While Oregon and Washington, Colorado, Maine or California amongst others saw explosive craft brewery growth, the Southeastern states seemed trapped in light lager culture and a persistent prohibitionist mindset. Beer remained stuck at sports bars and tailgating parties.
It’s finally cool in the South to come out and admit undying devotion to craft beer. Beer lovers can find new breweries, brewpubs and beer-focused bars and restaurants throughout the eight-state region, as today’s excitement caps decades of struggle to catch up to more beer-centric regions of the country.
The Brick Store, Decatur, GA
Now, a vibrant beer world flourishes in the Southeast. World-class imports, locally-produced microbrews and specialty brews from the rest of the country have achieved unprecedented popularity in the region. Southerners are realizing that beer can be a varied and vibrant part of meals, social gatherings and life as a whole.
The Bad Old Days
The South’s love affair with robust, old-world beer styles is a relatively new trend that trails other regions of the country. There was a long, bland beer legacy to overcome.
The bad old days of southern beer were pretty bad. The smattering of southern breweries in the 1800s could not begin to compare to the hundreds found in northern parts of the country. German immigrants who founded the early breweries of the Northeast and Midwest never settled in the South in any great numbers, and the oppressive heat of the lower states made beer production extremely difficult.
The modest group of southeastern breweries that existed in the early part of the twentieth century was completely squashed by Prohibition and the Great Depression, and grain rationing during World War II drove many post-Prohibition breweries out of business.
Religion has also exerted a restraining influence on beer in the south. In his book, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement, Samford University professor John L. Coker explains that prohibitionist sentiment was not popular in the South before the Civil War because the temperance movement was associated with the northern anti-slavery movement. After the Civil War, however, southern Protestant leaders reinterpreted the ideals of temperance and prohibition to be compatible with southern culture. By 1915, alcohol had been officially forbidden by most southern churches.
This Protestant holy war against alcohol never occurred in the Catholic state of Louisiana, which explains many of the state’s liberal alcohol laws. Prohibition, however, was a different matter. Wolfram Koehler, owner/brewmaster of New Orleans’ Crescent City Brewhouse, reflects, “New Orleans, with 22 operating breweries at the turn of the 20th century, was truly a brewing capitol of the South, but almost all were lost due to Prohibition. When I arrived here in the 1980s, Dixie was the only surviving brewery in the Big Easy. When we began Crescent City Brewhouse in January of 1991, this was the city’s first brewery opening in over 70 years.”
Besides the sultry climate and an oppressive church, what other factors held beer back? State laws did not help matters. Microbreweries and brewpubs were illegal in most southern states from Prohibition right up until ten to twenty years ago. And a lack of any ingrained brewing tradition in the South allowed the big national brands to completely dominate the region after Prohibition.
Ironically, even though most southern states outlawed high alcohol beers in the past, strong spirits have always been a staple of imbibing southerners. Whereas barley and hops were scarce in the South, corn and other grains used in the production of distilled spirits have always been readily available. Moonshine was in wide, albeit illegal, production over the past 150 years—especially during Prohibition. It was much easier to hide a still than a brewery, and a small volume of spirits was easier to produce and transport than a much larger volume of beer. Spirits weren’t filling in the heat of the summer and were easier to carry in small flasks to conceal from religious folk. Locally distilled beverages reigned supreme in those days, and the South simply lost whatever taste it had for beer.
Another reason the South trailed other parts of the United States in beer appreciation may have something to do with its early population. Affluent intellectuals settled the Northeast, European immigrants with strong beer backgrounds gathered in the Midwest and adventurous risk-takers made their way to the Northwest. Farmers, laborers and many individuals on the run from the law populated the old South.
Low incomes, long hours of hard work and a conservative, stubbornly traditional nature seemed to help solidify the cheaper light lager preferences of many “old school” southerners. Scott Maitland of the Top of the Hill Restaurant & Brewery in Chapel Hill, NC adds, “Craft beer is more of a white collar thing, at least in the beginning, and the South has only recently started a transformation from an agriculture-based economy to an informational one.”
