A requiem for three-two

The decline of near beer

One of the best things ever written about Oklahoma was penned by George Milburn in 1946, who wrote that “Oklahoma is to sociology what Australia is to zoology. It is a place where the trials and errors of men, instead of nature, have been made only yesterday, and the results are as egregious as a duckbill, or a kangaroo. Oklahoma is filled with man-made contradictions, perversities and monstrosities.” 

Those monstrosities can be tragic, like the Tulsa race massacre, or just blinkingly weird, like Sally Kern, but sometimes they become charming quirks. Such is the case with low-alcohol beer, known to many an Okie as, simply, “three-two.”

With a raft of competing legislative proposals now on the table, some kind of reform to Oklahoma’s antiquated alcohol laws seems inevitable. What exactly change will look like remains unclear but odds are that before too long an adult in Oklahoma will be able to buy a cold, full-strength beer at a grocery store. Sales of 3.2 beer will plummet. Whether brewers stop making it altogether or not, 3.2 will cease to be truly a part of Oklahoma’s culture and the beer many of us grew up on will effectively be no more. Without getting into the weeds on liquor law reform, let us take a moment to prepare for what will be lost.

3.2 was designed during the last months of prohibition to be a non-intoxicating beverage, but after rigorous, longitudinal field research I can assure you it is quite possible to get drunk on the stuff. Thanks to another idiosyncratic convention—brought to you the biggest country still courageously defending degrees Fahrenheit and the mile—3.2 beer is actually 3.2% alcohol by weight, making it roughly 4% alcohol by volume, not terribly lower than the Budweiser on offer south of the Red River. Still, it’s easier to drink a lot of it without getting blasted—perfect for boozing in the sun at the lake or shot-gunning beers at the park, if you’re the disreputable sort who goes in for that kind of thing. 

Four other states also have 3.2 beer laws—Utah, Minnesota, Kansas and Colorado—but most 3.2 beer is consumed in Oklahoma, which is why Anheuser-Busch is in the fray on the reform debate with a doom-and-gloom ad campaign; if Oklahoma goes full-strength the remaining 3.2 states are likely to follow. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Belgium-based AB InBev, the largest brewer on earth, Anheuser-Busch is really a European company, so in a way the 3.2 Budweiser in QuikTrip refrigerators is a Belgian beer brewed especially for Oklahoma by the biggest beer maker in the world. I for one will mourn its passing. 

While it lives, 3.2 beer continues to be a testament to Oklahoma’s strange history and gobsmacking capacity for hypocrisy—as Will Rogers once put it, “Oklahomans will vote dry as long as they can stagger to the polls.” Poor old Rogers didn’t live to see Okies prove him wrong when, in 1959 by popular vote, Oklahoma became the last state to repeal prohibition. When 3.2 vanishes, so will a relic from the time when, in 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court valiantly advanced gender equality by striking down an Oklahoma law that allowed women 18 to 20 years old to drink 3.2 beer while their male peers could not (I’m serious—the case was called Craig v. Boren, look it up). 

And we aren’t just losing our history, but our traditions. Forced to contend with warm full-strength liquor store beer, Oklahomans are unusually adept at cooling down beverages. Whatever your method (I prefer the ice-spin, or the wet-paper-towel-wrap-in-freezer), those skills, handed down generation to generation, will be lost. I can almost hear the plaintive cries of future generations helplessly apologizing to friends for leaving the beer in the sun. 

Incidentally, while 3.2 beer is on the wane in Oklahoma, super-low alcohol beer is on the upswing in another ultra-religious petrol state: Saudi Arabia, where clerics have issued a fatwa declaring beer permissible so long as getting drunk on it isn’t possible. Does Sally Kern like near beer? She might like it over there. 

For more from Denver, read his article on Mayor Bartlett's letter to the White House about Syrian refugees.