Upsetting Conventional Wisdom

Fine, but I wasn’t done yet. Assuming these premises, I asked, how could Americans who allegedly demanded flavorless beers suddenly change their mind and support the craft beer revolution that began in the 1970s. Julia Childs was Ogle’s answer. Ok, that might be an oversimplification.

Here’s what happened. During the late eighteen hundreds at the same time brewers were learning that they had to cut their recipes in order to remain competitive another trend was on the rise. Anti-Alcohol leagues would severely affect Americans’ taste for beer for a long time. The same movement that would eventually wield enough power to establish Prohibition was already educating American’s in their views of the evils of beer and other forms of alcohol. So complete was their campaign that by the time Prohibition was repealed in 1933 two generations of Americans had grown up with an indoctrination of the evil of the drink. Americans had simply lost their taste for beer.

Those whose view of alcohol remained unchanged by the Anti-liquor leagues also drifted away from beer. During Prohibition, the only drink that made sense was hard liquor. It was easier to smuggle, hide and distribute. Americans that were drinking were not drinking beer.

Ogle said that the years directly after repeal were grim for breweries. They were making a product for which there was virtually no demand and sales steadily fell. The beer that was sold had to be as light as possible. The breweries resisted this trend towards even lighter beer. They felt that they’d already cut out enough barley and didn’t want to go any further. Those breweries that refused to cut their recipes began to go out of business.

Sales had continued to slide down through the fifties. It wasn’t until the sixties that there was finally a turnaround. This had more to do with the fact that there were simply more adults thanks to the baby boom generation reaching adulthood than a greater percentage of drinkers choosing beer.

This was also a time of growing wealth and changing tastes. Americans began to travel and experience other cultures. This is where Julia Childs comes in. Her influence on the American diet was to reintroduce flavor. Until now a trend towards blandness that began with the first convenience foods around the turn of the century threatened to take over. Frozen foods and white bread had joined canned foods in Americans’ kitchens for a largely flavorless gastronomic landscape. Even cigarette companies found that they had had to cut the amount of tobacco in their product. It’s really no surprise that beer had followed the same path. But now, thanks in part to Julia, Americans were discovering that flavor can taste good.

As part of this discovery, they were discovering good beer. During their travels to Europe they would find rich flavorful beers. Once home they would want more and imported beers started finding their way onto shelves at liquor stores.

The first craft breweries weren’t far behind. The final chapters of her book chronicle the rise of first New Albion then Anchor, Sierra Nevada and others. The craft beer revolution had begun if revolution is the right word. The dominance of the megabreweries during the mid-Twentieth century was, according to Ogle, an anomaly. Never before and nowhere else has such a thing occurred. Beer and breweries have always been regional and plural. The events of the early Twentieth century created an artificial atmosphere for beer that allowed, briefly, a dominance of a few companies. It might be more correct the call the craft beer revolution a beer industry correction.

So, Ogle might be right after all of my self-righteous indignation. For a brief time American beer drinkers demanded light, flavorless beer. But that is certainly changing. As more and more drinkers discover the richness and complexity of beer, it is losing its image as something to guzzle during the game on Sunday afternoon. It is becoming, to borrow Ogle’s phrase, the ambitious brew it once was.