In Meat We Trust (61 page)

But successful or not, and whether located in New York or the Wisconsin Territory, the first immigrant brewers introduced a new kind of beer to the United States: lager. In the early nineteenth century, the only beer Americans knew was English-style ale, brewed in the states since colonial days but never as popular as either cider or spirits. The differences between British ale and German lager were apparent to both eye and tongue. Ale sat dark, heavy, and “still” in a tankard, brown in color and thick in body. Lager seemed nearly buoyant in contrast, thanks to its lighter body and color, and lower alcohol content. The yeast accounted for part of the difference between the two: Ale’s organisms worked on the wort’s surface; lager yeast foamed and then drifted to the bottom of the vat, there to spin its magic in the dark.

But there was another, greater divide between the two kinds of beer: temperature and fermentation time. Ale fermented at room temperature, it required no aging, and was ready to drink in a matter of days. That also meant that it turned sour and nasty as soon as a man turned his back on it. Wise drinkers edged toward a mug of ale, taking a delicate first sip in order to find out whether the tankard contained sweet beer or sour; a thick, yeasty pleasure or a rank broth with the taste and texture of muddy water. Those who could afford it turned up their noses at local ales in favor of bottles of imported porter or stout from more proficient British brewers.

Lager required more time and care. Brewers stored—or “lagered,” from the German verb
lagern
, meaning “to rest”—the beer in capacious wooden puncheons that held hundreds of gallons, stacking these in their “caves,” or underground caverns, at near-freezing temperatures for two or three months. As the lager rested, remnants of yeast and other solids drifted to the bottom of the barrel as harmless sediments. The brew mellowed and its flavors ripened. Most important, the combination of rest and cold endowed the beer with greater longevity than ale. Assuming all went well, tapping day produced a malty, amber lager with the heft and sustenance of liquid bread. Then the brewer transferred the beer from the fermenting kegs into smaller barrels, usually sized to hold thirty-one gallons. Because even lager began to decay once it left its cold berth, brewers kept the beer in underground storage until it was sold.

Nowadays, brewers ship their beer long distances on paved highways, but the 1840s were a time of few roads or rails and reliable cold storage was limited to underground caverns. A lager brewer sold nearly all of his beer within a mile or two of his brewhouse, cultivating the goodwill of nearby tavern owners, Germans for the most part who had set up shop in order to supply beer to other immigrants. But both the tavern owners’ and the brewers’ market was driven by their clientele: In the first ten years of German-American brewing, lager was consumed almost exclusively by German-speaking immigrants.

There was a reason that beer and taverns followed on the heels of German immigration. Brewing and beer had been part of Germanic culture for centuries. Ancient northern sagas, among them the
Kalevala
and the
Edda
, memorialized fermented beverages as gifts from the gods and as the source of poetry. For centuries, Germanic tribes prized ale as food, and as the centerpiece of the drinking fests that preceded and followed warfare. By the fourteenth century, beer—fermented barley cooked with hops as a preservative—had become central to German culture. To drink with friends was to celebrate life and its bounty. People affirmed wedding vows, settled arguments, and sealed contracts with glasses of beer, which served in those cases as a sacramental offering to the event. As a result, brewing was a craft that was deeply entrenched among the German-speaking peoples of northern Europe. But in the 1840s, it was a rare “American”—an English-speaking native—who embraced the beverage.

B
Y
1847,
THE
B
EST FAMILY
was selling thirty barrels of beer a week to saloons in and around Milwaukee. Three horses crowded the small yard on Chestnut Street; two powered the grinding stone and a third pulled the brewery’s delivery wagon. The men hoped to add a fourth animal soon, a necessity now that the family was carrying beer to the outlying villages that dotted the Milwaukee and Menomonee river valleys.

Their success was not hard to understand. Milwaukee behaved like a living creature, a boisterous infant to be precise, whose insatiable appetite fueled seam-ripping growth. The town’s population numbered seven thousand when Phillip arrived in 1844: it topped ten thousand in 1846, and would race past twenty thousand in 1850. The Bests found customers for their lager among the third that was German-speaking. But the Bests’ success rested on more than Phillip’s salesmanship. A young man who tasted the family’s brew in the late 1840s described it as “the most delicious lager,” worth a trek up the hill, and already ranked among Milwaukee’s finest.

