Prohibtion and liquor consumption

[Inquisitor Leet]

Rum runners, bootlegers, moonshiners, smugglers, crooks and thieves. Call them what you want, but they produce a good that during prohibition in the US was a desirable commodity that people were willing to kill for.

I'm planning a prohibition era game for GURPS where the players will be a small time gang looking to make it big in the liquor business, or die trying. But I've hit a bit of a roadblock.

How much liquor could a still produce? How liquor does a speakeasy consume? Google fu has failed me, but I've put together a little guide that i'd love some feedback on particularly from anyone who works in bar/club industry.

Speakeasy consumption and size:

Tiny
Your dice game around the corner or the brothel up the street, a place that doesn't make it's sole income from liquor sales but offers drinks to client
25 bottles of spirits a week (seems too small )
5 barrels of beer per week

Small
large gambling dens, big brothels. Liquor still not the main focus, unless it's a small bar, but it makes up a large percentage of the profits
100 bottles of spirits a week
20 barrels of beer

Medium
Average bar open only a few nights or a large restaurant
400 bottles of spirits a week(seems a bit high)
50 Barrels of beer

Large
Large popular clubs and jazz halls, open all night with rambunctious crowds
800 bottles of spirits
75 Barrels of beer

Huge
What ever hood dreams of owning, open to high society with plenty of dough to drink and dance life away
1500 bottles of spirits
100 barrels of beer

So the numbers I sort of just made up, not a whole lot to base it off of except for a short conversation with my local student bartender.

the other question is how much can a still and or brewery produce? I'm sure it varies by alcohol type, but a general range would be great!

So fire up the gramophone, pour yourself some Canada Club, and let's brainstorm ways to take on the liquor trade!

Cheers,
Inquisitor Leet

 

[billd91]

You might want to do some prohibition research in a real library, particularly one with a good US history section.

I was just listening to a discussion on NPR with an author who wrote about some of the things the US government did to combat bootlegging. Some bootleggers used to steal industrial alcohol and distill it further to make it less dangerous to drink, so the US government asked producers to mix in various toxins including cyanide to discourage the practice. And lots of people died from that. That could be interesting to put into a game - the dirty things people do to get around the law, the risks they take, and the dirty things law enforcement does to ratchet up the stakes to suppress law breaking.
Unfortunately, I can remember neither the author's name nor the book.

 

[avin]

So fire up the gramophone, pour yourself some Canada Club, and let's brainstorm ways to take on the liquor trade!

Unfortunately today's Canadian Club is far away from prohibition times one... but hooray for Boardwalk Empire GURPS!

 

[malcolypse]

Probably this piece billd91 was talking about from npr.

Prohibition: Speakeasies, Loopholes And Politics : NPR

 

[billd91]

I actually found the reference. It was Deborah Blum and she was talking about The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.

 

[Gilladian]

I found some interesting statistics here: National Prohibition of Alcohol in the U.S.

Earlier than you wanted, but still good to know...

By 1810, there were at least 2,000 distillers producing more than two million gallons of whiskey (Roueche, 1960, p. 42). By the 1820s, whiskey sold for twenty- five cents a gallon, making it cheaper than beer, wine, coffee, tea, or milk (Rorabaugh, 1991, p. 17). Annual consumption may have been as high as ten gallons per person (Clark, 1976, p. 20; Asbury, 1968, p. 12). 4
This level of consumption was over four times the current rate. However,"liquor tended to be taken in small quantities throughout the day, often with meals. Instead of a morning coffee break, Americans stopped work at 11:00 a.m. to drink. A lot of work went undone but in this slow paced, preindustrial age this was not always a problem. A drunken stage coach driver posed little threat, since the horses knew the route and made their own way home" (Rorabaugh, 1991, p. 17).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

How much liquor could a still produce?

Depends on the still- some were barely bigger than the jugs they were used to fill; others were actual commercial stills that were supposed to be destroyed but were merely relocated.

My best guess is that most stills used by those selling moonshine for profit (as opposed to for personal use) produced around 500 gallons at a time, and ones over a thousand gallons wouldn't be particularly rare. However, that is deceptive: a "commercial" moonshiner might have several stills in one location, and might have several locations.

FWIW, there is a new show on Discovery coming up detailing modern moonshiners- I don't recall it's name, but it should be airing soon. Moonshine running also figured into an episode of The Glades (it's set in Florida, if you didn't know), and a still was part of a unit bought on an episode of Storage Wars.

 

[Hand of Evil]

See the History Channel, they have some shows on the subject. Rumrunners, Moonshiners And Bootleggers DVD | | History

Video: Bourbon and Moonshiners — History.com Video

As far as how much could be produced, it was all in the size of the "still" and some were quite large, 55 Gallon drum large, basicly running 7/24. Moonshiners would have multible setups, so if one was found they could still produce.

Also, don't forget Canada! Lot of smuggling into the US

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I don't have any historical information to contribute but in my first Call of Cthulhu (1920's) experience our investigators went to a jazz club to gather more information. My character flagged down a waiter and ordered a beer and the waiter brought my character back a glass of milk. Clearly the GM misunderstood so I rectified the situation--

me: "Oh sorry. No, I ordered a beer."
GM (with a deadpan expression): "1920's?"
me: *blink, blink*
GM: "Prohibition?"
me: *blink, blink*
GM: *waiting for me to catch up*
me: "......Oooooh!"

My friends still like to tease me about that one.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Most moonshiners were small time operators, using personal "washtub" stills creating a corn mash whiskey (moonshine - so named because it was usually made after dark in the middle of the woods). Usual output is about a gallon of shine per still per four hour batching process (no, I don't have family that still makes shine, why do you ask?). The thing is, most moonshiners had several stills in different locations and would usually change location night after night (kept them revanoors offin' yer tail).

When the mobs up North started building distilleries in Canada and shipping the product south via smuggling operations, the Southern and rural Midwestern shiners started pooling their resources, bundling their product together and selling larger batches from three or more stills to get better prices using local drivers with hopped-up, stock looking cars to get their product to the "market".

The cars they used to run these large batches of shine were eventually the cars that created NASCAR. (So in case y'all are wondering why NASCAR and redneck go together....)