American Brewing Companies

American Beers

The United States isnt particularly well known as a Beer Lover's heaven -  but their lack of flavor is well offset by the significant marketting arms of the numerous manfacturing companies selling their goods.

While only 13th in the world in per capita beer consumption, the United States had 1,444 breweries of varying size operating as of 2006.

History

The brewing traditions of England and the Netherlands (as brought to New York) ensured that the colonies would be dominated by beer drinking rather than wine. Until the middle of the 19th century, ales dominated American brewing. This changed when the recently developed lager styles, brought by German immigrants, turned out to be more profitable for large-scale manufacturing and shipping. Names such as Miller, Pabst, and Schlitz became known through the breweries they founded or acquired, and many others followed. Czech and Irish immigrants also made their contributions to American beer.

The lager brewed by these companies was not the extremely mild lager now associated with modern US megabreweries. Instead, the classic American pilsner was a significantly stronger beer, both in flavor and alcohol.

Prohibition

All American brewing came to a halt when Prohibition was imposed, even though the temperance movement had already reduced the number of breweries significantly. Very few breweries, mainly the largest, were able to stay in business by manufacturing near beer, malt syrup, or other non-alcohol grain products, in addition to soft drinks such as colas and root beers. Production and shipping of alcohol was largely confined to illegal operations, which could deliver compact distilled beverages more efficiently and reliably than bulkier products such as beer.

Post-Prohibition

Before the American beer industry could re-establish itself, World War II began. This further inhibited the re-emergence of smaller breweries, and pushed brewers to use lower cost ingredients that were not rationed. For more than fifty years after the end of Prohibition, the United States beer market was heavily dominated by large commercial breweries, producing beers more noted for their uniformity than for any particular flavor. Beers such as those made by Anheuser-Busch and Coors followed a restricted pilsner style, with large-scale industrial processes and the use of low-cost ingredients like corn or ingredients such as rice that provided starch for alcohol production while contributing minimal flavor to the finished product. The dominance of the so-called "macrobrew" led to an international stereotype of "American beer" as poor in quality and flavor. The term, "Budmilloors," became popular among many beer aficionados to describe these mass-produced beers. However, in recent years the major brewers have made serious attempts at developing premium beers in the European Tradition such as Killian's Irish Red and Budweiser Select.

Resurgence of craft brewing

Due to the resurgence of the commercial craft brewing industry in the 1980s, the United States now features many beers, offered by over 1400 brewpubs, microbreweries, regional brewers such as Anchor Brewing Company(San Francisco) and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company (Chico, CA), and contract-brewed brands such as Samuel Adams. In much of eastern Pennsylvania including Philadelphia, an order for "lager" is assumed to refer to Yuengling Traditional Lager, a flavorful beer from a regional brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania founded in 1829, making it the oldest American family-owned operating brewery, surviving prohibition. While in volume the macrobrews still dominate, smaller producers brew in a variety of styles influenced by local sources of hops and other ingredients as well as by various European traditions. The success of the commercial craft brewing industry has led the large breweries to invest in smaller breweries such as Widmer Brothers, and to develop more complex beers of their own.

Known Brewers: