The Fall and Rise of American Beer
When our friend Michael Jackson published his monumental tome, The World Guide to Beer, in 1976, we have to wonder if he had any idea what he had wrought.
Many of us had severely questioned what was happening to American beer, when our great brewing industry settled on brewing a single type of beer, and then had made that one beer style even blander and more innocuous. Worse, all of America’s brewers—large and small—soon jumped on the yellow bland bandwagon of tasteless beer. Our national beer had become a total travesty, divorced from the great Pilsner Urquel and other wonderful legendary lagers of Central Europe.
Grain adjuncts had replaced much of Europe’s malted barley as the main ingredient, plus an incredible array of chemical additives. Our brewers took such delights as calcium disodium ethylene diamine tetra-acetate, flavored with a dash of isoamyl butyrate, laced with methyl anthranilate and added them to a malt beverage of some sort. Did I mention sodium citrate, dextrose, animal gelatin, caramel coloring, quillaja bark extract and sodium ascorbate? How about hydrolyzable gallotannins?
It wasn’t long before the smaller brewers began to emulate their larger brothers. Dark beer fell by the wayside, porters and stouts had long been eliminated. On the way came the invention of “lite” beer. But I digress and that is Michael Jackson’s wonderful legacy.
Jackson’s book brought us back to reality. It turns out that beer actually had more than one-and-a-half styles! And who’d ever heard of Belgian beer, not to mention a number of fine British ales? It was a remarkable revelation. But where could one find some of these wonders? Well, an American entrepreneur, Charles Finkel of Seattle’s Merchant du Vin wine import company, actually began to bring some of Jackson’s beer discoveries to the U.S. Wow! There was flavor and character in beer. Who would’ve known that?
California led the way 30 years ago, and one of the most fascinating success stories in U.S. brewing history is the craft brewing revolution. A few homebrewers, small brewers and “micro” brewers took up the challenge and brought great beers back to the whole world.
Ken Grossman told us Sierra Nevada started in 1980 with a hand-built brewhouse and some interesting ideas about beer. Today, it’s America’s longest-running craft startup, and boasts the number one, best-selling craft brand in the country: the legendary flagship, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The brewery now ranks second in size among American craft breweries, after Boston Beer.
