People come up to me constantly with this question: “How did you learn to brew?”  The short answer – at home – is trivial.  The question I want answer is “why did I learn to brew/distill/make wine?”  Even though I was born decades after its repeal, I learned to brew as a direct result of the Volstead Act.  In the United States, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union pledged not only to ban alcohol, but to improve public morals.  Like the fascist in today’s Florida, this isn’t about improving THEIR morals but rather imposing limitations on others and creating a society where ordinary citizens are turned into everyday criminals over issues of religion, intolerance, and ignorance. 

You see, I spent most of my childhood in a “dry county.”  Dry counties are counties whose government forbids the sale of any kind of alcoholic beverages for any reason. Prohibitions to drinking in many Protestant sects derives not from strict interpretations of the Bible but rather the politics of the clash between Protestants and Catholics.  While the Koran explicitly prohibits intoxicants, the Bible simply warns against drunkenness, and the “Old Testament” (the Pentateuch) actually celebrates the “fruit of the vine.”  Arguments that it is somehow more “godly” to be alcohol free have more to do with greed and territory than religion.  That said, in some parts of America, we elect morons to make our laws and these laws are not based on facts but fears.

So, we have situations where, in order to exercise your 1^st Amendments right to Freedom of Religion (how do you say kiddish without wine?), people break other laws – in this case the Volstead Act and its successors.  The process is straightforward.  You see, wine in a “dry county” cannot be sold but fruit juice and yeast can.  Grape concentrate will ferment, turning into wine. It’s easy.  Beer is a bit more complicated but you see how this works.  When faced with tyranny, you improvise and if necessary, engage in civil disobedience.

I became the Regimental Brewmeister.  The next generation may well be re-creations of librarians (who share banned books), printers and bookbinders (who stand up to censors), doctors (who practice women’s health), and honest politicians. 

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana

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