You can thank Jimmy Carter for Maine’s thriving craft beer industry

By Emily Burnham, Bangor Daily News Staff

Here in Maine we’ve come to expect that every business that sells beer — from gourmet markets to grocery stores to corner gas stations — will have at least one type of craft beer. The state is internationally renowned for its thriving craft beer industry, which each year produces millions of gallons of tasty brews from more than 150 breweries statewide.

Less than 50 years ago, however, that was very much not the case. It wasn’t until a landmark piece of federal legislation in 1978 pushed by early home brewers that allowed the craft beer industry to operate legally. And you have former President Jimmy Carter to thank for that.

Carter, who died on Sunday at age 100, was famously not a drinker. And yet, without his support for HR 1337, people would not be able to enjoy a pint of iconic Maine beers like Allagash White, Orono Brewing Company Tubular or Bissell Brothers Lux. Those breweries simply would not exist.

Prior to 1978, home brewing was illegal. Home brewers in early craft beer hot spots like New England, Colorado and California had to operate semi-secretly, with federal law prohibiting home beer making. It was a vestige of the Prohibition era, with federal regulators concerned that rather than making lower-alcohol content beer, people would instead make moonshine, a highly potent and sometimes toxic homemade liquor. 

By the 1970s, however, the homebrewing hobby had caught on, riding a wave of do-it-yourself, back-to-the-land ethos, and in opposition to the beer monoculture of the U.S. In those days, the only beers available in stores were largely lagers, made by one of a handful of gigantic national breweries. Those early home brewers wanted something different — something that actually tasted, as they often put it, good.

In 1976, a group of homebrewers in California got their senator to support a bill that would legalize home brewing, though it would take two years for the measure to actually get to the president’s desk. When Carter signed HR 1337 in 1978, a famed teetotaler became a homebrewing hero. 

In the first few years after legalization went into effect in 1979, iconic books like Charlie Papazian’s “The Complete Joy of Home Brewing” were published, and the American Homebrewers Association was founded, helping to inspire a new generation of home brewers and future craft breweries. Maine’s first licensed brewery, D.L. Geary Brewing Company, was founded in 1983 as just the 14th licensed craft brewery in the country, and the first new brewery to open east of the Mississippi since Prohibition ended.

Craft breweries slowly began to open in Maine, with around 15 operating statewide by the year 2000. But it wasn’t until the 2010s that Maine’s craft beer scene truly began to explode, with nearly 100 breweries opening in Maine between 2010 and 2020. Home brewers — some of whom came out of that initial wave of post-legalization interest in beer making — in many cases led the charge. 

Today, craft beer in Maine is an approximately $260 million industry, and employs thousands of people across the state, according to the Maine Brewers Guild. None of it would have been possible without the support of Carter, however, who signed the bill that kicked off the entire craft beer industry in Maine and the rest of the country.