North Alabama Beer

Book excerpt: North Alabama built its fi rst commercial brewery in Huntsville in 1819, three months before the state joined the Union. Before Prohibition in 1915, the region was peppered with numerous saloons, taverns and dance halls. Locals still found ways to get their booze during Prohibition using Tennessee River steamboats and secret tunnels for smuggling. Alabama re-legalized beer in 1937, but it wasn't until 2004, when the grass-roots organization Free the Hops took on the state's harsh beer laws, that the craft beer scene really began to flourish. Authors Sarah Bélanger and Kamara Bowling Davis trace the history of beer in North Alabama from the early saloon days to the craft beer explosion.