Material Culture of Breweries

Herman Wiley Ronnenberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781598741667
• eBook ISBN: 9781315424798
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

From antique bottles to closely guarded recipes and treasured historic architecture, breweries have a special place in American history. This fascinating book brings the material culture of breweries in the United States to life, from many regions of the country and from early 16th century production to today's industrial operations. Herman Ronnenberg traces the evolution of techniques, equipment, raw materials, and architecture over five centuries, discusses informal production outside of breweries, and offers detailed information on makers marks, patents, labels, and beer containers that allows readers to identify items in their own collections. Heavily illustrated with photographs and line drawings, this book will be popular with collectors and general readers, and a key reference in historical archaeology, local history, material culture, and related fields.

CHAPTER ONE

Overview of Brewing Techniques With Emphasis on Changes in Equipment and Raw Materials: 1500–2000

Beer came to America in the ships of the first European explorers,¹ and was ubiquitous as a provision on ships. The idea of brewing beer came to America with the first settlers. European beer was imported across the Atlantic but the supply was spotty, and the quality generally deteriorated on the voyage. If settlers from beer drinking cultures, especially the British and the Dutch, wanted their accustomed beverages, they realized that they had to make their own. Manufacture required raw materials, equipment, and skill. In the New World, adjustments had to be made in all of these to create beer, or something resembling beer. Human ingenuity worked wonders, and the seed of the American brewing tradition was sown.

In the prescientific age, the brewing process was mysterious; this caused successful, quality brewing to be honored and even held in awe. Between the raw material and the final product lies microscopic chemistry so complex that for millennia, it was considered nearly miraculous.

No matter how primitive or sophisticated a system for brewing might be, the processes involved are the same. The raw materials are water, grain (usually barley), yeast, and hops or other flavoring agents. All of these must be obtained, stored, and processed. Boiling, kiln drying, and cooling are indispensable, so fuel and a technique for cooling are required. The final product—beer—consists of about 90 percent water, 4 percent alcohol, 6 percent dissolved sugars from the grain, and a tiny amount of hops extract for flavor.²

A brewer must also put the beer into vessels, transport the vessels to a retailer (if this is not the brewer himself), and the retailer must serve the beer to the consumer in some vessel. All of these items reflect the culture that produced them and the level of science and technology known and affordable at that time and place.

A physical facility to accomplish this work is also required, but it might be small and temporary, such as a shed or barn, or enormous and grandiose such as the major commercial breweries of the twenty-first century. Equipment for each part of the brewing process is necessary, and highly varied.

When the first English colonists at Roanoke tried malting maize to make beer, they had only hand labor and primitive tools with which to work. By the early twenty-first century brewing involved equipment and materials so specialized and complicated that universities offered degrees in the subject. The development of the apparatus of brewing left a physical record of the progress of the brewing industry. The recovery and analysis of the various items of brewing equipment will show the development of not only brewing techniques, but also scientific concepts and their application to industry of all types, trade patterns, and cultural change.

The Basic Recipe of Beer

European brewing has roots that stretch back into prehistory. Even in a prescientific age brewers learned how to make beer efficiently from practical applications. The process begins with preparing the grain. Barley was and is the dominant grain in brewing, but wheat, rye, oats, and others have all been used independently or mixed with barley. Raw grain is high in starch and low in sugar and will not ferment rapidly enough, if at all. The solution is to sprout—called malting—the grain to change much of the starch to sugar. The grain is moistened and the seeds begin to grow in a few days, just as they would if they had been planted. A sprout grows out the end and is allowed to develop until it is the length of the seed from which it emerged, and to which it is still attached. The grain at this stage is called malt and must be dried to prevent rotting. The malt may be dried with virtually no change in color or roasted to a darker color, reaching nearly black. This gives the final beer its color. After drying, the malt may be transported or stored.

When ready for use, the malt is ground much as flour would be, although not as finely. The ground malt is steeped in hot water for some hours to allow the sugars to dissolve into the water; this is called mashing. The residual grain, with a low starch and sugar content, is filtered out. The sugary liquid, now called wort (pronounced wurt) is boiled for several hours with added hops. The hops are filtered out when the boiling concludes. The wort is cooled to the proper temperature and yeast is then added in a process called pitching. Fermentation takes place as the yeast acts on the sugar. This process may take several days or several weeks depending on the temperature and type of yeast. The fermentation process changes the sugar to alcohol and carbonic gas.

