Billy Beer was never very good, and it didn’t last on the market very long, but it may deserve a large share of credit for the contemporary boom of craft beer.
Produced briefly in the late 1970s by Billy Carter, the oafish younger brother of then-President Jimmy Carter, the beer leveraged whatever national attention is given to a president’s good-ole-boy, beer-swilling sibling.
“I had this beer brewed up just for me,” Billy Carter would tell the camera in TV ads for Billy Beer. “I think it’s the best I ever tasted. And I’ve tasted a lot. I think you’ll like it, too.”
At the time, there was barely a craft or micro-brew industry, in a large part because federal law prohibited home-brewing and also held tight regulations for the commercial production and distribution of beer—both laws hold-overs from Prohibition.
Then, a year after his brother introduced his (weak sauce) Billy Beer, President Jimmy Carter signed into law a pair of federal regulations—an allowance for home-brewing, and another law to de-regulate the beer industry. Combined, the laws opened up a new frontier, and paved a way for hobby brewers to launch into full-blown, commercial breweries.
At the time, in 1979, there were fewer than 100 breweries in America—including, yes, the fledging Billy Beer, brewed by Louisville-based Falls City Brewing Company, which had been in operation since 1905.
Although little more than a historic footnote to an oft-overlooked president, five years after Jimmy Carter allowed home-brewing and de-regulated the beer industry, a couple dozen microbreweries had opened in various cities throughout America, including pioneers like Deschutes Brewery in Bend.
It was the beginning of a frenzy—and by 2015, there are nearly 2,500, including more than 20 in Central Oregon alone.
In our annual Beer Issue, this year we celebrate those “little” ideas, the ones that begin as a concept and then bubble up and become mainstream trends. The once-fringe idea of “open yeast” brewing is sweeping through the industry, and there are new ideas about distribution, and even the brew-pub, an American institution since Benjamin Franklin, is being radically overhauled.
And, this year, we don’t limit our Beer Issue to, well, beer. Two weeks ago, we profiled the booming kombucha industry in Bend and, in this issue, we look at hard cider. With 50 percent growth each year since 2011 and three cideries now open in Bend, it is the fastest growing industry within all beverages.
Related Stories
Brewer in the Woods
A Good Problem To Have
Moving Bend’s Beer Scene Past Bend
A Cider a Day
Small, But Mighty
Pouring It Forward
Growler Fills
This article appears in Mar 11-18, 2015.
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got to give a shout out to the best beer on earth . . . B O N E . . . . Y A R D . . . . .
my name is global internet government
you can call me gig
I am a web site
http://www.gig15.com
I am 15 years old .
my father is charles webster baer and my mother is the state of oregon usa .
I now live with my dad in tianjin china .
I was born and raised in north east portland oregon usa earth in the spring of 2000 .
I am both a media outlet and a social media site .
I have two primary goals .
goal one is making sure that all humans have full reproductive rights .
goal two is making sure that all governments are totally transparent .
first I will talk about goal one , and then I will talk about goal two .
ok , goal one . make sure all humans have full reproductive rights . I support and would like to assist the united nations in this effort . in my opinion , full reproductive rights for all humans means this . all humans on earth now and forever have total and free access to all forms of birth control including abortion . this means that every female on earth has the right to decide for her self individually if she wants to get or stay pregnant . its her choice , and in my humble opinion the correct choice is for her to decide to never have any kids in the future at all . ever . not only this , but she must and will receive total support from everyone for making this , the right choice . all females must be encouraged to make this choice and must be supported when they make this choice . supported legally , financially , culturally , socially , politically , etc .
allow me to make this very simple . now , in 2015 , there are to many humans on earth . that means humans are killing , or have already killed the environment . this is not good because humans need the environment to survive . so , humans are committing suicide . thats bad . if we still have time to save the environment then we need to do that , as in right now . there are to many people on earth . that means that we dont need to make more people . that means we need to take care of the people who are already here . humans need to stop breeding .
the ability to stop reproducing is the one thing that seperates us from the rest of the animals . animals can talk and use tools . the one thing that makes humans better than animals is that we can stop reproducing when we need to . and now we need to . 8 billion people on earth is unsustainable . we have driven off a cliff and are enjoying the nice view and the nice breeze . if we have not driven off this metephorical cliff yet we need to put on the brakes and do a u turn . we need to stop making more humans and create a signifigant and sustained decline in the human population until we reach a sustainable level . in a few centuries we will reach a sustainable level of humans , at around three billion people . the number of people that is sustainable is a number future generations will decide .
