Cellar management notes from the 1950’s.

“Mild Ales… In some parts a dark, sweet ale must be served. This must be as fresh as possible and quite brilliant. In the industrial centres this beer will be in very great demand… In the residential or suburban areas, a mild ale of a lighter colour is more in favour…”
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Translations from the de Bello Civili which mentions the use of a barrel.
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A write-up on Anton Shwarz, a Bohemian-born American who helped advance brewing science in the country.
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Recently, Ron Pattinson and Goose Island teamed up to recreate Stock Pale Ale as historically accurate as possible. There are three write-ups regarding this here, here, and here, so far.
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Breathing new life into a now defunct beer brand from the 1890s. 
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​A brief description of Huangjiu

“With a brewing history of more than 2,500 years, huangjiu is believed to be one of the oldest alcohol drinks in China. The earliest text record traces back to the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC).”
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Nice write up on the revival of yeast from a shipwreck off Australia.
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​Write up on Carlsberg’s recent efforts to brew an old recipe.

Description of the Vindolanda site in England. One of the key literature references to drinking in Roman-era Britain stem from these ‘grocery lists’ for the soldiers. 
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​Deep analysis into temperance movement literature

“His main book, 1924’s Saloon Survey New York City, was a detailed statistical examination of various liquor and sociological issues five years after Prohibition. It looked for example at the number of shops selling distilling equipment or wine for sacramental reasons, at the incidence of illegal public drinking, the new uses the old saloons were put to, comparative rates in hospital admissions for drunkenness, and the effect on real estate values of saloon closures. He often sought to show the new businesses employed more people than the saloons had.”
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​New book on Norwegian Farmhouse Ales! In Norwegian, though.
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History of beer in Iowa

“While some might have regarded the attacks on beer as an assault on German culture, the reason for the 1884 riots was largely economic. More than 120 breweries could be found across the state at that time. They hired people to brew beer, store it, transport it, produce the barrels that held it and much more — creating deep community as well as economic ties. Ending the production of beer not only threatened the large brewers but also their workers, the urban populations they supported and even the surrounding farmers.”
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Another piece on Iowan beer history, but also promotes a local Oktoberfest.

"Located below the sidewalks at the intersection of Market and Linn Streets and the adjacent Brewery Square is a web of underground beer caves, serving as a reminder that Iowa City’s highly involved relationship with beer began long before the Iowa-Iowa State weekend.

The beer caves were initially used during the fermentation process of the three breweries — Union, Great Western, and City, commonly referred to as the “German Beer Mafia” — that used to call Market Street their home."
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Depiction of a typical ‘Jolly Good Ale and Old’ event, hosted by the Intoxicants Project, and how they approach the question: were early modern people perpetually drunk?

“It’s a thorny issue, to which the response is too often a knee jerk cliché about the weakness of early modern ‘small’ beer and its status as a low-alcohol alternative to polluted water supplies (which, we know now, were actually pretty clean). Instead, to address the question properly, one of our expert panel – our own Dr James Brown, Research Associate on the Intoxicants and Early Modernity project – draws on recent work by Professor Craig Muldrew in his book Food, Energy, and the Creation of Industriousness (2011), which tackles the question head-on.”
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​A brief history on the now defunct Olympia Brewing Company.
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A description of a talk which Tiah Edmunson-Morton of OHBA fame will be giving. Although not too informative, it does give info on historic brews like Wahoo and Pompion beer.
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​A cellar from a brewery operating in 1865 has been discovered.
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​A Roman brewery in Towcester! 

“The remains of a number of buildings were identified, two of which contained evidence indicating they were used to prepare grains for malting and brewing. Pottery and other artefacts recovered from amongst the surviving elements of the buildings reveal that the process was being carried out during the 2nd and early 3rd centuries AD.”
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​Experiences on teaching a class on alcohol in American history

“As the class progressed, these problems continued. On one hand, much of the energy and interest of the class came because students could personally relate to the class material about alcohol and attitudes about it. I want students to feel invested in the course material, but it was very difficult to get many of them to consider what it meant that people in the past thought about alcohol very differently than contemporary Americans do.”

