Beer Gardens

Every now and then a "Pre-Prohibition Lager" shows up from one brewery or another. The label usually earnestly declares that this is how beer was before the Volstead Act although nobody can really know. Poor and secretive record keeping from most breweries of that time has kept us from knowing exactly how beer was made and what it tasted like. We can create some pretty close approximations but we'll never know if these Pre-Prohibition recipes are spot on.

Another Pre-Prohibition legacy was lost to US drinkers - the beer garden. At the end of the nineteenth century when the beer barons seemed unstoppable and the beer drinking culture in the US was booming, beer gardens flourished. These were fun, family-friendly spots where the adults could relax with a beer and the kids could play. Beer gardens are rare these days but you can still find them if you look. A good place to start is New York. Check out Danial Lehman's review of beer gardens.