National Beer Day is a kind of weird holiday. We're marking the Cullen-Harrison Act, signed into law on April 7th 1933.
"But wait," astute observation might say, "the 21st amendment was ratified on December 5th, 1933! Why are we celebrating a bill from months earlier as National Beer Day?"
Well, if you would just shut up for a minute, I'd tell you. Also, nobody likes a know it all.
While the 21st Amendment allowed states and municipalities to set their own liquor laws, ending the explicit prohibition of alcoholic beverages at a federal leval, the Cullen-Harrison Act was a kind of last ditch effort to save prohibition by striking a balance between the Temperance Movement everyone else.
The idea was pretty simple: people want to drink, but this one powerful minority group is going to get us kicked out of office if we make getting plastered legal again. What if we made it possible to drink without getting drunk? Then everyone is happy, right?
Of course not, that is obviously stupid!
Never the less, the Cullen-Harrison Act made it legal to sell and consume beer that was no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight. And, if you live in Minnesota, no, it really was by weight back then, but yes, that's why grocery store beer sucks.
Within a couple months, it was pretty obvious, even to congress, that 3.2% had not made speakeasies and the mob go away. The 21st was passed, but was still a compromise. People got to have booze, Temperance peeps got to mess up laws and make booze distribution irritating, and, thanks to those Temperance peeps soldiering on, the mob got to go somewhat legit as corrupt distributors!