this is not a economic matter . poor people and rich people need to stop reproducing . this is not a religious matter . people of all religions need to stop reproducing . this is not a racial matter . people of all races need to stop reproducing . this is the only issue of this millennium . every problem on earth in this millennium is simply a branch off of the trunk of human overpopulation . kids , like clean air and clean water , are now luxuries we can no longer afford . when a female decides not to be a mother , she decides not to be a slave to another man . when a female decides not to be a mother she takes control of her life . she now has the time and energy and resourses to devote to her own education and career . when a female makes the correct choice to not be a mother , she becomes free to live her own life as a financially independent contributing member of society who can date who she wants when she wants if she wants or not . also , its cruel to bring kids into a planet like the one we now have , with zero opportunity and nothing but war and confusion .
people often say to me , well , if we dont reproduce then there will be no more people on earth . I get that . I support a one woman one child policy . that means that every female on earth has the choice to have zero kids in her life or to have one kid in her life . that is a good policy . the main point is that every one alive now will spend the rest of their life on a planet that has to many people , and we will all suffer because of that . its a quality of life issue . future generations will be correct to blame us for the lack of clean air and clean water .
so , that is my first goal . reproductive rights for all humans now . me , gig , and the un , the united nations , will be working together to achieve this goal for everyone right now .
now I want to talk about my second goal . total transparency for all governments .
I look forward to working with the international monetary fund , the i.m.f. , to make all governments on earth totally transparent . this is an issue of freedom of speech . this is an issue of media speculation . this is an issue of accountability .
I , gig , will monitor every financial transaction by every government on earth . I gig , will monitor every financial transaction by non governments , like the i.m.f. , the u.n. , the e.u. , etc .
I , gig , will work to make all of asia on economic community , just like europe is now . the e.u. has shown us how to do it , now we must do it . I want to make all of north america , and south american , and central america , and the carribean , into one economic community .
gig and the i.m.f. are working to turn europe into one nation and gig and the imf will also work to turn all of america into one nation , from canada to argentina , from alaska to chile . this is the future . to do this , nations must be gig complient . to be gig complient nations must have the following things done
. one . balanced budget
. all nations that want to merge into larger , continental mega countries , must have a ballanced budget amendment legally in their constitution . that means it is illegal to go into debt . that means if the country goes into debt , the politicians who past that budget go to jail . also , the law states that they must pass a budget , so if they dont , they go to jail .
. two . low inflation
. inflation has to be less that two percent of gross national product
three . transparency
. every financial transaction the government makes must be publically and immediately and accurately published and accounted for for everyone to see .
four. approval
votes to join larger economic border communities must pass with above a two thirds margin more than once
so that is how I , gig , and the i.m.f. are going to work to unite the planet economically and politically . and that is my second main goal . to lay down the foundation for one world government . we wont live to ever see that , but we must begin the process to put future generations in a position to achieve this .
one point I would like to make is that the u.n. and mainly the i.m.f. have lame web sites . the u . n . and the i.m.f. need to make there web sites easier to understand and fully transparent . they need to simplify . all humans need to be able to understand what is going on . that is also the job of gig . the u.n. needs to consentrate on reproductive rights and the i.m.f. needs to consentrate on making the total money trail transparent . in other words , we should be able to tell for every country how much money that country gives and receives from the i.m. f. every year .
my other point is that the leader of the i.m.f. should not be a european . the europeans have hijacked the i.m.f. to use it to get money from it . the europeans are the richest people on earth . this is insane . this is totally destroying the credibility of the i.m.f. this really makes me mad . its like they are legally robbing a bank . its a total conflict of interest to have a european run the i.m.f. we need to get back to basics of what the i.m.f. is and what it is doing and how it is doing it . the i.m.f. is here to united the world and it is being used as a a.t.m . by the europeans who are already the richest people on earth . its a phrikin outrage . and no one knows about it or cares about it except those in on it .
so , gig is shining a light on this and we need to reform it fast . the time to remove stupid people from earth is not now . however , now is the time to remove stupid people from the governments of earth .