Not Much To Celebrate On National Beer Day

April 7^th was National Beer Day and with much of the nation sheltering-in-place, bars and taprooms shut down and thousands of jobs and lives lost to Covid-19, there wasn’t a lot to celebrate.

But why National Beer Day to begin with?

Like most of these ‘officially designated days” National Beer Day exists today primarily as a marketing tool…Print and media outlets, always hungry for content, promote them because why not?

And the beer biz benefited a little from whatever coverage it got…but not this year.

Unlike other worthless official beer days, (and International Beer Day we’re looking at you) National Beer Day actually has some historical roots…

Celebrated every year on April 7th, National Beer Day commemorates the exact day back in 1933 when people could legally buy, sell, and drink beer after 13 years of goverment repression better known as the Prohibition.

National Beer Day remembers the Cullen–Harrison Act, which although signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 22, 1933, didn’t actually go into effect on April 7th for some bureaucratic reason.

Upon signing that history-changing legislation, Roosevelt famously remarked, “I think this would be a good time for a beer.”

And President Roosevelt wasn’t alone…

After more than a decade of federally-imposed abstinence (which also gave birth to organized crime and gangsters like Al Capone), the law’s passage was met with an almost bacchanalian fervor. Americans flooded US barrooms from coast to coast and 1.5 million barrels of beer consumed in one day.

But if National Beer Day 2020 is remembered at all, it will be a solemn remembrance in the shadow of a global pandemic…

Although the beer biz is doing its best to keep things positive at this unprecedented time, many worry that it will never recover fully.

And all the virtual happy hours around the world, but a temporary bandage, for the thousands of breweries destined to close…and an industry that unfortunately may never be the same.