Then I wonder why people started drinking BMC beers, and what the original ad campaign was to get customers to stop drinking real beer.
"Tired of flavor? Can't handle the pressure of deciding what beer to drink? Now, for the first time ever, a beer that tastes like cold, carbonated piss and has no redeemable qualities!"
Sorry, that's just a myth that we EAC's like to perpetuate to keep us warm at night...but it ain't the truth.
I just finished Maureen Ogle's book on the history of beer in America...When AH released Budweiser with it's corn and rice adjuncts in the 1860's it was the most expensive beer out there; a single bottle retailed for $1.00 (what would equal in today's Dollars for $17.00) this was quite difference when a schooner of beer usually cost a nickel.
The American populace ate it up!
It wasn't done to save money, it was done because heavy beers (both english style Ales and the heavier Bavarian malty beers) were not being drunk by American consumers any more. Beer initally was seen around the world as food (some even called it liquid bread), but since America, even in the 1800's was a prosperous nation compared to the rest of the world, and americans ate meat with nearly every meal, heavy beers had fallen out of favor...
Bush and other German Brewers started looking at other styles of Beers, and came upon Karl Balling and Anton Schwartz's work at the Prague Polytechnic Institute with the Brewers in Bohemia who when faced with a grain shortage started using adjuncts, which produced the pils which was light, sparkly and fruity tasting...just the thing for American tastebuds.
So the brewers brought Schwartz to America where he went to work for American Brewer Magazine writing articles and technical monographs, teaching American brewers how to use Rice and Corn...
The sad moral of the story is....The big corporate brewers did not foist tasteless adjunct laced fizzy water on us, like the popular mythology all of us beersnobs like to take to bed with us to feel all warm and elitist....it was done because our American ancestors wanted it.
As much as I hate to admit it...Americans just weren't drinking that much American Ales before the germans came. That's why I've had f*&@-all luck trying to find a late 1800's
ale recipe.
ambitious brew said:
In the early nineteenth century, Americans didn't drink beer - they drank whiskey instead, more than seven gallons per adult a year. There were 14,000 commercial distilleries in the United States but only about two hundred small breweries.
It wasn't until the German introduced thinner beers that Americans began to drink it.
Myth: After World War II, brewers lowered production costs by adding corn and rice to their beer.
Reality: German-American brewers began adding corn and rice to their beer in the early 1870s, and did so not to lower their production costs (in 1878, a bottle of Budweiser cost the equivalent of $17 in todays money!) but in order to accommodate Americans demand for a light-bodied beer.
Listen to this from Basic Brewing;
November 30, 2006 - Ambitious Brew Part One
We learn about the history of beer in the USA from Maureen Ogle, author of "Ambitious Brew - The Story of American Beer." Part one takes us from the Pilgrims to Prohibition.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr11-30-06.mp3
December 7, 2006 - Ambitious Brew Part Two
We continue our discussion about the history of beer in the USA with Maureen Ogle, author of "Ambitious Brew - The Story of American Beer." Part two takes us from Prohibition to the present day.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr12-07-06.mp3
You might want to take a look at her book.
Her website and beer blog are great reads.
http://www.ambitiousbrew.com/index2.htm
She's been covering the AH/Inbev thing from a historian's perspective on her blog
http://maureenogle.com/blog/
By the way...this one Po'ed me even more...
In recent years, beer drinkers have worn t-shirts decorated with a quote attributed to Ben Franklin: "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Just one problem: Franklin didn't say that. It's a mangled version of another Franklin quote about the pleasures of wine. In a 1779 letter, he wrote that the rain that fell on vineyards and transformed vines into grapes for wine provided "a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy."
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