Ambitious Book

I recently finished reading Ambitious Brew, by Maureen Ogle.

Ogle begins her book by claiming that the general consensus among beer aficionados is that domestic beer is driven, not by quality and taste, but by corporate greed and that the only American beer worth drinking is what can be found at microbreweries.  She spends the next 400+ pages trying to prove the opposite.  She doesn’t succeed.

Don’t get me wrong – this is a great read.  Ogle paints a mostly-chronological portrait of the history of brewing in the States; giving the majority of her attention to industry titans (or, rather, people who would become industry titans) like Philip Best, Frederick Pabst and the Uihlein and Busch clan.  How these men jockeyed for position in their markets makes for an interesting story.  Also fascinating is their quest for a mass-produced, inexpensive, quality brew.  Then there’s the whole problem of how to transport beer in a world with unreliable, slower transportation and limited refrigeration capabilities.  Ogle spends a large chunk of her book detailing the relationship between brewer and saloon.  She gives reasons for the differences between American and European brews (hint: different clientele in the cafes of Europe and the American Frontier) and explains the origins of Budweiser’s Clydesdales and Pabst’s blue ribbon (hint: they were popularized due to the  same event).

More enjoyable is the slow, subtle undercurrent of the Progressive movement.  Some brewers were confident their product would never be outlawed, but as the nineteenth century ended and the twentieth century began, more and more counties (and then states) went dry.  This, of course, precipitated the 1919 Constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale of alcohol throughout the company, and Ogle’s account of breweries’ struggle to survive those years makes an engaging tale.  Some breweries did not survive, others diversified into soft drinks.  When prohibition was repealed, brewers’ woes were not over: they now had to try selling to a population raised on soft drinks.  Ogle details the lasting ramifications that Prohibition had on breweries and the populace’s palate.

In the final quarter of Ambitious Brew, we learn more of the compromises made by breweries in an effort to remain competitive in a culture that now had many other beverage options.  Many drinkers were dissatisfied with the larger brewers’ offerings, and turned instead to imports.  This opened the market for many smaller breweries to try their hand at making a living.  In essence, then, Ogle’s initial argument is almost negated: I, for one, was left unimpressed by the titans of American beer.  The book left me in no hurry to go out and buy a 6-pack of Schlitz.

But please, don’t hold Ogle’s inability to argue her main point against the book: it’s still a fun tale to read.  It will make you, if anything, glad that there are more to choices than Budweiser and Pabst.  Like brewing your own.