In the summer of 1851, Phillip and brother Jacob opened a beerhall in downtown Milwaukee and a second, smaller, tavern above the remodeled brewery. Then, in 1852, the brothers embarked on a new, riskier expansion. Chicago had become one of the great marvels of the nation, growing at a pace that astonished even the most optimistic of boosters: Four thousand residents in 1840 mushroomed to thirty thousand just ten years later. The city’s few brewers could not keep pace, especially as German immigrants arrived to grab their share of the city’s bounty. Phillip and Jacob seized the opportunity and began shipping their lager to Chicago by ferry, an easy day’s trip, two thousand barrels’ worth in 1852 and a thousand more the next year.

Then came the summer of 1854—so agonizingly hot and humid that brewers in both St. Louis and Chicago ran out of lager. “Something must be done,” complained the editor of the
Chicago Journal
. “Germans disconsolate and haggard wander from hall to hall, and as yet there is no beer.”

The Best brothers, already established in Chicago’s market, capitalized on the moment, expanding production to keep pace with this venture into long-distance shipping. They continued to send beer to Chicago by ferry, and then, after 1855, by the rail line that linked the two cities. Lager bound for St. Louis traveled to Chicago first, and then by canal to the Illinois River, and from there to the city blossoming on the Mississippi River. By the late 1850s, a railroad shortened the journey and reduced its cost.

Nothing says more about Phillip’s ambition and business acumen than this decision to venture into distant markets. Both Chicago and St. Louis contained a solid German presence, which meant that Best beer competed with lagers from other immigrant brewers. But he brewed an exceptional beer, and it was on this that he based his gamble. The maneuver catapulted Best Brewing out of the ordinary and set it on its course toward greatness. “I could never have imagined,” marveled Phillip, “that [the business] could develop as far in ten years as it is now.” But he was quick to credit the real source of his success. “In Germany,” he wrote to his wife’s family, “no one knows how to appreciate the liberty to which every human being is entitled by birth, only here in America can he experience it.” His bustling brewery, Milwaukee’s relentless growth, and the heated competition among the town’s brewers exemplified the nature of the United States, a place where liberty nurtured ambition, and ambition fostered success.

T
RUE, PARADISE SUFFERED
from a few flaws here and there. “[N]obody has any idea of
‘plaisir’,”
lamented one discouraged émigré, “but just business, business, business, day out and day in; so that one’s life is not very amusing.” Americans talked of nothing but business and money. They lived to turn every inch of land and every minute of each day to profit. As for leisure, they “played” at quilting bees and barn-raisings—work disguised as pleasure. The nation’s cities sprouted factories and shops, mills and warehouses—but no parks or pleasure gardens. In most towns, cemeteries provided residents with their only green spaces. Land devoted to pleasure? What was the point?

One need only watch the nation at table to discover the people’s priorities: Americans hunched over their plates and gobbled their food. No time to waste on idle chitchat. No time to savor flavors and textures; just gorge and run. Sometimes they did not even bother to sit, choosing instead to stand and feed “like an animal,” as one shocked German traveler put it, racing through meals as if they were endurance tests or some form of gastronomic torture (and, given the quality of most American food—heavily salted meats, undercooked pastries, breads fried in pools of fat—perhaps theirs was a wise strategy).

Americans drank furtively, greedily, and with no thought of pleasure. A typical American tavern, complained another German, contained “neither bench nor chair, just drink your schnaps and then go.” Who wanted to linger? Dingy and devoid of sunlight, floors decorated with spit and cigar butts, the air laced with ribbons of thick smoke and the nose-wrinkling perfume of stale whiskey, the tavern was not a place to relax, and definitely no place to take women and children. Even when Americans sat to drink, they were less interested in enjoying the company or the moment than in testing one another’s generosity and capacity for booze. Germans recoiled from the national practice of “treating” or “buying rounds.” Once a fellow bought you a drink, common courtesy and good sense dictated that you stick around until it was your turn to buy, but you could be topsy by the time your round came—especially if the group was tossing back shots of hard liquor.

