Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer (47 page)

Adolphus would be proud—but then again, he would have expected nothing less.

Epilogue

I
N LATE
2005, Sam Calagione, the founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Delaware, traveled to New York City to participate in an odd but instructive competition: He and a sommelier served their respective specialties during a five-course dinner, a different wine and beer with each course. Calagione brought along Fort, a fruit-based ale concocted from more than a ton of Oregon and Delaware raspberries and with an alcohol content of 18 percent. He also poured Pangea, only 7 percent alcohol but flavored with an ingredient from every continent (including ginger and basmati rice); India Brown Ale (7.2 percent), with its notes of coffee, ginger, and chocolate; Raison d’Extra (18.5 percent), brewed from brown sugar and raisins; and World Wide Stout (18+ percent alcohol), a desert beer that the brewer compared to port. Calagione left behind at the brewery his Chateau Jiahu, a concoction brewed from honey, grapes, hawthorn fruit, and chrysanthemum flowers; his Immort Ale, made from peat-smoked barley, organic juniper, and maple syrup, and aged in oak casks; and his Burton Baton, an oak-aged ale with hints of citrus and vanilla. At the end of the evening, the guests voted on which they preferred with each course—beer or wine. Calagione won three of the five courses (and might have won a fourth had his staff not inadvertently packed the wrong beer for one of the courses).

On the other side of the country, the folks at Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, California, age their Temptation in oak wine barrels for a year. Supplication also sits in oak barrels—Pinot Noir casks, to be precise—for a year before the brewmaster declares it ready. Little White Lie, a wheat beer, contains coriander, cumin, and orange peel. None of those sound good? Then try some of the brewery’s other offerings: Pliny the Elder, Dr. Zues, or Parking Violation. Deification, Beatification, or Sanctification. Redemption, Perdition, or Damnation. Erudition, Salvation, or Rejection.

And back on the East Coast, Jim Koch, still sitting comfortably in the ranks of brewing’s top ten, reigns as current king of what he calls “extreme beers.” The 2003 vintage of his Utopias rippled with the flavors of vanilla, oak, and citrus and possessed an alcohol content of 25.6 percent, high enough to land it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Too much, you say? Try a bottle of Samuel Adams Millennium, with a (somewhat) lower alcohol content and hints of cinnamon, butterscotch, and pear. Or for something a tad more mundane (relatively), how about a bottle of Koch’s seasonal Cranberry Lambic?

Welcome to American brewing in the twenty-first century, where anything goes; where brewmasters are not just pushing the boundaries of beer, but redefining this ancient beverage. Where, in 2005, fifty breweries and brewpubs went under, but forty-nine new ones appeared to take their place. It is this kind of creativity that has defined the industry for decades. Like beer itself, the business of brewing seems a living creature—often buffeted by forces beyond its control, but constantly adapting, changing, shifting shapes and direction in order to survive. How many industries can claim to have been reinvented not by government bodies or huge corporations, but by individuals? How many industries can claim an entry bar so flexible that a guy with welding skills and a few thousand bucks can shake it up and fashion something new?

And therein lies the mystery, the wonder, and the excitement of American brewing and its history: At its core are passionate men and women. In that sense, today’s industry—some fifteen hundred breweries and brewpubs, ranging from giant AnheuserBusch making 100 million barrels a year to individually owned brewpubs dispensing a few thousand barrels a year at bars located fifty feet from the brewvats—has not changed much from its inception in the 1840s, except that there are more fine beers and a greater variety of them than at any time in American history.

At present, craft beers command less than 5 percent of the beer market. That’s not much, and it probably explains why the number of breweries and brewpubs has remained flat over the past decade: There are only so many consumer dollars that can be siphoned away from Anheuser-Busch, a behemoth that is determined to grow, not shrink, its own already gargantuan market share.

Per capita consumption of beer has continued its downward slide, and while A-B continues to post gains, the few remaining mainstream brewers are fighting a losing battle to stay in the game. Most analysts think Pabst Brewing, to name one battered example, is terminally ill, a claim that’s easy to believe given how hard it is to find Pabst Blue Ribbon in an ordinary grocery store.

