuban cigars they had - right before the embargo was signed.
Some of the earliest bootlegging operations were luxury hotels because they could hoard alcohol and sell it discreetly to the wealthy. Wealthy hotels also never got raided because they could pay off the police. General Smedley Butler was hired to enforce Prohibition in Philadelphia. He started by raiding small speakeasies and shutting down bootlegging operations. He was hailed as a hero because he shutdown hundreds of operations. But then he started raiding luxury hotels and ballrooms and the newspapers and politicians immediately attacked him. He quit not long after because he made so many enemies by forcing the rich to abide by Prohibition laws.
That’s why they also sold grape juice with specific instruction not to drop the included yeast into it and then forget about it under a cupboard for a few months. Yeah don’t do that with our product we just sold you.
Alcohol was also prescribed by doctors too. That was a looohole.
There is a bar in Wisconsin that operated through prohibition. How? Bitters is 90 proof and was considered a medicine at the time. A doctor owned the bar, and he could prescribe bitters to his "patients". That bar still consumes more angostura bitters than any other bar in the world supposedly
That's where the phrase "Ah fuck! We're down to just gin!" comes from.
My family's winery stayed in business making wine as they had a license to produce Catholic sacramental wine. Maybe made a bit extra, I dunno. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