Beer
Beer became the drink of choice for Americans as the result of German influence. An inexpensive, grain-based drink with low- alcohol content, beer has historically come in many varieties, including ale and porter, but it has only been a popular American beverage since the mid-nineteenth century.
The German immigrants who flooded into the United States at that time demanded beer and brought the skills to produce a high-quality, light-bodied beer that appealed to a wider market. German Americans with such names as Eberhard An- heuser, Adolphus E. Busch, Frederick Miller, Joseph Schlitz, and Frederick Pabst have dominated the beer industry ever since.Beer probably originated in southern Europe, both as a way to use grain before it spoiled and as a healthier drink than other available choices. For much of recorded history, water has been a source of such killer illnesses as dysentery. Milk, with pasteurization unknown until the mid-nineteenth century, did not have a noticeably better safety record. Therefore most people, including infants and nursing mothers, drank ale in the morning, noon, and night. The boiling necessary to make beer neutralized most of tainted water’s ill effects, although no one realized this for centuries, and the grains added some protein to the diet.
The Romans brought beer to northern Europe around 55 BCE, and the popularity of the beverage gradually spread. The English word beer comes from the German word bier, a term that originated in the breweries of German monasteries in the eighth century. Beer of this early period would not be recognizable to modern connoisseurs of the drink. Hops were not used, and as a result, the beer appeared very dark with a strong flavor. It also spoiled easily because the active ingredient in hops, lupulin, inhibits the growth of certain types of fungi and bacteria. Sometime around the early sixteenth century, breweries in Germany began adding malt to beer production.
Hops were added to the mix about the seventeenth century to produce a light, clear, somewhat bitter, and long-lasting product.The German process of making beer would become the world standard by the nineteenth century, and despite changes in technology, it remains the essential process employed today by American brewers. Barley kernels are allowed to germinate by immersing them in water until as much as 45 percent of the water is absorbed. After this steeping is completed, the barley is spread out on a stone floor to a depth of 2 feet and constantly turned with a shovel. This five- to seven-day process of germination causes the natural enzyme systems within the barley to begin breaking down the membranes of starch cells so that the starch can be more easily converted into sugars during the brewing process. When the barley is properly germinated to a sprout length of three-fourths of the size of the kernel, the grains are transferred to a kiln and heated to 140° Fahrenheit (60° Celsius). The temperature is raised depending upon the type of malt desired. A lower temperature in the malting process results in a paler malt and a lighter-colored beer. Ground malted barley is mashed with hot water. The liquor, known as wort, is then extracted. A portion of hops is added, and the whole mass is boiled until the aroma of hops is obtained. It is then allowed to cool before being fermented with yeast, which produces a small amount of alcohol. Different brews require different types of yeast.
American brewers in the colonial era used barley to make beer, but the quality of the product may have been poor. Most American brewers had little training, and it was fairly easy to misjudge steeping to produce unevenly germinated barley. Additionally, they did not employ hops and often blended herbs such as rosemary and yarrow together to produce gruit beer. These early brewers produced only enough ale, porter, or stout to meet the needs of their families. Wealthy Americans would purchase beer imported from England.
Cider, an alcoholic drink that anyone with an apple tree and a press could easily make, proved a much more popular beverage. Still, home-brewed beer could commonly be found in colonial homes as a drink used from infancy.During the first half of the nineteenth century, immigrants from northern Europe poured into the United States. Many of the immigrants came from the German states of Bavaria and Wurttemberg, the biggest beer-producing areas per capita in the world, bringing both a love of beer and excellent beer-making skills. Although many of these immigrants stayed in New York City, over 1,000 Germans per week in the 1840s came through Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This city would soon emerge as the brewing center of the United States because of these immigrants. Milwaukee’s substantial German population provided not only a huge base of customers but also a source of experienced brewers.
The influx of German immigrants changed every aspect of American beer from ingredients to manufacturing to marketing. The first German-influenced development came with the introduction of lager beer. This type of beer, a beverage with a 3.5 percent alcohol content that is difficult and time consuming to make, constituted the most popular German variety. First produced in Bavaria sometime prior to 1420 and named after the German word meaning “to store,” lager beer develops a tangy, effervescent taste from being properly aged. It is made only with bottom-fermenting yeast that had been unknown in the Americas. Philadelphia brewer John Wagner, a former Bavarian brewmaster, brought the first lager yeast into the United States in 1842 and revolutionized the American beer industry. Five years later, two Germans, John A. Huck and John Schneider, opened the first lager brewery in Chicago. In city after city, Germans became the first to brew lager. In 1850, there were 431 active breweries in the United States, and home brewing had died out.
