American Brew Tradition

Beer.  I never really liked it, until I started trying styles that didn't taste like a nasty slice of bread mixed with water (these were commonly available at every house party known to man in undergrad, as everyone knows.) Historians credit beer for the rise of human civilization as we know it.  Fresh water was available to humans at the beginning of our time on planet Earth, but when populations grew there was not enough to go around or it had been dirtied because humans are gross.  Beer helped sustain larger human populations in compact areas because the fermentation process made the beverage safe to drink.  No pesky barf-inducing microbes here! (Unless, they drank too much beer, that is.)

One might say that beer still sustains human civilization.  We don't need it anymore, but as a culture we need it.  Americans enjoy their beer, but until recently there have been very few beer types available to the American consumer.  In 1873 there were more than 4,000 breweries in the States. 4,000!! German brewers started manufacturing lighter-tasting lagers and Americans enjoyed these lagers.  In the years leading up to WWI a lot of breweries began to consolidate and smaller breweries started to disappear.  By 1918, only 1,000 breweries remained.  Then Prohibition began.

Even though Prohibition had hit the American brewers hard, about 700 breweries were back in business in 1933 when Prohibition was repealed.  The larger breweries took over the market through their quest for expansion and their superior marketing campaigns and drove small breweries into the ground.  By 1950 there were only 407 breweries, and this number dropped to 230 just eleven years later.  By 1983 there were only 80 breweries in the United States and only 51 of those was independently run.  And most produced the same style of beer.  A beer writer from England noted:

“They are pale lager beers vaguely of the pilsener style but lighter in body, notably lacking hop character, and generally bland in palate. They do not all taste exactly the same but the differences between them are often of minor consequence.”

 But worry not, my friends!  In the late 1970s there were a couple of small upstart breweries in Northern California that started to brew styles of beer that hadn't been brewed in America in many years.  More and more micro- and craft breweries began opening around the U.S. and American ingenuity in the beer business was alive and well.  Small, but innovative breweries began popping up in Colorado and elsewhere, and now one from a little town called Boston is dominating the market.  Sam Adams, anyone?

In 2013, there was an estimated 2,822 breweries in this grand nation of ours!  That is more than in any other country in the world.  Brewers are trying new recipes, ancient recipes, different kinds of yeasts, and making beer like no one has before.  America's brew tradition has finally risen from the ashes like the majestic phoenix that it is!

Here is a link to an article on the matter: http://www.craftbeer.com/the-beverage/history-of-beer/the-american-story