Why is April 7th “National Beer Day”? Well, it’s because it was on that date in 1933 that the production and distribution of beer became once again legal in the United States. On March 14, 1933, Representative Thomas H. Cullen introduced House Resolution 3341, which would amend parts of the Volstead Act, which was the…
Category: Beer History
Women in Brewing: Hedwig Sprung, California Bootlegging Homebrewer
In the middle of the southern portion of San Francisco Bay in California sits the ghost town of Drawbridge. Now quietly sinking into the mud of the bay’s tidal flats, Drawbridge was once a vibrant little community full of colorful characters. A collection of dwellings that grew up spontaneously around the South Pacific Coast Railway’s…
St. Arnold of Soissons
Today is the Feast Day of St Arnold of Soissons, the Roman Catholic patron saint of hop pickers and Belgian brewers. According to the Revue bibliogaphique belge (v. 1, no. 1, 20 January 1889), he was born in about 1040 at Tiegem, the son of a Flemish nobleman. He embarked on a career of arms,…
The “American Brewers’ Review”
Just the other day, as I was conducting a online search entirely unrelated to beer, I happened on a couple of images depicting the 2nd International Brewer’s Congress held in Chicago in 1911. Following up on them I discovered that they came from the American Brewers’ Review, a trade journal published between 1887 and 1939…