Germanic wheat beers were once widespread and survive today. But the greatest influence from the mid-19th century came not from an invader but from neighboring Bohemia, now the modern Czech Republic. The brewing revolution that started in Pilsen and produced the first golden lager beer was soon manifest in Poland. Breweries that had been built on hills in the mountainous Tatra region were found to be ideal for digging deep, cold cellars in which the new-style pilsner beer could be stored or lagered for several months.

But Poland also had a Monty Python moment. At the same time as pilsner beer was changing the methods of brewing, something completely different was making an appearance in the Baltic states. The British were no slouches where empire was concerned, but their only involvement in the east was to export substantial quantities of a potent black beer called Baltic porter. It is a wonderful irony of brewing history that, just as golden lager began to transform brewing practice in central and eastern Europe, a beer that broke all the new rules by using warm fermentation and dark, roasted malts also put down deep roots in those countries.

A Brewing Aristocrat

For centuries, brewing in Poland had been a small-scale operation run either by farmers or town councils and strictly controlled by the church or local dukes. In the 19th century, a definable commercial brewing industry began to develop due in the main to the enormous power of the ruling Habsburg dynasty that ran the Austro-Hungarian empire.

One of the key participants in the new brewing industry of that period was Archduke Albrecht Friedrich von Habsburg. He inherited vast swathes of land in Galicia and Silesia and was encouraged by his father to go into brewing on the grounds that “if you own land and make beer, my son, you can’t go wrong.” The archduke’s first brewery was built in 1846 high above the small town of Cieszyn in the Silesia region, a stone’s throw from the Czech border. It was a fortuitous choice. for Cieszyn had a steelworks and there were many thirsty throats to refresh.

In the manner of aristocrats in the German-speaking countries of Bavaria and Austria, the archduke at first made wheat beer at Cieszyn, but he switched to cold fermentation when pilsen burst on the brewing scene in the 1840s. As a result of the brewery’s dominant position above the town, it was a comparatively simple matter to dig deep lager cellars for cold-fermented beer.

The archduke’s brewery prospered and within five years he summoned the best engineers and water experts to join him for an expedition into the forests of the Zywiec [zhiv-y-etz] region of Galicia to find a spring that could supply pure water for a bigger brewery than Cieszyn. A suitable site was found and a local priest blessed the plot. Within weeks, the plant was under construction and in 1856 the new Archducal Brewery of Zywiec was registered with the Austrian authorities. It used all the new technologies of the industrial age, with lager beer stored for between three and eight months in deep cellars cooled by rooms above that were packed with ice cut from rivers and lakes in winter.

A decade later, the concern now is whether that indigenous tradition can survive an assault from the global brewers of the West. Excluding the former Soviet republics, Russia itself had 300 breweries in the early 1990s. Within a decade, many have closed, and overseas brewers have bought nearly all of the rest. Only four or five remain in Russian hands.

The arrival of the free market in Russia has coincided with an explosion of beer drinking. Mikhail Gorbachev’s campaign to discourage the consumption of vodka prompted a switch to beer, a switch that has been boosted by the marketing techniques of Western companies in the 1990s and early 21st century. Today, Russia is the fastest-growing beer market in the world. Beer production has grown by 30 percent a year, from 28 million hectoliters in 1997 to 73 million in 2002. Growth is expected to be slower this year, but that is only because in previous years it has been so phenomenal.

That does not mean the country is satiated. Russians drink 40 liters of beer a year, compared to the Germans’ 128 liters and the Czechs’ 150 liters. There is still some catching up to be done, though national averages can be misleading. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the country’s two major cities, the people manage a more respectable 100 liters per head a year.

All the usual big global companies— Heineken, Holsten, Interbrew/ Staropramen, SAB-Miller/Pilsner Urquell —are involved in the Russian market, either as importers or as owners of breweries. But far and away the biggest players are Carlsberg and Scottish & Newcastle. S&N, Britain’s biggest brewer, entered the Baltic and Russian markets by buying the Finnish brewer, Hartwall, while Carlsberg also moved east by buying Finland’s other major brewer, Synebrychoff. The two brewing giants have created a consortium known as Baltic Beverages Holding (BBH).

As a result, Carlsberg independently or with S&N via BBH now dominates the Russian beer scene. BBH alone owns 16 breweries in the former USSR and accounts for 21 percent of the Russian beer market. In the early 1990s, it built the Baltika Brewery on a greenfield site near St. Petersburg and it is now Russia’s biggest supplier of beer. Baltika has built a second plant at Rostov-on-Don.

Nowhere is the contrast between old and modern Russian brewing more glaring and fascinating than in St. Petersburg, the country’s second city, founded 300 years ago by Czar Peter the First—Peter the Great—as an opulent, architecturally stunning, Western-style city on the Bay of Finland. Peter encouraged the development of modern industry and decreed that beer should be made available for hospitals and the navy. Brewing, which along with hop growing, had been a domestic enterprise for centuries, began to blossom commer-cially. Thus it is no accident that Russia’s two oldest breweries are based in St. Petersburg.

Commercial beer at first was made by warm fermentation. English ales, such as Burton brown beers and London stout and porter, were prized and replicated. The climate, an inexhaustible supply of ice, and the influence of events in Bavaria and Bohemia prompted a switch to cold fermentation in the 19th century. Dark beers remain popular, however, and account for 10 percent of the beer market. These include imperial stouts and porters, though they are made by cold fermentation today. Dark beers are especially popular with women drinkers, who consider them to have important benefits during and after pregnancy.