​Raw ale is beer brewed without boiling. This particular style of brewing, for me, is one of the most intriguing. It's quite possibly one of the oldest ways humans brewed beer. The technology to get something boiling is much more complex than simply maintaining high temperature, as would be necessary for the mashing process. As with most things in archaeology, though, this is tough to prove.

Beer for me is defined as an alcoholic beverage whose sugars are derived from cereals. Given the adaptability of wheat, barley, rye, and oats to cold/wet climates, these grains became the dominant brewing materials. As a result, western society has, over time, come to define beer as an alcoholic beverage made from mainly malted barley, water, hops, and yeast, with the brewing process as mash, boil, and fermentation. Turning to history, one quickly finds that this idea is only a modern one. Raw ale is a perfect example as to why current brewing dogma needs more historical inspirations.

Raw ale is part of the larger Northern European ‘farmhouse ale’ family. Efforts to preserve such traditional brewing started around the 18th century, but more concrete research began with John Granlund's survey of Nordic brewing in 1928 (Revised with corrections, thanks to Lars Garshol). My entry into Nordic brewing history stems from Odd Nordland’s Brewing and Beer Traditions in Norway, published in 1969. It was based on a census in Norway in the 1950s, asking questions about the brewing process. I haven’t had the chance to read Nordland’s work, but it has been cited plenty by archaeologists (leading to my frustration with its unavailability). 

Thankfully, Lars Garshol has explored Odd’s work, and researched into the style extensively. Coincidentally, he has recently published a book on the topic. It was his prolific exploration of farmhouse breweries, and the discovery of these different styles that inspired me to brew a raw ale. 
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One problem, I don’t have a homebrew setup in Berlin (the joys of moving countries). So, I got together with the awesome folks over at Pirate Brewing who were kind enough to let me throw Brettanomyces into their fermenters. The two-person team used to run homebrewing parties out in Spain and have recently gone pro out here in Berlin. They also have a killer brew set up at home. 
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Recipe design based on the research carried out by Lars Garshol
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Smell - Ripe banana, with a hint of pine. Don't smell any DMS, nor any hint of sourness.

Appearance - Two to three fingers thick fluffy white head, with some haziness. I didn’t expect the beer to be as clear as it was. Given the increase of proteins and unfermentable sugars, I anticipated full on haze.

Taste - Banana meringue or banana flavored whipped cream with a dry finish. Going into this brew session blind, I couldn’t be happier with how this turned out. I expected a 100% malt bomb, but we got something similar to a dry hefeweizen. Neither cloying nor lingering flavor.

Mouthfeel - Full bodied, but over carbonated. These immediately foamed once you opened a bottle. 

Final Thoughts: I am seriously surprised by this beer. I anticipated a DMS-filled malt wreck, but it was a well balanced and easy drinking. Plus, it was one of the easier brew days I’ve had, so that makes it even more appealing. According to Lars, the beers go bad quicker than normal beers. But for the sake of experimentation, we’ll keep a bottle or two to see what happens. There are Lacto- and Brett in the bottles, so perhaps something good will happen.

Changes: More branches. I didn't detect too much juniper/pine flavor, and it would have played nicely with the strong banana flavor. Also, it would be interesting to play with the malt bill. I’d like to see how oats or rye would play into a beer like this. 

Write up on a recent malt & malting seminar out in Orkney.

"The ancient and traditional way of harvesting grain by hand was extremely hard work, it was a time when the whole community worked together to bring the harvest home. On Orkney, where I live, grain was harvested by hand and stacked in stooks in the field until as recently as the 1950s."
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Brewed Culture visits Rhinegeist Brewery, which is housed in the old bottling plant for Moerlein Brewing Company from the 1800s.

"​American craft beer is great, but it has really big shoes to fill. Rhinegeist is pretty large as far as craft breweries go, producing about 30k barrels when I visited but on the cusp of an impressive expansion. Yet despite being a major regional player on the craft scene today, they still struggle to fill the space of one single part of the brewing complex of a major regional player a hundred years ago. Craft beer today is re-inventing, not creating, the local focus and diversity that once characterized American beer."
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Tasting notes for Brewing Classical's second rendition of the Armenian lentil beer.
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Personal opinions aside, AB does play an interesting role in US history. 
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"1970s beer books, written at the dawn of the craft revival, are respectful and sometimes admiring of its [Anheuser-Busch] beers even as they were then."
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Ron Pattinson sits down for a chat about Scottish brewing heritage with the BeerSmith podcast.
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Lithuanian brewery tour #7. Not quite historical but this brewery still makes traditional beers.

