Sudsy tribute to prohibition anniversary

Beer drinkers have more to celebrate this weekend than usual.

It was 74 years ago on Saturday that the federal prohibition on beer was repealed.

For eight months, beer and light wine — drinks with 3.2 percent alcohol or less — were the country's only legal alcoholic beverages. In December 1933, people were legally free to drink stronger forms of alcohol.

Elysian Brewing is celebrating with a bathtub full of foaming ale in the dining room of its Capitol Hill brewpub.

The clawfoot display is a play on bathtub gin, the often foul-tasting liquor brewed in large quantities — maybe even in bathtubs — during Prohibition.

Still, the Elysian spectacle is not just for fun.

"Part of the reason is to call attention to the fact that there's a very strong neo-prohibition movement," said Elysian co-owner Dick Cantwell.

He points to occasional efforts to lower the legal blood-alcohol level for driving, sometimes as low as 0.02 percent from 0.08 percent in Washington, and the fact that five states — Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah — still ban home brewing.

With more than 80 breweries, Washington has the third most of any state, after California and Colorado, according to the Brewers Association in Boulder.

Each brewing site is counted separately, so that Elysian has three — on Capitol Hill, near Green Lake and one near Safeco Field.

Craft brewers have crawled back from their heyday before Prohibition, which became federal law in 1920. Some states, including Washington, banned many alcoholic beverages years earlier.

Because of Prohibition, "the biggest brewery owner became Al Capone," said Charles Finkel, who owns Pike Brewing near Pike Place Market with his wife, Rose Ann.

"It took away legitimate business people and replaced them with criminals."

A few years after Prohibition was lifted, the country had only 750 breweries.

Now it has some 1,500, including big players like Anheuser-Busch and regional brewers like Redhook Ale Brewery in Woodinville, which last week posted its first annual profit in a decade.

For a small beer museum Finkel is creating at Pike Brewing, he recently paid $30 on eBay for a replica of Carrie Nation's hatchet.

Nation was a temperance leader at the turn of the last century known for hacking up taverns.

Pike Brewing will celebrate the legalization of beer drinking on Saturday with half-price beer samplers and a discount on "Carrie Nation's Cocktails" — better known as fruit juice.

— Melissa Allison

Seattle Times researcher Gene Balk contributed to this report.

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Retail Report appears Fridays. Melissa Allison covers the food and beverage industry. She can be reached at 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com. Monica Soto Ouchi covers goods, services and online retail. She can be reached at 206-515-5632 or msoto@seattletimes.com.