My latest article for The Bulletin this week landed on National Beer Day (April 7), so I took the opportunity to examine a bit of history and pre-Prohibition brewing styles, and suggested a few local beers brewed with this legacy in mind.

Prohibition also served as a dividing line between brewing eras in terms of style. Before, most beer produced in the U.S. was pale lager, though there were breweries producing other styles including porter, bock, and others. Though it took 50 years after Prohibition ended, today over 9,000 breweries are producing over 100 different styles.

While modern beers are a far cry from the ones you’d have tasted prior to 1920, there are still styles whose DNA can be traced directly back to pre-Prohibition influences, such as American pale lagers and cream ales.

While any beer style is appropriate to raise a toast to National Beer Day, it can be fun to explore ones influenced by pre-Prohibition brewing to get a sense of what they might have been like over a century ago.

Related: my NBD post from two years ago wherein I dig into local history to present a Prohibition-era ale recipe.