German émigrés concluded that they would have to create their own pleasure. The artistically inclined organized orchestras, singing societies, opera clubs, and theater groups. Others introduced the old country tradition of sharpshooting, and Phillip Best supported one group by setting up a shooting gallery out back of the brewery. Club members took turns displaying their marksmanship and sipping Best’s fine lager. Young men organized
Turnvereine
, clubs aimed at promoting both physical fitness and intellectual well-being, where they practiced the accoutrements of German manhood: gymnastics, shooting, debate, and singing.

The Turners wore their military-inspired uniforms to outings at the city’s new German beerhalls, many of which had been opened and were operated by brewers like the Bests. Jacob and Phillip served cheese and German wine, and of course their lager, which, they informed readers of the town’s several German newspapers, “bubbles as fresh and clear as ever—for our benefit and the good and refreshment of thirsty mankind.”The Bests’ advertising also included a snappy jingle (probably written by Jacob, who was a bit of a wit): “When the glasses loudly ring,/All the waiters quickly spring,/Serving promptly all the guests/With the ‘bestest’ of the Bests.” But theirs was a German-inspired house of amusement, and felt more like the old country than the new one. Light poured through large windows. In the evening, young couples and families congregated for music, dancing, food, and the house lager. Men met there each morning for gatherings devoted to chess or cards, literature and politics.

In warm weather, the city’s Germans migrated to “pleasure gardens.” In the evenings, and on Sunday, the week’s one day of rest, crowds thronged the grassy lawns at Bielfeld’s and Kemper’s; Leudemann Park, perched on the bluff overlooking the lake; and the Ludwigsthal nestled on a small rise just north of Cherry Street. Proprietors wooed customers with flower beds, twinkling lanterns, and gravel paths that wound through leafy arcades. Visitors wandered the manicured grounds or claimed tables and chairs near the music. Waiters trooped through the crowds bearing trays laden with sausage and cheese, ice cream, lemonade, and wine, and, of course, mugs dripping with lager. The young flirted, the old danced, and the pungent aroma of lager nosed its way from table to table. Young and old alike waltzed and polkaed the evening away. Musicians strolled through the crowd, and patrons burst into song or rose to their feet in impromptu dance, their hearts filled with the exquisite pleasure of being a German in free America.

The beer gardens and halls allowed Phillip Best and other German immigrants to infuse their new homeland with old-world pleasure, but in so doing, the brewers and their fellow emigres collided head-on with an incontrovertible fact of life in the United States: A multitude of Americans scorned those who made and drank alcohol, and stood ready to prevent both.

T
HAT HAD NOT ALWAYS
been the case. The men and women who first settled the colonies shared the view of Increase Mather, who described alcohol as “a good creature of God” and treated drink as a necessary component of daily life—in moderation and so long as its use did not interfere with God’s other creatures: worship, work, and the pursuit of wealth.

But the colonists who carried beer from England to North America in the early seventeenth century promptly abandoned it, early evidence of the new world’s uncanny ability to inspire new modes of behavior. Settlers devoted every waking minute to the demands of survival: They girdled and burned trees, scratched furrows in the thin, rocky soil, and cultivated meager crops of wheat and corn. Given the amount of labor needed to produce a season’s worth of food, only a fool wasted time fiddling with luxuries like barley or hops. Southern settlers could grow just about anything, but their steamy climate worked a weird magic that turned ale to swill. Far easier, colonists decided, to plant apple and pear trees, which demanded minimal attention and produced plenty of fruit for cider and brandy.

Rum took care of the rest. In the late seventeenth century, West Indian and Caribbean plantation owners flooded the North American colonies with molasses and rum, the waste byproducts of their sugar cane mills. Mainland colonists developed a passion (more like an addiction, critics sniffed) for rum’s intoxicating allure. They drank it straight or mixed it with water, fruit juice, or milk to create slings, sloes, punches, and toddies. They drank it hot; they drank it cold; they drank it morning, noon, and night.