St. Louis was home to about three dozen breweries before Prohibition took hold in January 1920. Many of them — including industry leaders Lemp Brewing Co. and Anheuser-Busch — brewed lagers, the type of beer favored by the city's sizable German-immigrant population.

Prohibition dealt a striking blow to St. Louis' bustling beer industry in the early 1900s. It forced Lemp and dozens of other breweries out of business, causing hundreds of workers to lose their jobs. Lemp owner William J. Lemp Jr., distraught over the shuttering of his business, committed suicide in his family's mansion in 1922.

To stay afloat during Prohibition, several St. Louis brewery owners started making soda and "near beer," which contained little or no alcohol. Anheuser-Busch's Bevo became one of the best-known brands of near beer.

Others, like the Griesedieck family's Falstaff Corp., used their brewing facilities to make products like smoked ham and bacon.

Joseph "Papa Joe" Griesedieck kept Falstaff alive through those rough years (13 years, 10 months, 19 days, 17 hours and 32½ minutes to be exact) and pounced on the opportunity to get back into the beer business when Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

The government granted Griesedieck's company Federal Brewing Permit No. 1, allowing the newly renamed Falstaff Brewing Co. to be the first U.S. brewery to brew beer again. Falstaff quickly began churning out pools of beer from its brewing site at Forest Park and Spring avenues, the current home of Six Row Brewing Co.

As Falstaff, Anheuser-Busch and smaller breweries bounded back from Prohibition, St. Louis' brewing industry began to rebuild, with A-B eventually taking the commanding lead of market share locally and nationally.

In 1991, a startup called St. Louis Brewery ushered in the beginning of a craft-beer renaissance with its Schlafly brand beers. Twenty years later, St. Louis Brewery continues to grow, undergoing several recent expansions to keep up with demand.

A new crop of breweries is popping up all over the St. Louis area — two, Perennial Artisan Ales and the Civil Life Brewing Co., opened this month. Several others opened in 2010 and this year, bringing the number of breweries within a two-hour drive of downtown St. Louis to more than 20. That's the most breweries St. Louis has seen since Prohibition.