I thought I’d do a themed post today — the creation, fall and redemption of beer. We could probably make it into an allegory for something, but also probably shouldn’t.

So once upon a time, America was a land of many wonderful beers. First the Puritans bent the elbow. Then German immigrants filled our steins with frothy Bavarian goodness. Then the Irish came to our shores, bringing with them lovely, bitter stouts. America was a beery garden of delights, on par with Europe.

But there was a snake in this garden — woman. Particularly pub-hating, bluestockinged women. They took away our beer for a decade and destroyed the beer culture in America. In passing, they also managed to mushroom the size of the mafia, spike the murder rate, and accomplish little in reducing alcohol consumption. Good times.

When beer was legalized again, big corporations dominated the industry. Cheap, putrid lagers ruled the landscape. The world was plunged into darkness.

But in the 1970s, an unlikely savior appeared — Jimmy Carter. On a sunny day in 1978, Carter signed into law an obscure tax bill which absentmindedly legalized homebrewing. It was the only noble thing he did in his whole terrorist-hugging life. But it was enough to move him two or three levels upward in Dante’s Inferno.

Once homebrewing was legalized, it naturally led to experimentation. And experimentation led to microbreweries and brewpubs. And these led to a tidal shift in American drinking tastes. Thanks to Jimmy Carter, the 2000s promise to be a millennium of stouts, porters, ales, IPAs, witbiers and lambics.