November 2015 was an auspicious month for the American beer industry. According to data provided by the Brewers Association the number of breweries in the United States reached 4,144. At no other time in our country’s history has America had so many breweries. The previous high was 4,131 in 1873. The current number of breweries in the United States is particularly impressive when you consider that it was only as recently as 2011 that the number reached 2,000. In commenting on reaching a record high number of breweries Bart Watson, the Brewers Association’s economist, stated that “this is a remarkable achievement, and it’s just the beginning”. Some may find the statement by Watson to be provocative as it suggests that the number of breweries is set for continued significant growth. I happen to agree with Watson and share his optimism. However that is a topic that I have addressed in a previous entry and so is not one that I want to revisit here.

1873 – the year in which Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days was published in France, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patented the first blue jeans with copper rivets, Prince Edward Island became the seventh Canadian Province, nineteen students attended the opening class at The Ohio State University, and Jesse James and his gang committed the world’s first robbery of a moving train near Adair, Iowa.

But what about beer? What was happening in the world of beer in and around 1873? While the number of breweries today is almost identical to 1873 the population of the United States was considerably smaller back then – ~40 million, compared to ~320 million today. Do the math and that means that in 1873 there was 1 brewery for every 9,683 people, compared with 1 brewery for every 77,220 people today. In 1873 there were 8.9 million barrels of beer produced in the United States. Today’s craft brewers produce 22.3 million barrels. In 1873 the top three beer producing states were New York (2.9 million barrels), Pennsylvania (1.1 million barrels), and Ohio (0.8 million barrels). Today the top three beer producing states (for craft beer) are Pennsylvania (4.1 million barrels), California (3.4 million barrels), and Colorado (1.7 million barrels).

The breweries of the 1870s were smaller than the craft breweries of today. In 1873 the average annual output of American breweries was 2,154 barrels. Today’s craft brewery averages 5,381 barrels. This can be partly explained by the fact that a number of today’s breweries have a much larger geographic reach than the breweries of the 1870s. The Boston Beer Company’s beer, for example, is sold in all fifty states plus D.C., beer brewed by Oregon’s Deschutes Brewery is available in twenty-eight states plus D.C, and Michigan’s Bell’s Brewery is available in twenty-three states, plus D.C. In 1872 today’s brewing giant Anheuser-Busch was producing just over 1,400 barrels of beer per year; an insufficient volume for the King of Beers to occupy a top twenty spot among America’s breweries.

Today’s craft breweries have access to brewing techniques and transportation technology and infrastructure that were unavailable (or was just becoming available) to brewers in the 1870s. The process of pasteurization, which kills harmful bacteria in the beer with the result that it does not spoil so quickly, was discovered by French chemist Louis Pasteur in 1864. In was during the 1870s that Anheuser-Busch, and other brewers, started to pasteurize their beer. Pasteurization opened up the possibility of brewers shipping their beer beyond very local markets.

The long-distance transportation of beer today is dependent upon a modern and efficient transportation infrastructure. Such an infrastructure was still evolving back in 1873. The first automobile, the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, was a decade away and widespread ownership of automobiles would not be a reality until the 1920s. When beer was transported to more distant markets it was done so by rail car. The rail network of 1870 was confined primarily to those parts of the country that lay east of the Mississippi River.

Another key transportation innovation that made its appearance in the 1870s were refrigerated rail cars. Anheuser-Busch started using refrigerated rail cars in 1874 and by 1877 had a fleet of forty rail cars, manufactured by the Tiffany Refrigerator Company of Chicago, that were used to deliver beer to ever more distant markets. The first refrigerated rail cars were cooled by using huge amounts of ice. This meant that there had to be Ice Houses (where rail cars would replenish their ice supplies) located at strategic locations along the rail track. It was not until the early-1880s that Anheuser-Busch adopted artificial refrigeration systems, thus eliminating their dependence on ice. By 1879 Anheuser- Busch’s beer was available in all thirty-eight states in the Union.

So what type of beer were Americans drinking in 1873? By then lager was the most popular style of beer in the United States. Lager was introduced to the United States by German immigrants who started coming to the United States in large numbers beginning in the 1830s. Prior to that British-styled ales and stouts had dominated the American beer market. By 1880 over eighty percent of the brewers  in the United States were German immigrants. While the lagers brewed by the first-wave German immigrants were replicas of those brewed back in the old country the American beer drinker demand lager that was blander and smoother – hence the utilization by the brewers of cheap adjuncts, particularly rice. By the end of the 1870s lager was well on its way to becoming Americanized.

So 1873 represents a high-water mark for the American brewing industry; one that was only surpassed last month. The 1870s, however, was also a decade of transition  during which new technological innovations were setting in motion the wheels of change that would alter the face of the American brewing industry.

Further Reading

Warner, Alfred G. 2010. The Evolution Of The American Brewing Industry. Journal of Business Case Studies, Volume 6, No. 6, pp. 31-46.