{"id":131,"date":"2009-03-20T08:32:42","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T14:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=131"},"modified":"2009-03-20T08:43:06","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T14:43:06","slug":"ambitious-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2009\/03\/ambitious-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Ambitious Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently finished reading Ambitious Brew<\/a>, by Maureen Ogle.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 She spends the next 400+ pages trying to prove the opposite.\u00a0 She doesn’t succeed.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong – this is a great read.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 How these men jockeyed for position in their markets makes for an interesting story.\u00a0 Also fascinating is their quest for a mass-produced, inexpensive, quality brew.\u00a0\u00a0Then there’s the whole problem of how to transport beer in a world with unreliable, slower transportation and limited refrigeration capabilities.\u00a0 Ogle spends\u00a0a large chunk of her book detailing the relationship between brewer and saloon.\u00a0\u00a0She 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\u00a0origins of Budweiser’s\u00a0Clydesdales and Pabst’s blue ribbon (hint: they\u00a0were popularized due to the \u00a0same event).<\/p>\n

More enjoyable is the slow, subtle undercurrent of the Progressive movement.\u00a0 Some brewers were confident their product would never be outlawed, but\u00a0as the\u00a0nineteenth century ended and the twentieth\u00a0century began, more and more counties (and then states)\u00a0went dry.\u00a0 This, of course, precipitated the 1919 Constitutional\u00a0amendment prohibiting the sale of\u00a0alcohol throughout the company, and Ogle’s account of breweries’ struggle to survive those years makes\u00a0an engaging tale.\u00a0 Some breweries did not survive, others diversified into soft drinks.\u00a0 When prohibition was repealed,\u00a0brewers’ woes were not over: they now had to try selling to a population raised on soft drinks.\u00a0\u00a0Ogle\u00a0details the lasting ramifications that Prohibition had on breweries and the populace’s palate.<\/p>\n

In the final quarter of Ambitious Brew<\/em>, 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.\u00a0\u00a0Many drinkers were\u00a0dissatisfied with\u00a0the larger brewers’\u00a0offerings, and turned instead to imports.\u00a0 This opened the market for many smaller breweries to try their hand at making a living.\u00a0 In essence, then, Ogle’s initial argument is almost negated: I, for one, was left unimpressed by the titans of American beer.\u00a0 The book left me in no hurry to go out and buy a 6-pack of Schlitz.<\/p>\n

But please,\u00a0don’t hold Ogle’s inability to argue her main point against the book: it’s still a fun tale to read.\u00a0 It\u00a0will make you, if anything, glad that there are\u00a0more to\u00a0choices than Budweiser and Pabst.\u00a0 Like brewing your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 She spends the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-film-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}