Cheers, and thank you to an American homebrew hero, President Jimmy Carter. His legacy will live on in every batch of beer brewed.
— American Homebrewers Association
Rest in peace, James Earl Carter Jr.
In my estimation, the former president was a far more complicated human than he has been portrayed by defenders and detractors alike, perhaps even a genuine Georgia peanut belt intellectual. Even as an atheist, I consider myself a fan of Carter’s and voted for him in 1980.
But this is a beer column. It has been handed down to us as an article of faith that one of Carter’s signal achievements was legalizing homebrewing, thus launching the craft beer revolution.
Yes and no; maybe. To be sure, Carter signed the product of the legislative sausage grinder (H.R. 1337) in 1978, but the bill’s back story deserves a clear-headed explanation of the sort offered right here at the Washington Beer Blog: The Truth about Jimmy Carter and the Craft Beer Revolution.
H.R. 1337 was a simple, slam-dunk tax bill that revised the IRS code … (it) was amended to provide individuals with an exemption to the beer and wine excise tax. It was not illegal to make beer, but it was illegal to not pay taxes on the beer once you’d made it. No realistic mechanism existed for an individual to pay such taxes.
You’d need to start a company and sell the beer to pay the taxes. Because homebrewers, by definition, were not looking to sell the beer, there was no reason for them to pay an excise tax, except that the law required it.
The amendment to H.R. 1337 allowed “any adult to produce wine and beer for personal and family use and not for sale without incurring the wine or beer excise taxes or any penalties for quantities per calendar year of: (1) 200 gallons if there are two or more adults in the household and (2) 100 gallons if there is only one adult in the household.”
Essentially, by clarifying homebrewing’s tax status and providing an exemption for home use, the bill’s effect was to legalize (perhaps more accurately, decriminalize) homebrewing from the federal perspective.
Senator Alan Cranston (D. CA) created and sponsored H.R. 1337’s homebrewing amendment. Representative William Steiger (R. WI) co-sponsored the amendment.
It is known that the Los Angeles-based Maltose Falcons, America’s oldest homebrewing club (founded in 1974, pre-decriminalization), aggressively lobbied Cranston — who by sheer coincidence held the 1980 fundraiser that resulted in the breakup of the rock band Eagles after an on-stage altercation between Glenn Frey and Don Felder.
Consequently, while President Carter signed the bill incorporating the specific amendment removing federal sanctions against homebrewing (again, by relinquishing federal claims to taxation), only the individual states could bring homebrewing out of the murky shadows by explicitly allowing the practice to exist within their boundaries.
It took 35 years for all 50 states to succeed in doing so. In 2013 the last two laggards, Alabama and Mississippi, belatedly joined the homebrew parade.
So, to what extent did homebrewing’s decriminalization preface America’s “craft” beer revolution? It’s impossible to say definitively because numerous other factors were at play. However the measure created space for the more effective marketing of homebrewing.
- October 14, 1978: H.R. 1337 is signed by President Carter.
- December 7, 1978: The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) is formed and the first issue of Zymurgy magazine is published.
- February 1, 1979: The official homebrewing “legalization” date.
- May 5, 1979: AHA’s first National Homebrew Competition
- September 1984: Charlie Papazian’s The Complete Joy of Homebrewing is published.
Speaking personally, several friends and acquaintances became active homebrewers during the 1980s, and their numbers eventually were such that the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. homebrewing club (in SoIN) was founded in 1990, a year or so after Louisville’s L.A.G.E.R.S. Both clubs still exist today.
However, while I certainly helped others homebrew by smoking cigars and drinking the beer they’d already brewed, my introduction to the genre of better beer did not come from homebrewing.
I came to the cause as a result of seeking an alternative to watery, flavorless American mass-market beer (Bud, Miller, Coors, et al), finding relief at first in the form of imports, later traveling to Europe for first-hand exposure to the genuine classics, and later still embracing Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Anchor Porter and the tidal wave of “craft” beer that followed.
At any rate, “craft” beer has now been a factor in American life for almost 50 years. Certainly we can thank the prescient politicians at work during the Carter presidency, as well as the chief executive himself, for clarifying homebrewing’s status.
Their many elected successors, particularly as congregated in 50 separate statehouses, have followed suit to define the legal terms of engagement for an explosive genre that absolutely no one saw coming to America following Repeal.
You know the drill: From fewer than 100 breweries around the time Jimmy Carter served, as many as 9,000-plus now operate in this country; although this is a number not everyone trusts, the difference is staggering — and gratifying.
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This celebratory note brings us to Jeff Alworth’s annual year-end report at Beervana, and a reality check: Looking Back and Looking Forward (Plus Dubious Predictions).
No one is going to argue that 2024 was an awesome year. Overall, the beer industry struggled and the craft segment was down 2% at midyear. The more worrying part of this trend is that craft beer underperformed the industry as a whole in the second half of the year, so the final numbers will probably be even worse.
Another bad sign: for the first time since—what, the 1990s?—more breweries closed than opened in 2024. On the other hand, there was the spectacle of Guinness, that 265-year-old brewery, selling so well it ran out of beer. Mexican beer is likewise going gangbusters, and the threat of seltzers is petering out.
Industries go up and industries go down. The more salient question is whether we’re at the bottom of the trough, or still sliding toward it—and if someone tells you they know the answer smile, nod, and ignore them. Now let’s start poring.
As noted annually in this space, a half-century of anything in consumer goods and the service sector is a trend, not a gimmick. Breweries today are where pizzerias were during the 1970s. “Craft” beer isn’t going away, and we’ll not be subjected to the “wet air” tyranny of High Life and Banquet without loftier alternatives. With maturity in a market segment comes a different set of complexities from those navigated at birth and during adolescence.
Papazian himself might paraphrase: Relax, don’t worry, support your local indie operators who serve the “better” beer you prefer.
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Alworth also has taken the lead in publicizing the concept of #PubJanuary: Celebrating #PubJanuary
In recent years, many people have decided, post-holidays, to spend the first month of the year on an alcohol hiatus. That’s a healthy impulse, but choosing the month as Dry January served as a double whammy for our friends who make beer. The month was already the worst for sales, and adding a nationwide abstinence campaign was especially bad timing. So last year, I proposed a new twist on January. Whether you’re abstaining or not, consider getting out of your house a few times next month for #PubJanuary. It’s good for you and it’s good for your neighborhood brewery.
Yes, we have all been here before.
Hip Hops: Consider supporting local breweries and pubs during Dry January
I’ve long since abandoned the practice of resolutions for the new year, although a toast in this vein strikes me as pertinent, along with my unceasing gratitude to anyone out there who reads the “beer words” I’ve written, here and elsewhere.
And now we welcome the new year — full of things that have never been.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
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The cover photo was found randomly online, sans attribution. Let me know the source, and I’ll cite it.
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Previously at “Hip Hops”:
Hip Hops: Yes, craft beer is still being “brewed for flavor and drinkability”
Roger Baylor is an entrepreneur, educator, and innovator with 
