Homer's line "To alcohol! The cause of... and solution to... all of life's problems," was described by Josh Weinstein as "one of the best, most truthful Simpsons statements ever."
During the riot, a scene where an Irish mob blows up a British chip shop named "John Bull's Fish & Chips" was censored on British television and the rest of Europe. The episode first aired while the conflict in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles was on and four years after the Shankill Road bombing in which ten people were killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb which exploded prematurely in a fish shop.
As the show has many episodes that have stories and jokes related to alcohol, the writers thought it was strange that they had never done an episode related to Prohibition, and that the idea seemed "perfect."
Various writers were very concerned about Bart getting drunk. This was why he drank the beer through a horn, to show that it was only accidental. This was a toned down version of what was in John Swartzwelder's original script.
The shot of the exterior of the diner where Rex Banner is with Officers Lou and Eddie is a reference to the painting Nighthawks by Edward Hopper.