JONATHAN CHAIT AUGUST 5, 2010
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
I am not a drinker, but this, per E.D. Kain, seems like an unappreciated accomplishment for the 39th president:
If you’re a fan of craft beer and microbreweries as opposed to say Bud Light or Coors, you should say a little thank you to Jimmy Carter. Carter could very well be the hero of International Beer Day.
To make a long story short, prohibition led to the dismantling of many small breweries around the nation. When prohibition was lifted, government tightly regulated the market, and small scale producers were essentially shut out of the beer market altogether. Regulations imposed at the time greatly benefited the large beer makers. In 1979, Carter deregulated the beer industry, opening back up to craft brewers. As the chart below illustrates, this had a really amazing effect on the beer industry:
Possibly this was all a plot to jack up peanut sales. But it worked.
It's worth noting that Carter got no political credit for this move, and that the benefits didn't appear until long after he departed. Some policy successes -- like a successful war or peace treaty -- yield immediate political dividends. But others produce little change until many years later, by which time everybody has forgotten your policy had anything to do with it.
12 comments
Jimmy Carter was a terrible president but credit here is credit due.
- liberal reformer
August 5, 2010 at 6:27pm
And don't forget the homebrew industry that the law created as well - I brew a batch of beer in Jimmy Carter's honor every year! I'm sure Billy deserves some credit as well.
- Attrill
August 5, 2010 at 6:56pm
One of many examples of deregulation initiated by Carter - another would be airline deregulation. Reagan usually, and wrongly, gets popular credit for deregulation, when in most instances it was begun under Carter and actually slowed under Reagan. Carter also began the defense buildup, doing more to expand the Navy and Air Force in particular than Reagan, held the line on federal spending, and cut the deficit, all areas where Reagan wrongly gets credit and Carter gets demerit in popular memory.
- rhubarbs
August 5, 2010 at 7:17pm
This puzzles me. I recently read what appeared to be a well-researched article (can't quite recall where) in which the main argument was that we had indeed enjoyed a resurgence of craft breweries and their beers over the last 30 years, but that the two or three biggies still had the lion's share of the market, and were essentially freeing up a part of the market to the crafts. The main reason being, that the big breweries still largely control the distribution networks, and the crafts are very dependent upon the goodwill of the distributors to get their product to market. Any clarification out there?
- ironyroad
August 5, 2010 at 8:08pm
This makes it even harder to believe that our 39th president was related to Billy "Billy Beer" Carter
- ATuring
August 5, 2010 at 8:32pm
irony, if I'm reading you right, the source of your confusion is the chart. The chart displays the total number of breweries in each category. So the vast tower of red shows that America now has many hundreds of craft breweries and a small handful of large breweries. A chart of sales or market share would paint the opposite picture. The half-dozen largest breweries account for the vast majority - 90 percent or more, if memory serves - of domestic sales, while the 1500 or so craft breweries together account for just a few percentage points of the market.
- rhubarbs
August 6, 2010 at 12:00am
irony- You're correct, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing. Obviously BMC (that's Budweiser, Miller, Coors, for the unenlightened) beers are horrible, but the fact is America probably has one of the best, if not the absolute top, craft beer communities in the world. A lot of people might scoff, but these days the US clearly stands equal to Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, and the other great beer countries. In my opinion, that's because US brewers have to work for it. Microbreweries here can't count on a built-in customer base, so they've worked to compete via quality and innovation. Rhubs is probably close enough in his statistics, but the "top half dozen" breweries include Boston Beer co (makers of Sam Adams), Yuengling, and Sierra Nevada. I'm not a huge fan of Sam Adams or Yuengling, but both are clearly superior to, say, MGD. Sierra Nevada is downright good. Regionally, you can't go to a gas station in the mid-Atlantic without finding a sixer of the generally excellent Dogfish Head. Up north, Bell's is very common. In Oregon, it's actually hard to find Bud sometimes, because craft brews dominate the market. So thanks, Jimmy Carter! And yep, I believe he legalized homebrewing too. If only he could improve my attempts at it....
- ratnerstar
August 6, 2010 at 9:26am
ratner, I just wasn't sure if the chart counted actual breweries or brands. Budweiser is one brewer, and controls just over 50 percent of the market, but it's actually produced at several breweries around the country. It's really just the 3 brewers you name that dominate the market, but I wasn't sure if the chart was counting brewers or breweries. Craft beers had a total market share of 4.3 percent in 2009; domestic brewers together accounted for 85 percent of the U.S. market. Boston Beer Co., brewer of Sam Adams, has a market share of about 0.5 percent; Yuengling, about 1.7 percent. Personally, I thing Yuengling is the best beer value on the market; by far the best beer near the Bud/MGD price level, and the black and tan is actually a pretty good beer. Yuengling lager is a B-minus beer at a D-minus beer price. Sam Adams basic lager and ale I don't love, but I find their seasonal and limited brews to be uniformly very good. This spring Sam Adams put out a "noble pils" that was the equal of anything I enjoyed in my last trip to Bohemia.
- rhubarbs
August 6, 2010 at 10:08am
The chart is definitely counter-intuitive to the point of being surreal. But I was really thinking of the piece I read a couple of months ago, which made the point that the crafts try to get along with BMC because they don't want any arguments or unpleasantness that might constrict the distribution networks. I completely agree with ratty about the quality of American craft brewing -- and I plan to do some active evaluation and appreciation later on today!
- ironyroad
August 6, 2010 at 10:32am
Fair point, Rhubs. I certainly won't argue that the big macrobrewers dominate the US market. My point (I think) was that this doesn't preclude us from having a thriving microbrew community -- in fact, it even helps it to an extent. Also, I should point out that competition from craft brewers has even spurred some improvements in the big guys. Blue Moon, owned by Coors, is really pretty decent, and Shock Top, owned by Anheuser-Busch , is ... well, better than Bud. And I definitely agree about the Noble Pils, which was great. But not all seasonal and limited brews are as good. I submit for your consideration: the Cranberry Lambic and the Blackberry Witbier. Blech.
- ratnerstar
August 6, 2010 at 1:01pm
Good point by ratnerstar about the effect of microbrews on the big guys. Blue Moon has become my default drink at places (increasingly rare in Boston/Providence) that don't have actual craft beers on tap, or if they have only the current Sam seasonal, a summer beer that fails to move me.
- frippo
August 6, 2010 at 2:26pm
In a 1988 article, a Village Voice writer mentioned "the 80 percent of the people who drink 20 percent of the beer." Deregulation and resulting diversification have given us other 20 percent greater and better choices.
- chuckdurante
August 7, 2010 at 12:07am