To a certain extent, Big Beer has only itself to blame for its sagging fortune: It keeps playing the same old song, over and over and over. Remember the Anheuser-Busch ads during the 2005 Super Bowl? A snowy scene, an old-fashioned sleigh, two lovers snuggling—and the Clydesdales passing gas. Or the company’s anti-Miller ads in which A-B touted its beers as “American,” in contrast to foreign-owned Miller? (When Coors merged with Canadian Molson,A-B immediately did the same to the Colorado brewery.) Miller retaliated with, among other things, TV commercials that featured taste tests in which bar patrons are shocked—shocked!—to discover they’ve chosen Miller Lite over Bud Light, or Miller Genuine Draft over Budweiser. Set advertising like that next to the beers being made by Koch and Calagione, and the ads seem not just stodgy, but hopelessly out of synch with today’s consumers.

Still, there’s no denying that American beer drinkers today live in a barley-based paradise. How long will this current golden age last? Impossible to say. Already there are corporate-owned chain brewpubs that serve mediocre beers. But that was true back in the nineteenth century as well, when more than one brewer served up indifferent beer simply because he could find an equally indifferent saloon to carry it. More troubling to beermakers of all stripes are the wines and spirits gnawing at their share of the alcoholic drink market.

On the other hand, craft brewers continue to do what they’ve done, and done well, for a quarter of a century—treat beer as a sophisticated, sensual, flavorful delight—and so their small market grows each year, even as beer consumption slides. Perhaps that explains a move on the part of Anheuser-Busch in early 2006, when the company suggested that brewers join forces to improve beer’s image. The idea was to borrow a tactic employed in recent years by producers of milk, eggs, and pork: Mount an
industry-based
campaign that would tout the virtues of beer, regardless of brand. In this case, the ads would focus on the art and craft of brewing and suggest ways to pair beer with food. As an Anheuser Busch spokesman put it, “Craft beers have pushed hard on selling the romance of the product, but we [mainstream brewers] have not,” choosing instead to dump money into TV spots centered on babes, sports, or “brown bottles in icy water.” It’s an idea long overdue, but only time will tell if any of A-B’s competitors will join in the project (as of this writing, May 2006, none had).

Of one thing I am certain: the heart of brewing will always be its people. In the course of writing this book, I met some of the most intelligent, passionate, and energetic people that I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. They gravitate toward brewing, I think, in part because beer is itself an exciting, lively creature capable of almost infinite complexity and nuance. So I am optimistic: American beer will continue to attract the brightest and the best, and those people will, in turn, continue to reinvent the beer and the industry. Indeed, perhaps American beer’s best days are yet to come.

Prosit!

Acknowledgments

I
T’S BECOME
fashionable of late for some to scoff at lengthy acknowledgments. To those ignorant souls, I return the scoff: Anyone who so indulges either has (a) never written a book, or (b) written only fiction concocted entirely of imagination. Because if they’d slogged through a project like this one, they’d know just how much the writer of nonfiction depends on the input, assistance, and kindness of other human beings.

One of the first people I met when I began working on this book was John C. Eastberg, the director of development at the Captain Frederick Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee. John, a man of great warmth and charm, is also the soul of generosity; he never hesitated to share whatever Pabst-related goodies he found. I am certain that he and the Captain would have been great friends.

I thank the people of Milwaukee for having the good taste and wisdom to spend money on their magnificent main library, where I conducted much of my initial research. I also thank the men and women, who, as employees of the Works Progress Administration during the 1930s, compiled a superb index of the
Milwaukee Sentinel
; the American taxpayers for funding the work; and President Franklin Roosevelt and his staff for conceiving of such projects in the first place. (Yes, okay, maybe it’s possible to get carried away with acknowledgments, but trust me: The thanks in this case are well deserved.)

The New York Times Company deserves some sort of congressional or presidential medal for its index, which is an indispensable tool for historians studying the United States. If it happened or mattered, the
Times
covered it and the indexers included it, and some sections of this book could not have been written without that newspaper’s index. I am sincerely grateful, and I wish everyone at the
Times
many years of good health, good writing, and happy indexing.

This is the third book I’ve written at the Parks Library at Iowa State University. It’s still the finest library I’ve had the pleasure to work in. The microfilm equipment and the staff are second to none (and there are a good many libraries, whose names I shall not mention, that could take a tip or two from the staff at Parks).

