THIS BOOK BEGAN WITH A QUESTION—ONE THAT CAME TO light while I was waiting for my first batch of home brew to cool in our nation’s capital. How did beer, a beverage both essential and, for most of its existence, undeniably local, shape the regional histories of this country? Surely, such a valued product must have figured into the identities of what really is more a conglomeration of cultures than any monolithic state. The beloved brewdog must have played a pivotal role in defining how we, as northerners, southerners, midwesterners, and westerners, define ourselves.
It seemed simple enough at the time, chatting with my brother-in-law Steve on a beautiful day with a half-dozen beers already under our belts. But now, with things coming to an end almost three hundred pages later, it might be best to close with a confession: it took a whole lot longer than the few weeks I envisioned to find the answers. And, frankly, I’m still finding them. American history is an evolving story, and our understanding of it is malleable to the facts at hand. No sooner had I finished up my description of the sad demise of the English alewife in the 1500s, when I happened to stumble upon an English cooking manual from 1615, which listed “brewing” among the skills to be mastered by the lady of the manor—proof that at least some English women were still carrying on a tradition that would eventually bring pumpkin beer to New England and molasses brews to the southern colonies. And I didn’t discover this while digging through microfiche in some musty archive; I was just Googling a pancake recipe on a Sunday morning. History, like beer, is all around us. Crack it open, and you’re never sure exactly what you’re going to get, although chances are, if it’s consumed thoughtfully and discerningly, it will make for an enjoyable experience.
One thing I can say with certainty, however, after having spent a solid year of studious sampling, is this: there has never been a better time to be a beer drinker in America. This book started with the premise that the richness of the American experience has always sprung from our own diversity, and at this moment, the brewing culture in the United States is as diverse as it has ever been. When Jack McAuliffe opened the first new craft brewery in America since Prohibition in the late ’70s, there were fewer than fifty breweries operating in the United States. When Jim Koch cooked up his first batch of Boston Lager in 1984, there were still less than a hundred. But today, just a few decades later, there are well over three thousand. And within all those permutations of yeast, malt, and hops lies an almost unlimited potential for truly great beer, no matter one’s personal preference. For those looking to taste heritage in a glass, there are the old-school breweries that survived Prohibition and still make traditional styles of lager—places like Yuengling, Shiner, and Anchor Steam. If it’s pushing the envelope you’re after, the mad geniuses at breweries like Dogfish Head, Stone, and Rogue are always looking to combine age-old techniques with bold innovations—Dogfish actually produced a stout made with chocolate, lobster, and basil, should you need convincing. And for nostalgia, or even just simple refreshment, there’s always the assortment of macrobrews we all grew up on. Sure, they might get a bad rap from the connoisseurs, but it’s also well worth remembering that when America nearly became a country of whiskey drinkers in the nineteenth century, and cocktail drinkers in the twentieth, it was Messrs. Busch, Schlitz, and Pabst who pulled us back from the brink. They effectively saved American beer, and we might not be drinking it at all were it not for them.*
The future of regional beer is harder to divine, but we can certainly speculate. Some in the industry have voiced concerns about market saturation, although small-scale independent brewing at a local level will likely continue to grow for the foreseeable future, if recent trends are anything to go on. In 2013, Americans even managed to drink more craft beer than Budweiser—a feat unimaginable just a few years before. Inevitably, though, we still go back to what we already know, and certain proclivities lend themselves to rediscovering old favorites. As a country, we may be exploring new ways to drink our beer, but our regional roots run deep indeed. Malty, high-alcohol brews made with copious local hops have come to dominate the craft brew scene of the West Coast, just as they did over a hundred years ago. Beers aged in bourbon barrels are gaining popularity in the South, hinting perhaps at some ancestral longing for char and corn, and in New England, seasonal beers have once again become a common sight—apparently, the taste of an autumnal pumpkin ale still holds considerable appeal for the Yankee palate. But that isn’t to say that these regional styles don’t have national appeal as well (especially when it comes to West Coast IPAs), or that entirely novel forms of beer aren’t being created. This heterogeneous nation of ours may have a historic problem with consensus, but it’s also never been short on innovation. Just because we embrace the familiar doesn’t mean we shy away from creating something new, often in the most unexpected of ways. In the Pacific Northwest, the Cascadian dark ale has arisen from a local love of dark malts and piney hops—and also, according to some, a small but vocal movement to create the independent country of Cascadia. Apparently, the “CDA” is often the local Cascadian separatist’s drink of choice. And way over on the other side of the country, the recent obsession with all things “gluten-free” in health-conscious northeastern cities has resulted in some breweries using sorghum syrup rather than barley to make their beer. Little do those antiglutenites know, they’re actually drinking a modern, revamped version of a colonial-era molasses beer—the very stuff George Washington and Thomas Jefferson used to brew in their kitchens, making it a great blessing for celiac sufferers and history lovers alike.
And speaking of making beer in the kitchen, my own batch of home brew is finally ready to drink—in fact, my brother-in-law Steve is getting out the glasses right now. No, this isn’t the first batch of high-rye IPA that sparked the idea for this book. That one came out . . . not so good. But while the great midwestern writer F. Scott Fitzgerald may have been right about there being no second acts in American lives, when it comes to American brewing, there’s always time for another round.
“All set?” Steve has the bottles uncapped and he’s poised for a pour. I nod and take a deep breath. Time for the moment of truth. The instant when I’ll finally see if a year’s worth of insight can translate into a good batch of brew. With lambent tones of honey and sunlight, laced at the top by a delicate foam, the freshly brewed ale rises in our glasses. It is a thing of wonder and a thing of beauty—happiness in a bottle, history in a glass. We chime rims and take our first tentative sips. For a moment, neither one of us speaks. We let the hops and the alcohol work their bright alchemy. We allow four centuries of the American experience to tingle on the tongue. Words feel all at once superfluous—there really isn’t all that much to say—although a shared glance reveals that we’re both in agreement. The verdict is?
Well, let’s just say we’re probably not going to be opening a craft brewery in the near future, and we won’t be quitting our day jobs anytime soon. But we did make some very drinkable beer. And as every brewer from Geronimo on down to Jim Koch could tell you, that’s something any American can be proud of—no matter where in this sprawling nation of ours he or she is from.
So I’ll drink to that.
Cheers.
The author’s brother-in-law Steve, engaging with his son Graham in a distinctly midwestern form of father-son bonding.