Definition
A brewer is any person, firm, or corporation that manufactures fermented liquors — of any name or description — for sale, from malt, wholly or in part, or from any substitute for malt. The definition is trade-functional: it turns on the activity of manufacturing fermented malt-based beverages for commercial sale, not on the scale of operation, the specific product name, or the form of business entity involved.
The legal definition originated in federal excise tax legislation and was adopted broadly in licensing, regulatory, and revenue statutes. The operative phrase "any substitute therefor" was included deliberately to prevent evasion by producers who replaced malt with corn, rice, or other fermentable adjuncts while producing functionally identical beer-type beverages.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A person who brews; in popular usage, also a supporter or player associated with certain sports teams bearing the Brewers name.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who brews; one whose occupation is to prepare malt liquors.
Editorial note: The common meaning and the legal meaning overlap substantially in describing the person who makes fermented malt beverages, but the legal definition diverges in two important respects. First, it explicitly extends to firms and corporations, not just natural persons. Second, it adds the commercial-sale requirement: a homebrewer making beer for personal consumption falls outside the legal definition regardless of process.
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Common Confusion
BREWER vs. DISTILLER: These terms are frequently paired in revenue and licensing statutes but describe fundamentally different manufacturing processes and attract different regulatory obligations. A brewer produces fermented liquors from malt or its substitutes; a distiller produces spirits through distillation. Anderson's Dictionary of Law specifically flags the comparison. In historical federal excise law, the two occupations carried separate licensing requirements, tax schedules, and enforcement regimes. Researchers consulting revenue statutes must take care not to apply brewer-specific rules to distillers, or vice versa.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a creature of revenue and licensing law. Its legal significance peaked during the period of federal internal revenue legislation following the Civil War — particularly the Act of July 13, 1866 — and continued through Prohibition-era regulatory frameworks and post-repeal licensing regimes. Researchers working in this period should note several traps:
First, the definition is statutory in origin, not common law. Its precise contours can shift between jurisdictions and time periods depending on how a given legislature chose to define the term in its own revenue or licensing code. The federal statutory definition cited in Black's governs federal excise cases; state licensing statutes may use broader, narrower, or simply different language.
Second, the "any substitute therefor" language was tested in federal court. The cases cited in Black's (2nd Ed.) — U.S. v. Dooley and U.S. v. Wittig — arose from disputes over whether particular manufacturing practices fell within the statutory definition. Researchers tracing the scope of the term should consult those cases for interpretive guidance on the substitute-ingredient question.
Third, post-Prohibition revival of the brewing industry, and more recently the craft brewing movement, has produced modern regulatory definitions that may differ from the historical federal formulation. State ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) statutes and the federal regulations administered by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) now govern, and those sources use updated terminology that does not map perfectly onto 19th-century statutory language.
Fourth, researchers in Prohibition-era materials should be alert to the fact that the legal category of "brewer" did not disappear during Prohibition — brewers could lawfully produce "near beer" (de-alcoholized malt beverages) and certain industrial products, and the licensing and definitional framework remained operative for those purposes.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical dictionaries agree on the core definition, drawing from the same federal statutory source: the Act of July 13, 1866. Black's (1st Ed.) and Black's (2nd Ed.) reproduce the statutory language nearly verbatim. Anderson's adds the explicit extension to firms and corporations — a clarification consistent with the statutory text — and cross-references both LIQUOR and DISTILLER, signaling the term's place within a broader regulatory vocabulary.
Black's (2nd Ed.) adds value over the first edition by citing U.S. v. Dooley and U.S. v. Wittig, giving researchers two federal cases that actually construed the definition in disputed contexts. These citations are genuine and traceable in the Federal Cases reporter.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: state-level variation, the impact of Prohibition on the category, and the modern regulatory landscape. They also do not address the distinction between commercial brewing and home or craft production — a distinction that was not legally significant in the 19th century but is central to modern licensing frameworks.
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Jurisdictional Note
The definition in the historical dictionaries is federal in origin, derived from Civil War-era excise legislation. State licensing laws have always maintained parallel but not identical definitions. Modern researchers must consult applicable state ABC statutes and TTB regulations rather than relying on the historical federal formulation.
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