The beer is often filtered, and then aged to reach maximum flavor. It is then transferred to containers to be transported to the wholesaler, retailer, and consumers. Wooden barrels were used for centuries, followed by galvanized barrels, then aluminum. For small quantities beer was put into glass or stoneware bottles. In the twentieth century beer was first put into metal cans.

Every step in the brewing process must be tightly controlled to get the desired final product. Improper brewing techniques can cause an entire batch of beer to be ruined, or result in poor quality.

The Beer Revolution of the Nineteenth Century

Starting in the 1840s and moving rapidly after 1860, the replacement of the British brewing tradition with the German brewing tradition changed America. Lager beer slowly supplanted ale, which may have been representative of much wider cultural change. In 1880, beer authority Frederick William Salem said: “when we remember that outside larger cities, even twenty years ago, ale was almost sure to be dull and muddy and very apt to be sour, we must admit that American ale-brewers have accomplished much.”³

The latter half of the nineteenth century saw science and technology applied to brewing to such an accelerated extent that it was a virtual revolution. A master brewer of 1800 would have been awestruck and lost in a modern brewery of 1900. A master brewer of 1900 would certainly be impressed by a brewery of 2000, but with the exception of the various uses of computers, the manufacturing process at the end of the twentieth century would be familiar to a brewer of the late nineteenth century. Thousands of inventions in Europe and the United States—and thousands of protective patents—chronicle the advances. Europe and America cross-fertilized each other with brewing knowledge in the nineteenth century. Brewers often visited across the Atlantic specifically for research purposes. The extensive literature on European brewing history, biography, and archaeology would prove instructive for understanding the American experience and for making comparisons.

Early Beer Varieties

Over fifty distinct styles of beer are currently known in the Western world. During the exploration and colonial periods, British beer was categorized into three basic types. Small or single beer was a weak variety made only from malt. Middle, also known as ships or table beer, had some sugar added to the malt to increase the alcohol content. Double, old, or strong beer had enough sugar added to assure a high alcohol content.⁴

Each part of the brewing process must be understood in greater depth if the archaeologist is to identify and understand cultural and industrial items that are uncovered.⁵

Brewing Materials

As mentioned, beer requires several basic ingredients: water, grain, yeast, and flavorings. Even subtle variations in the quality or species of these elements can have a profound effect on the finished result. Through trial and error, brewers are able to refine their product into their ideal concept of the perfect beer.

Water

Many American breweries in the modern era have touted their local water as an almost secret ingredient in their beer. Olympia Brewing Company advertised with the slogan “It’s the Water!” The artesian water of Tumwater, Washington, was responsible for its distinctive flavor. Coors of Golden, Colorado, promotes its Rocky Mountain spring water. Genesee Brewing of New York claimed that the best brewing water in the world came from nearby Hemlock Lake. The nowdefunct Kessler Brewery of Helena, Montana, was located next to a gushing mountain spring; Herr Kessler received a land patent from President Grant assuring him possession of the famous Kessler Springs.⁶ Leinenkugel of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin has always used the water of the Big Eddy Springs. Hamm’s Brewing, when based in Minneapolis, was “From the Land of Sky Blue Waters”; later, when the corporation had breweries in multiple locations, the beer was “Born in the Land of Sky Blue Waters.”

A number of breweries ran sideline businesses selling bottled water. Cold Spring Brewing Company of Cold Spring, Minnesota, marketed mineral water when founded in 1874 and again decades later.⁷ Carl Mallon, while building a new brewery at Wallace, Idaho, in 1890, discovered a naturally carbonated spring.⁸ He was selling “Edanha” bottled water in champagne bottles—beer bottles were too weak to hold its gaseous power—before he sold his first beer from the site. Home Brewing Company of Richmond, Virginia, sold Beaufont Springs Sparkling Carbonated Table Water. This water, from springs in Chesterfield County, Virginia, came in 32-ounce bottles.⁹ Many other examples of bottled water sales by...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 Overview of Brewing Techniques With Emphasis on Changes in Equipment and Raw Materials: 1500–2000
• CHAPTER 2 Brewery Architectural Developments: 1500–2000
• CHAPTER 3 Makers’ Marks, Patents, Labels, Production Dates, Beer Containers, and Other Evidence
• Appendix I A Chronology of Brewing in the New World
• Appendix II Glossary of Brewing Terms Used in This Volume
• Appendix III Organizations That Assist in Identifying Brewery Artifacts
• Appendix IV Archaeological Excavations of Breweries and Related Sites for Comparative Purposes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author