By the time of the Civil War, lager beer constituted the favorite drink of white American males, but lager required hops.
A perennial that grows on vines and a cousin of hemp, hops did not become a commercially important crop in the United States until the nineteenth century, when demand for beer made from hops skyrocketed largely because of German influence. Coincidentally, with the nation’s demand for staples being met by farmers in the Ohio Valley, growers in other areas needed a profitable cash crop to stay in business. They seized upon hops. Massachusetts thus became a major hops-growing state, even exporting some of its crop to France and Germany. New York at midcentury became the leading hops grower in the nation, producing 11 million pounds annually and representing 88 percent of the total crop grown in the country. By 1850, hops were produced in thirty-three states. By the time of the millennium, hops had achieved the rank of seventy-second in a listing of the most important American crops, with the hops industry now centered in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.Lager beer standardized the brewing industry. It offered a moderately priced beer of sparkling appearance, great stability, light body, and lighter alcohol content than the old-style ales and porters. The popularity of lager allowed Germans to dominate the brewing industry to the point that the U.S. Brewmaster’s Association titled its journal Der Braumeister (The Brewmaster), and German remained the official language of the U.S. Brewer’s Association until 1873.
The German origins of American beer can be seen everywhere beer is sold in the German names of the brewing companies. All the major breweries began operation in the nineteenth century, switched to other products such as cereal during Prohibition, and restored themselves to full strength after repeal through skillful marketing.
The Pabst Brewing Company produces Pabst Blue Ribbon, Old Milwaukee, Colt 45, and Lone Star among its twenty- nine brands. The company started up in 1844, when Jacob Best left Mettenheim, Hesse-Darmstadt, and began brewing lager beer in Milwaukee.
Frederick Pabst, sonin-law of Best’s son Philip, took over the company and gave it his name in 1864 when the firm produced 5,000 barrels annually. Nine years later, Pabst turned out 100,000 barrels of beer per year. In 1951, it became the first brewer to participate in color television by sponsoring a program. In the twentieth century, it has taken over the brands of failed breweries, including Schlitz.The Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, founded by an immigrant from Mainz who
took over another German-owned brewery, began operation in 1858. By 1870, the brewery was producing more than 12,000 barrels per year. By 1947, Schlitz sold over a million barrels annually as the leading beer producer in the world. Schlitz introduced the pop-top can in 1963, and this innovation considerably boosted sales of such brands as Schlitz and Schlitz Malt Liquor. A change in its beer recipe combined with failed advertising campaigns sent Schlitz into bankruptcy in 1981. Stroh Brewing Company of Detroit, founded by German brewer Bernard Stroh in 1850, purchased the assets of the company before it was in turn taken over by Pabst.
Frederick E. Miller, born in Riedlingen, Wurttemberg, arrived in the United States in 1855 after serving as brewmaster at Hohenzollern Castle in Sigmaringen, Hohenzollern. He bought a brewery in Milwaukee. In 1883, Miller’s brewery became one of the first to establish a bottling plant, and it bottled 5,000 barrels annually within three years. Beers like Miller High Life and slogans such as “It’s Miller Time” have made the brewery into the second largest in the United States.
Anheuser-Busch is the largest American brewer. The firm traces its roots to a brewery begun in St. Louis in 1864 under the direction of soap manufacturer Eberhard Anheuser and brewer’s supply store owner Adolphus Busch, both originally from Germany. Anheuser-Busch produces thirty brands of beer, including Budweiser. Known to viewers of television commercials as the “King of Beers,” Budweiser has been brewed since 1876.
It has been the world’s best-selling beer since 1957, and at the millennium it was distributed in more than 70 countries. One in almost every five beers sold in the United States is a Budweiser.Americans consume millions of barrels of beer a year because Germans brought their favorite drink to the New World along with the skills to make it. Although the rise of microbreweries in the 1980s has cut into the sales of the major breweries, particularly among female consumers, most beer sold in the United States today is still made by companies founded by Germans. Of all the contributions made by German Americans to the United States, beer may be the most appreciated.
Caryn E. Neumann
See also Chicago; Milwaukee; New York City
References and Further Reading
Anderson, Will. Beer, USA. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Morgan and Morgan, 1986.
Apps, Jerry. Breweries ofWisconsin. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.
Goldammer, Ted. The Brewer’s Handbook: The Complete Book to Brewing Beer. Clifton, VA: KVP, 2000.
Salem, Frederick William. Beer: Its History and Economic Value as a National Beverage. New York: Arno Press, 1972.