At the library, the people in the Interlibrary Loan Department once again provided me with superb service. I am grateful for their efforts on my behalf. I especially thank Kathy Thorson, who ran interference on more than one book-request-gone-haywire.

I thank the staffs at the Central Library of the Milwaukee Public Library system, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Missouri State Archives, the Missouri Historical Society, the National Archives—Great Lakes Region (Chicago), and Fred Romanski and Shannon Hickey of the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.

I conducted a large chunk of research at the Anheuser-Busch Corporate Library. I thank the Busch family for allowing me access (although I wish they had let me into the archives) and for having the good sense to maintain this great collection. At the library, Ann Lauenstein and Mary Butler provided efficient assistance. I am especially grateful to Ann for the time and care she took to supply me with materials and one of the photographs used in the book.

Richard Hamm at SUNY-Albany unraveled a perplexing legal question about Prohibition. Tom Tate of
anheuser-buschbottles.com
and Robert Klein both heeded my cry for help and supplied me with images of early Budweiser labels. Christopher Eck of the Broward County Historical Commission supplied me with a copy of his thesis. Drew Beechum and the crew from Maltose Falcons answered questions and offered much-needed information. Lew Bryson kindly provided a copy of his interview with Fritz Maytag. Renee De Luca provided contact information for Jack McAuliffe.

John Gurda and Tim John provided me with manuscript copies of their works-in-progress and I thank them for their generosity. Tim also took time from his own work to answer questions about his family, the Millers of Milwaukee.

Early on in this project, Philip Van Munching gave me a copy of his book and words of encouragement. Jen Robinson devoted most of a precious week’s vacation to reading and critiquing the manuscript. As soon as she heard about the project, Julie Johnson Bradford of
All About Beer
magazine stuck out a hand (electronically speaking), said howdy-do, and offered to help. I never managed to persuade Brad Davis at WanderWear that the Franklin beer quotation was bogus, but I thank him anyway for a truly hilarious twenty-minute phone conversation.

I thank Matt Braun, formerly of Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company; Michelle Sullivan of Boston Beer Company; and Laura Harter at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. for their help in setting up interviews. Michelle and Laura also tracked down photographs, as did Kelli Gomez of the Brewers Association and Fritz Maytag at Anchor Brewing. Dave Gauspohl, breweriana collector extraordinaire, provided images of beer labels. Mary Wallace of the Walter Reuther Library at Wayne State University also assisted with photographs. I thank Michael E. Miller for giving me permission to use the image of Jack McAuliffe, and Bill Ristow of the
Seattle Times
for helping me to find Mike.

A sincere thanks and a big smooch to the generous, dishy, and talented Gilbert King, who spent a morning tromping around Manhattan with me, taking publicity photos, and a wonderful afternoon eating and drinking at Gramercy Tavern.

Mike Cormican, owner of the Dublin House in Manhattan, kindly allowed me to use his lovely bar as a setting for some of those photographs. The name may say “Irish,” but the spirit of this establishment on West Seventy-Ninth Street, open since 1921 and the oldest bar on the city’s Upper West Side, is very much American. It’s a place I frequented back in my youth during the time I lived in the city, and it’s still dear to my heart. I am grateful to Mike and to Catherine Nicholson (as beautiful as she is kind) for their help. (And I urge one and all to visit this marvelous tavern. Look for the neon harp hanging above the door.)

One of the nearly sublime pleasures of writing this book was the opportunity to explore and write the history of living people. Beer folk, I discovered, are smart, funny, lively, and fully engaged with the world around them. I enjoyed every minute of the many I expended in interviewing them. I am grateful to all those who took time out to help make this a better book: Patrick Baker, Don Barkley, Larry Bell, Scott Birdwell, Daniel Bradford, Byron Burch, Fred Eckhardt, Charles Finkel, Ken Grossman, Jim Koch, Michael Laybourn, Mr. Bill Leinenkugel, Jake Leinenkugel, Michael Lewis, Nick Matt, Charlie Matzen, Fritz Maytag, Jack McAuliffe, Larry McCavitt, Bill Owens, Charlie Papazian, Nancy Vineyard, and Dick Yuengling.