"Vidmantas explained that this was a WW I army ammunition store, built into the ground to minimize the damage from any explosions. That's perfect for a brewery, because it provides partly natural cooling for the maturation room. The actual brewkit is in the same building as the shop, but the fermenters, maturation tanks, and bottling plant are in the bunker. It's very clearly a modern brewery, and the batch size is the same as at Davra, 2000 liters."
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Not about beer, but it highlights the general process behind residue analysis.
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A chronicling of beer in Indiana.

"​The first brewery in the city of Indianapolis came in 1834 with the opening of Wernweg & Young. Wernweg & Young, sometimes called “The Indianapolis Brewery”, was established in 1834 at Maryland and West Streets. Partners William Wernweg and John L. Young set the footprint for Indianapolis’ brewing story. The National Road, a.k.a. Washington Street or U.S. 40, was and is the spur toward the current craft brewery boon around Greater Indianapolis. Modern day breweries cluster along and nearby Washington Street."

One of the joys of running a blog is when you unexpectedly encounter like minded people. People who have the same obsession and used it as inspiration to go down a similar path, and, somehow, make you feel a little bit more normal.

Brian Alberts is the creative mind behind Brewed Culture, a blog which aims to place beer within its context. He is currently working on his PhD in 19th century brewing in America at Purdue University. I stumbled across his blog awhile back and immediately bookmarked the site. This is a person I wish I could sit down and have a pint with.

So for now, via the power of the internet, I had a brief online conversation to get to know Brian a little bit better

​Officially my favorite beer is Three Floyds’ Zombie Dust, which is definitely deserving, but there are too many great beers out there to nail down just one. Some recent highlights for me have been Brickstone APA (out of Chicago), New Glarus’ Oud Bruin and Cran-bic special releases (only in Wisconsin!), and New Albanian’s Black and Bluegrass ale (southern Indiana, right by Louisville).  
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I don’t really “discriminate” among beer styles. I’ve encountered bad beer, sure, but no bad styles yet. Right now I’m most interested in Oktoberfest seasonals. Ayinger’s Oktoberfest märzen is far and away the best I’ve had, but on the American side I’m a sucker for New Glarus’ Staghorn.
 
But I’m also hoping to attend Cincinnati’s “Oktoberfest Zinzinnati” this year, the largest Oktoberfest celebration in the United States, so I’ll make sure to keep an open mind.
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Indiana has a fantastic beer scene which hooked me within a couple years of entering grad school. I specialize in the 19th century United States, but my original dissertation topic lost its appeal, so I went shopping for a new one. I wondered whether it was possible to meld a personal interest in craft beer into a historical moment.

Make no mistake, this is very much a “Danger, Will Robinson!” kind of approach. Just because you like something doesn’t mean it’s a significant or lucrative topic of historical inquiry. But I explored it in consultation with my advisor and discovered that beer could really be a gateway into better understanding very significant facets of the antebellum United States. Facets like capitalism and the market revolution, reform movements, and German immigration and ethnicity. What’s more, the U.S. between 1840 and 1873 saw a dramatic expansion of its brewing industry that in some ways resembles the American craft beer explosion we’ve been witnessing since the early 80s or so.
 
I’m not at the stage yet where I can draw definite lines between the two eras, but the correlation is difficult to ignore. And on top of it all, I’ve seen lots of space in the literature for further study on the pre-1870s American brewing industry. And when you see a lot happening in a historical era and not enough being written about it, that’s a dissertation.

My dissertation uses beer as a nexus point for better understanding how German immigrants navigated a mid-19th century United States that was itself undergoing massive transformations. The market revolution was changing the face of American capitalism, which in turn affected politics and culture. Demand for labor brought millions of immigrants, notably Germans and Irish, into the country. Immigration combined with urbanization and associated issues like crime and poverty spurred both political nativism and social reform movements, specifically the temperance movement.
 
