Beer through time · era 7 of 9
Temperance, war and prohibition
For a century the biggest force acting on beer was not brewing at all: it was tax, war and organised opposition to drinking, and they changed what was in the glass more than any brewer did.
BeerHQ’s own bracket for a change that happened gradually and has no start date.
Going in
A trade largely shaped by its own economics and technology.
Coming out
Weaker beer in Britain, a destroyed and restructured brewing industry in the United States, and licensing regimes that still shape drinking in both.
Temperance was a serious movement with serious causes
It is easy to caricature and worth not doing. Nineteenth-century temperance movements in Britain and the United States responded to genuine harm: industrial cities, spirits far cheaper in real terms than now, and almost no social provision for the consequences. They drew heavily on religious organisation and, particularly in the United States, on women’s organisations for whom a husband’s drinking was a material and legal danger with few remedies.
They were also frequently entangled with nativism, class contempt and moralism, and the movement contained both things at once. BeerHQ describes what it did rather than scoring it.
Its most durable effects were regulatory rather than prohibitionist: licensing regimes, opening hours, minimum ages and duty structures, most of which outlasted the movement and several of which are still in force.
War made British beer weaker, and it stayed weaker
This is the best-documented instance anywhere of policy changing beer. The First World War brought grain restrictions, and — decisively — a duty structure calculated on original gravity, which gave brewers a direct financial reason to brew weaker beer. Average gravities fell sharply. The Second World War repeated the pressure.
What is striking is that they never recovered. Taste and tax had both adjusted around the lower figures, and British beer settled at strengths that would have seemed thin in 1900. Mild and ordinary bitter as they exist today are substantially products of that adjustment.
This is also the origin of the general claim that beer used to be stronger, which is true in Britain across the twentieth century and is not true as a rule about the past — most historical beer by volume was weak.
Prohibition did not merely pause American brewing
National prohibition in the United States ran from 1920 to 1933 under the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, which set the legal threshold at half a per cent alcohol — the origin of the 0.5% figure still used in alcohol-free definitions in many places today.
Breweries that survived did so by making something else: near beer, malt extract, ice cream, soft drinks. Most did not survive. The industry that re-emerged in 1933 was smaller, more concentrated, and rebuilt around the surviving large producers.
The deeper structural legacy is the three-tier system imposed after repeal, separating producers, wholesalers and retailers. It is why American brewpubs required state-by-state legal change decades later to exist at all, and it shapes American beer distribution to this day. Prohibition’s effect on what Americans drink outlasted Prohibition by most of a century.
What people get wrong about this period
- Was beer stronger in the past?
True for twentieth-century Britain, where wartime tax and grain policy cut strength for good. Not true generally — most historical beer by volume was weak.
- Was historical small beer an early alcohol-free beer?
Small beer was weak, not alcohol-free — typically one to three per cent, made by reusing spent grain. No modern alcohol-free threshold would come close to permitting it.
Dated events in this period
1830–1920 Temperance movements reshape drinking law
Organised opposition to drinking, strongest in Britain and the United States, produces the licensing regimes, opening hours and duty structures that still shape how beer is sold.
1914–1950 British beer strength collapses through two wars
Wartime restriction and gravity-based taxation drove British beer strengths down sharply, and they never returned to nineteenth-century levels.
1920–1933 American Prohibition
Thirteen years of national prohibition destroyed most of American brewing and its regional diversity; the survivors consolidated around light adjunct lager.
1933 The American three-tier system is created
After repeal, American states separate producers, wholesalers and retailers by law — an arrangement designed to prevent brewery-owned saloons that shaped the industry for ninety years.
Styles shaped here
- Dark mild
A low-strength dark British ale, gently sweet and nutty, built for drinking in quantity after physical work.
- Ordinary bitter
The everyday British cask ale: low in strength, gently bitter, and built to be drunk in pints over a whole evening.
- Pre-Prohibition lager
A reconstruction of the American lager brewed before Prohibition: fuller, more bitter and more characterful than what replaced it.
Questions
What happened to breweries during Prohibition?
Most closed. Those that survived 1920 to 1933 did so by making something else — near beer, malt extract, ice cream, soft drinks — and the industry that re-emerged was smaller and more concentrated. The lasting change was structural: the three-tier system imposed after repeal separated producers from retailers, which is why American brewpubs later needed state-by-state legal change to exist.
Why is alcohol-free beer defined at 0.5%?
In the United States the figure descends directly from the Volstead Act, which set the prohibition threshold at half a per cent. The number outlived the law and became a common regulatory boundary in several jurisdictions — though the descriptors differ: 0.5% across much of the EU, 0.05% in long-standing UK guidance, and 0.0% for "alcohol-free" in the US.
What changed next
Before this: Packaging and reach · The whole history of beer
Last reviewed 2026-08-29.