On July Fourth, America celebrated its semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. That hot summer in Philadelphia, the 56 delegates of the Continental Congress who signed the historic document spent a lot of time in nearby taverns, drinking beer and discussing and debating the merits of trying to become an independent nation.
It may not be obvious, but beer has been a part of America’s history since the very beginning, even before the United States officially formed. When the Mayflower famously landed on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 1620, it was at least in part because the Pilgrims had run out of beer. As Pilgrim leader William Bradford noted in his diary, “We could not now take time for further search or consideration; our victuals being much spent, especially our beer.”
The truth, of course, is a little more nuanced. There was still beer on the ship, but it was reserved for the crew, who had to sail back to England after dropping off the settlers. The Pilgrims had been searching for a spot to settle for weeks, and their supplies were running low, so running out of beer wasn’t the only reason they chose Plymouth Rock. But it was a factor.
Before that, though, beer had already made an impact in the New World. Native Americans had been brewing a corn-based drink similar to beer since at least the 1200s, and similar drinks, like chicha, tesgüino, tiswin and tulapai, are still made today.
And before the Pilgrims made it to Massachusetts, Virginia colonists tried to brew a corn-based ale around 1587 and, by 1609, were advertising in London for a brewer to join them in Jamestown. In 1612, Dutch explorers Adriaen Block and Hendrick Christiaensen built a brewery at the southern tip of what was then known as New Amsterdam (modern-day Manhattan). The Massachusetts Bay Colony finally got around to building its own brewery in 1637, and most colonies followed suit, starting with Rhode Island (1639), then New Hampshire (1670), Pennsylvania (1683) and Georgia (1738).
But brewing traditional European-style beer was difficult and expensive, because barley for brewing and hops are not native to North America. Importing the raw materials was very expensive, so both were planted early on. European barley was planted and grew well in New York beginning in the early 17th century. Hops, likewise, were first planted around 1629 by both English and Dutch settlers. The first commercial hop farm was 45 acres and started in Massachusetts in 1648.
Unfortunately, planting did not quite keep up with demand, and brewers looked for creative substitutes. As a result, spruce, pumpkin and persimmon beer became common in the early colonies. When George Washington asked for rations for his army, the Continental Congress in 1775 approved a daily ration of one quart of spruce beer or cider per soldier.
While less common today, a few modern breweries have made tree beers. Anchor Brewing made Anchor Spruce beer for the 10th anniversary of the Great American Beer Festival in 1991, and Moonlight Brewing in Santa Rosa makes a seasonal beer (that will be ready in late July) using redwood tips called Working for Tips.
After the American colonists won their independence from England, of course, George Washington became the first United States president in 1789. He was an unabashed beer lover, and porter was his favorite style. He preferred a porter made by Philadelphia brewer Robert Hare. One of Washington’s aides wrote a letter to Hare on his behalf, asking that he send some porter.
“Will you be so good as to desire Mr. Hare to have if he continues to make the best Porter in Philadelphia 3 gross of his best put up for Mount Vernon? As the President means to visit that place in the recess of Congress and it is probable there will be a large demand for Porter at that time.”
Washington also wanted to see American beer flourish, writing to his friend and French aristocrat, the Marquis de Lafayette, in 1789. “We have already been too long subject to British Prejudices. I use no porter or cheese in my family, but that which is made in America.”
Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and served as the third U.S. president, supported brewing at his Virginia estate at Monticello. After his presidency, he welcomed to Monticello English brewer Joseph Miller, who trained enslaved cook Peter Hemings, a brother of Sally Hemings, in malting and brewing. Then, James Madison, who wrote much of the Constitution and became the fourth U.S. president in 1809, spent his time in office trying to start a national brewery to promote a domestic beer industry.
The next big step for American beer began shortly before the Civil War started in 1861, when the largest wave of German immigrants arrived in the mid-19th century. Just a few years earlier, in 1842, pilsner beer was first introduced in Plzeň, Bohemia (which is now in the Czech Republic), and, surprisingly quickly, became the world’s bestselling type of beer.
Germans had long been primarily lager brewers, so they adapted easily to the new style and, along with advances in brewing technology from the Industrial Revolution, helped it spread throughout the United States. Seemingly every town in America now had a brewery owned or brewed by someone born in Bavaria, Prussia or one of the other German states, before they all unified to become Germany in 1871. This was so common that most American brewing journals were printed in both English and German until the start of World War I in 1914.