Beer is connected to all of these issues. Lager beer and its German immigrant brewers helped transform and expand the industry from the late 1840s onward despite a changing economic landscape. They faced periodic resistance from nativist and temperance groups opposed to both their products and their presence. Yet by 1873 the U.S. contained ten times as many breweries as had existed in 1850. A German-American-dominated brewing industry was flourishing, had a working relationship with the federal government, and stood poised to embrace the economic, technological, and organizational developments of the Gilded Age. My dissertation examines this process by looking at two Midwestern cities—Chicago and Cincinnati—as sites which combined proportionally high German populations, large concentrations of breweries, and urbanization patterns tightly connected to the market revolution.
 
I perform research like many historians do. I look at old paper. For me it’s government records, newspapers, pamphlets (especially temperance pamphlets—if you want to learn about something, find the people who hate it and they’ll go on for days), trade journals, Civil War court martial proceedings, records of beer-related organizations like the United States Brewers Association, things like that. A particularly fun source is a massive book titled One Hundred Years of Brewing, published in 1903 or so by a trade magazine called The Western Brewer. It describes the development of American beer in exhausting detail and is unique in that many of the historical sources its authors used no longer exist today. Read any book on 19th century brewing and you’ll probably see it cited, though I’m of course supplementing it with a number of other source bases.

I’ll let you know when I have one. The to-do list is always changing, and a grad student like me definitely has it easier than, say, a professor. But generally my time is split between processing the research materials I’ve collected, reading, writing, preparing content for Brewed Culture, keeping up with beer news, and stuff like conference or funding applications. Over the next few months I hope to find a publishing opportunity to work towards, as well as put together a syllabus for an American beer history course I want to teach!

I think general audiences are too quick to default to the “progressive” view of history. It’s the idea that things tend to always get bigger and better than they were before. That as we move forward in history, rights expand, technology improves, problems get solved, on and on. The stuff of the past must have somehow been worse or less developed than today, because as a society we move forward, not backward. Most historians rejected that notion decades ago.

But that idea still crops up in relation to beer. I used to mention to people that the U.S. had more breweries in 1873 than they did now (that’s no longer true as of November 2015, but it once was). They’d respond with some comment about how breweries then would have been tiny and with little reach.

Well sure, but the vast majority of breweries today are tiny and serve a local community too! Roughly 75% of American breweries today produce less than 5,000 barrels according to the Brewers Association. That’s well over 3,000 breweries. Add them all together and they’ll produce less than a single MillerCoors brewing complex!

My professional goal for the moment is not so much to clear up individual misconceptions about beer history in the U.S., but rather to establish how critical beer history is in understanding its present identity. That the craft beer revolution, while distinct, is not completely without precedent. That even modern-day giants like Anheuser-Busch-Inbev stand on the shoulders of those who came before them.
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Amy Mittelman wrote a fantastic book several years back, called Brewing Battles. If you read it, you’ll notice how wonderfully specific she gets in the first couple chapters, once she begins talking about the American Civil War, the first government excise taxes on beer, and the brewing industry’s coordinated advocacy to get the U.S. government to reduce the taxes. It stands out to me in relation to the other (still laudable) parts of the book. That’s because Mittelman’s dissertation work at Columbia University focused on that very topic, the relationship between the beer industry and the federal government from 1862-1900. It’s a shame that such an important subject had to be condensed and fit into a larger work, especially when Mittelman clearly knows the subject well.
 
What deserves more recognition are these intimate connections between beer and broader society. My point isn’t that no such studies exist (take Sharon Salinger’s Taverns and Drinking in Early America, for example) but rather that rising interest in craft beer ought to contain a rising interest in the context and implications of that beer. Several popular histories of the craft beer movement already exist, but audiences and scholars alike should demand closer, deeper studies as we move forward.
 
