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Today (Friday, April 7) is National Beer Day. Rejoice, fellow alcoholics and degenerates! No longer must we hide our love of excessive beer consumption in the shadows, no longer must we conform to society’s expectations of not drinking beer at 9:30 in the morning. Today, we can indulge all of our deepest desires.
Okay, not really, but we can still knock back a handful of cold ones.
National Beer Day is celebrated in the United States every year on April 7, marking the day that the Cullen-Harrison Act was enacted after having been signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 22, 1933. Upon signing the legislation, Roosevelt dropped the most gangster line of all time, “I think this would be a good time for a beer.”
The law went into effect on April 7 and enabled people to buy, sell and drink beer containing up to 3.2% alcohol by weight. On that first day in which the American people were liberated from the tyrannical shackles of an oppressive and outdated paradigm on alcohol, 1.5 million barrels of beer were consumed. Yeah, we party hard here in the States.
Today we celebrate the date annually, with April 6 known as New Beer’s Eve.
Though the Cullen-Harrison Act did not mark the official end of prohibition in the U.S., it did alter the definition of an “intoxicating beverage” under the Volstead Act. The National Beer Day holiday began to celebrate this starting in 2009. In 2017, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe officially recognized National Beer Day, which is awesome.
Enjoy and drink responsibly. Or don’t. I’m not your mother.