Coinciding with the Gold Rush, in 1849, the Adam Schuppert Brewery, California’s first brewery, opened at the corner of Stockton and Jackson streets in San Francisco. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln levied the first taxes on luxury goods to help pay for the war, and those included beer. When the war ended in 1865, 3,700 breweries were making 6 million barrels annually. By 1873, the number of U.S. breweries reached its highest point before the modern era, at 4,131, just in time for 1876’s Centennial.
Unfortunately, the temperance movement of the 18th century, along with consolidation and improved shipping capabilities, reversed that trend, and the number of breweries dropped to around 1,500 by 1910, and then to zero when Prohibition, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages for 13 years from 1920 to 1933, when it was repealed by the 21st Amendment.
During Prohibition, breweries tried their best to stay in business by switching to making nonalcoholic beer, soda, malt syrup and even ice cream and other dairy products. The owners were hoping Prohibition wouldn’t last, although, at the time, most Americans thought it would be permanent, as summed up beautifully by this gem of a quote by Sen. Morris Sheppard (who had co-authored the 18th Amendment): “There is as much of a chance of repealing the 18th Amendment as there is for a humming bird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail.”
Fortunately for us, he was wrong.
Starting in April 1933, beer was back, with the Cullen-Harrison Act allowing for the sale of low-proof, 4% ABV beer. By June of that year, only 31 breweries were in operation. After the 21st Amendment was passed in December 1933, 756 breweries were open and brewing again in 1934. New state laws were implemented, and each created different rules for the return of beer. Additionally, the 21st Amendment “accidentally” omitted legalizing homebrewing (which wasn’t corrected until 1978).
As brewery consolidation created bigger regional and national breweries, competition intensified and required a greater reliance on marketing, beer became less diverse, as the majority of beer produced was a new type of American lager, based on pilsners, but lighter in body, flavor and character.
During World War II in the early 1940s, breweries made beer for the troops with less alcohol at the government’s request. Many service members returned with a preference for lower-alcohol beer, and the breweries obliged, as it was cheaper to produce. American beer brands became largely indistinguishable from one another, and consolidation continued. By 1980, just after 1976’s Bicentennial, there was a lot of beer by volume being brewed by an ever-shrinking number of breweries. At the time, the U.S. had only around 44 breweries, and the industry was dominated by names like Anheuser-Busch, Coors and Miller.
But there was another revolution taking place quietly in the background. In 1965, Fritz Maytag bought the Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco to save steam beer. He turned it into the first craft brewery. And up the road, in Sonoma, Navy veteran Jack McAuliffe, who had developed a taste for English and Scottish ales, built his own microbrewery from old dairy equipment and founded the New Albion brewery in 1976.
People were also finally ready again for beer that was different from the usual lagers, thanks to at least two developments. First, with the growth of the airline industry in the late 20th century, people started to travel more, and discovered that other countries had different beers that were very flavorful and quite different from what was available at home.
Second, in 1978, homebrewing was re-legalized when a resolution was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, correcting that so-called mistake at the end of Prohibition. In 1979, new homebrewers began experimenting with making ales and other beers that were vastly different from typical American lagers.
Craft brewing started slowly at first, and most business reporters predicted it was a flash-in-the-pan that would quickly be over and we could go back to all beer tasting the same again very soon. (I’m still waiting for at least one apology.)
But that’s not what happened. Microbreweries, as they were called in the beginning, did not go gently into that good night but instead flourished, finding an audience ready for a varied group of different types of beer, with their own unique flavors that could be paired with different foods, specific occasions and matched to the right weather.
It was a renaissance of brewing, and by the 250th anniversary of America’s founding this year, there are nearly 10,000 breweries in the U.S., many of them small and local, operating similarly to the way beers were first brewed in most homes and small breweries when the nation was established 250 years ago.
Craft beer has been slipping a little lately, but it continues to offer the most diverse types of beer that you can find anywhere in the world. If someone has imagined it, a brewer has made it. If you’re a beer lover, this is undoubtedly the best time to be alive and the best place to live.
For the nation’s 250th year, raise a toast with your favorite American beer. You’ll have no shortage of choices for the foreseeable future. Choose wisely. But there are no wrong choices, only old favorites and new discoveries.
Contact Jay R. Brooks at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com.