That said, exciting new research is already appearing. I can’t wait to get my hands on Peter Kopp’s recently released Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon's Willamette Valley (U. of California Press). Also watch out for a forthcoming edited volume called Untapped: Exploring the Cultural Dimensions of Craft Beer, scheduled for release March 2017 by the West Virginia University Press. Untapped will combine 12 essays from multiple disciplines and looks very promising.
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I honestly don’t know because I think the terms of the conversation are about to change. The Smithsonian is currently in the process of hiring a historian for its American Brewing History Initiative, who will be tasked with collecting and curating a new cache of resources devoted to tracking and interpreting the history of the American craft beer movement. The Smithsonian is a leading institution (deservedly so) and American brewing history isn’t the largest subfield out there, meaning it doesn’t have irresistible scholarly momentum of its own. So naturally I think the Smithsonian’s choices for who gets this job, and what specific directives they’re given, is going to set the tone for a lot of what’s to come.
 
It’s possible that the American Brewing History Initiative, with its focus on craft beer, will treat the movement as a watershed which is changing everything we thought we knew about American beer. They might focus on everything from the 1960s onward and its contributions to later craft beer, and ignore everything before. Alternatively, they could view craft beer as a product of longstanding trajectories and momentum and actively seek out the historical context which steered not only the diversification of late 20th and 21stcentury beer, but also the incredible consolidation that craft beer reacted to. I bet you can tell which of those I’m hoping for, but whichever paradigm the Smithsonian chooses will have a significant impact on public interest, available resources, and the terms of scholarly discussion.
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I would encourage more people in general to take a ‘long view’ with their interest in American brewing. Even the most ardent craft beer fan must acknowledge that the significance of American beer history runs far deeper than Sam Adams or Dogfish Head, deeper even than New Albion or Anchor Steam. And if they think beer just wasn’t interesting before that, well then they aren’t paying enough attention.
 
Regardless of anyone’s present opinion of Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Pabst, etc, their historical significance for American beer is indisputable. But even they rest upon a historical foundation of intense economic competition, diversity, and controversy which defined the brewing industry before their rise. It’s easy to look at American beer pre-craft and see nothing but bland homogeneity. But, honestly, I see the intensely consolidated beer markets of, say, the 1950s, as the exception rather than the rule. Craft is continuing, not inventing, a tradition of diversity and local influence in American beer and calibrating it to fit a 21st century economic climate. It’s something to celebrate, and also something to put into its rightful context.

"Craft is continuing, not inventing, a tradition of diversity and local influence in American beer and calibrating it to fit a 21st century economic climate. It’s something to celebrate, and also something to put into its rightful context."

​Cheers to that.

Summary of the difficulties in identifying and the nomenclature of artefacts. Comes with some awesome photos as well. 

“Despite these challenges, the identification of objects is an extremely important part of the project. The artefacts used to produce, traffic, store, and consume intoxicants were as carefully chosen as the substances themselves, so it’s only be documenting these objects, and the locations in which they were found, that it’s possible to fully understand and appreciate the role of alcohol, tobacco, tea, and coffee in early modern society.”
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“Adjunct use together with other procedures meant the beer would not cloud, from excessively high protein content, when shipped long-distance or where bottled beer was alternately exposed to cold and warm temperatures. It is evident from his remarks that both professional brewing and the public required under all circumstances a clear drink. (There were minor exceptions, e.g., “weiss” beer, and steam beer in part).”
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Laboratory analysis of Kveik yeast.
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Some more myth busting on Scottish brewing history.
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Scientists are attempting to regenerate grains from an ancient (2,800 years old) castle. Not sure how they plan to accomplish that, but hopefully it works.
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A brief description of a brewery from the late 1800s to early 1900s for a promotional event at a local museum.

“Noel’s Brewery, located in the river valley and operated by Joseph Noel and partner Narcisse St Goddart, produced “hop beer.” This four per cent brew was not aged but simply cleared of sediments and sold directly after the batch was made. There was also Malcom McKenzie, who owned McKenzie House, later the Windsor Hotel, and had a large brewery in the 1880s. In 1883, Joe Hall had established a brewery in the riverbottom.”
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I have been waiting for this for quite some time. Kevin Verstrepen’s work is fascinating and well worth a read. This paper is hot off the presses, though, so I havent had much time to have a proper read through. 

This month’s session is on the role of beer books, a topic which I could probably rant on about for a good while. So, I will focus on those books which have been there; key literature which guided me along the path I'm on today.
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​I was accepted to UC Santa Cruz in the summer of 2006. I thought my future lied in exploring the deep sea, trudging along the ocean floor hunting for squids. But sometimes it just doesn't work out. 

