We Found It! Here's the One Thing Jimmy Carter Got Right.

We know you've been searching for examples of what Jimmy Carter got right during his presidency and we found it. It's not much, but let's give Carter an atta boy for taking a Republican congressman's idea and running with it.

We know Carter was a church-going man, Sunday school teacher, and teetotaler. No doubt, he's already met his Maker in the heavenly realm after his death December 29 and begun dispensing advice to the King of Kings. Make no mistake, however: At some point during his state funeral on January 9, there's one reason why all beer-loving people of America should raise a pint to the former teetotaler in chief. 

In 1978, Jimmy Carter signed into law HR 1337, "An Act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 with respect to excise tax on certain trucks, buses, tractors, et cetera, home production of beer and wine, refunds of the taxes on gasoline and special fuels to aerial applicators, and partial rollovers of lump sum distributions."

The new law blowing up the Depression-era regulations suddenly made it legal for brewing "moonshiners" to ply their hobby in the garage without fear of the revenuers hauling them away to the feds' 1978 version of the D.C. Gulag. 

By signing the bill proposed by Wisconsin (beer country) Republican Congressman William A. Steiger, Carter unloosed the governmental reins a bit and stood down unnecessary governmental interference on home brewing.

I remember when I was a little kid, my dad and his buddies made beer in their basements and it was all very hush-hush. It was no joke. They were concerned that someone would find out and they'd get busted.

Author and beer historian Charlie Papazian remembers that before Carter signed the bill a Fed attended one of his pirate home brewing classes in Boulder, Colorado. 

I got a warning that somebody suspicious had registered for my class. And this guy showed up with dark slack pants, a white shirt and a black necktie. And he probably was the only person dressed like that for miles around. And he came to the class. I knew he was going to be coming. And I just gave my ordinary spiel that, you know, the ATF, the government has better things to do than arrest homebrewers, just — you make homebrew, make it for your own personal use and definitely don't sell it. And then I went on with teaching the glass and he rolled up his sleeves and learned how to make beer in the two classes that he showed up in. 

The American craft brewing business was already in its infancy beginning in 1965 with Fritz Maytag, who, as Reason magazine put it in 2023, "saved San Francisco's Anchor Brewing from bankruptcy in 1965 and helped keep alive a tradition of small, independent breweries in a world increasingly dominated by mass-produced beer." 

When combined with "scientific breakthroughs, like the development of the Cascade hop (which would become the backbone for the revitalization of a once nearly extinct and now ubiquitous type of beer called 'India Pale Ale'), which hit the market in 1972," and Washington State legal changes, as well as lobbying from the McMenamin and Widmer families in Oregon, the craft brewing industry took off. Reason also notes that 90% of these small businesses started brewing beer at home. 

Papazian says the real effect of the law was to free the ability to compete, share knowledge, and more readily get fresh ingredients to make beer. He said, "what the legislation really addressed more seriously than the ability to make it at home...was the ability to share it with your friends and go to club meetings and conferences and competitions and learn about the art and science of home brewing."

Carter didn't start the craft brewing craze as much as goose the fermentation process and make home brewing an acceptable form of food artistry. And God bless him. Other countries, such as Germany, had been doing this for generations and Americans noticed and wanted change.

It's a start.

Now the government needs to deregulate home stills. Craft spirits are out there, but let's call off the revenuers and get the government jackboot off backyard chemists, too.