[2] Dave Thomas guest stars as Rex Banner and Joe Mantegna returns as Fat Tony.

[2] After Bart Simpson accidentally gets drunk at a St. Patrick's Day parade, a prohibitionist movement emerges in Springfield.

When it is discovered that a ban on alcohol has been in effect but gone unnoticed for two centuries, Mayor Quimby, not wanting to alienate voters during an election year, agrees to enforce the law.

However, the mob continues to supply the town with alcohol through bribery of local law enforcers, allowing Moe Szyslak to reopen his bar disguised as a pet shop.

Homer Simpson concocts a plan to continue supplying Springfield with alcohol: he and Bart reclaim the beer disposed of at the dump, pour it into the finger holes of bowling balls and, through a intricate network of pipes set up under Barney's Bowl-A-Rama, bowls them straight to Moe's.

The media realizes someone is allowing Springfield's underground alcohol trade to flourish, and they dub the still-unknown Homer "The Beer Baron".

Banner's unsuccessful policing of Springfield's prohibition law and investigation into the Beer Baron's identity sees him miss or overlook blatant clues that the law is being ignored by the town and that Homer is the Beer Baron (which is effectively an open secret to the rest of the town).

After confessing to his crimes in public, Homer, originally believing he would be let off with a light punishment, faces expulsion from the town (and likely death) by catapult, showing how anachronistic the law really was.

[3] When Homer first enters Moe's "Pet Shop", the man that tips his hat to him outside was a background character used in the early seasons.

[9] The authors of the book, I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it "A nice episode in which Homer actually devises a clever plan to keep the beer flowing.