That father’s day, I coincidentally bought my dad The Brewmaster's Table by none other than Garret Oliver. At the time my dad was getting into craft beer, but I was still under age and refrained from drinking. I wanted to wait til I was 21 to have my first proper pint, but that didn't happen (college and all). Flash forward a year or two, and I read that book out of curiosity during one summer. There in the book was the first description of beer history I ever read and laid the foundation of my love for beer.

Around the time I graduated, I jokingly told my dad he should start homebrewing. And so, naturally, calling my dare our first batch together soon followed. Within a month or so we had our 5 gallon all grain HERMs set up, along with our collection of different beer books.
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Given how much I read How To Brew by John Palmer and Brewing Better Beer by Gordon Strong, I feel like they deserve an honorable mention. Yet it was Randy Mosher’s Radical Brewing with its different recipes from history that moved my interests forward. This book showed me that beers from the past were drinkable, interesting, and could be used as inspiration for today. This then lead me to wonder how beer fits in culturally, at what time these beers were developed, and the ultimate question, how did brewing begin?



Wanting to know more about beer history, I ordered a copy of Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by Richard Unger. I need to order a new copy since mine is essentially in ruins. I cannot recommend this book enough, and I frequently reread it to pick up information. Reading up on Richard Unger (and others like him), and how it was professionally possible to pursue the history of beer in academia - coupled with my dissatisfaction in marine biology - was the final straw in attending graduate school to research into beer archaeology.

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​So, as it happens, one of my good friends was attending Durham University for his Ph.D. Given his recommendation, I decided to give it a shot. I somehow got in and ‘moved across the pond’ as they say. The library here was phenomenal, and I was able to find books I couldn’t find before, the dissertation by none other than Merryn Dineley, and books I had no idea existed. Out of all of the books, I used A History of Beer and Brewing by Ian Hornsey. This book was a treasure trove of information, and I always used it as a starting point to begin research. I need to get myself a copy, as it is a great book.

So, now after what seems a lifetime ago of living in England, I live and work in Berlin away from academia (for the time being). I have just started to accrue my brewing equipment, made friends with those in the business, and started teaching myself the German language. A unique place to be, for sure, given that I never imagined myself to be in such a place. But, I am lucky enough to have the luxury to learn a language, and to research/write about beer history in my free time.

That is why I think for this point of time in my life, I would recommend (if you speak German) Das Bier: Eine Geschichte von Hopfen und Malz, by Dr. Franz Meußdoerffer and Dr. Martin Zarnkow. Bear in mind, though, that I speak/read at a child’s level of German, and so reading this book is slow. But because I had had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Martin Zarnkow, I trust that it will be an interesting take on the history of beer. By the end of it, hopefully, in addition to some beer facts, I’ll improve my German some as well.

​There are plenty of books I am skipping over. One on the history of countryside brewing in England, fermented beverages in the Sudan, the cultural role of consumption, etc etc. But these were the books that guided me onto my current career path and of brewing obsession. In the end, I just hope this month’s session inspires more reading, more learning, and more writing!

I must admit I read (Scottish brewers fermented ales at temps similar to lagers) this on more than one occasion and assumed it to be true. Goes to show how skeptical you must be when reading beer history.

Thoughts on American Lager pre & post prohibition.
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There’s a certain joy in learning about someone dedicated to their craft (beer), especially when theyre faced with similar issues as today.
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Journey #6 through Lithuania.

“They all make good beer, but the farmhouse brewers very clearly see themselves as keepers of the tradition, people whose task it is to keep a part of Lithuanian culture alive. The Davra brewers, however, clearly are businessmen, and not guardians of the cultural heritage.”

A farm decided to brew beer using modern and historic varieties of barley in Oregon.

Oddly enough, another beer museum in the works.

Key takeaway here: “the team also found that starch granules preserved in the dental calculus from Vlasac were consistent with domestic species such as wheat (Triticum monococcum, Triticum dicoccum) and barley (Hordeum distichon), which were also the main crops found among Early Neolithic communities of southeast Europe.”

Could have implications for the development of brewing in Europe, but would be extremely difficult to prove.