Read Online Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer by Maureen Ogle - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Maureen Ogle
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the men,” added the doctor, to drink lager.
Good news for the nation’s brewers, another thousand of whom set up shop during the war. But old or new, they all paid a price for their success. In the summer of 1862, the cash-strapped Union Congress began taxing “luxury” items: billiard tables and playing cards, yachts and carriages, and liquor and beer. The legislation levied a tax of one dollar per barrel and required brewers to purchase a federal manufacturer’s license (one hundred dollars annually for those who produced more than five hundred barrels; half that for smaller makers). Over the next three years, the new Internal Revenue Department collected $369 million in taxes, nearly eight million of it from beer.
The German lager brewers, anxious to affirm their loyalty and patriotism (and to defeat the hated Slave Power, as it was called by Union supporters), paid. But they recognized that once imposed, the levy would never go away. Less than a month after Lincoln signed the tax law, a few dozen eastern brewers convened in New York City to ponder the new regulations. The group persuaded Congress to lower the rate to sixty cents a barrel. As the war dragged on, lawmakers hiked the tax back to a dollar; still, the brewers learned a valuable lesson: better to cooperate than to resist; to educate the nation’s lawmakers than to ignore them. That meeting in New York inspired the formation of the nation’s first trade and lobby organization of any kind, the United States Brewers’ Association.
In April 1865, Union and Confederate generals and their troops played out the final scene of the nation’s sad drama in the woods and fields near Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. In St. Louis, the lager-hungry supply clerks vanished and the troops mustered out. Refugees began the long journey south; masons and carpenters packed their tools and headed home.
Eberhard Anheuser’s brewery might not have survived the downturn. His partner had jumped ship in 1864, leaving the old man to manage the place alone. Therein lay the problem: No one would ever accuse Anheuser of being a master brewer; he knew soap, but the mysteries of beer presented an entirely different challenge. Yankee troops and laborers had been willing to drink his beer, but the discriminating Germans of St. Louis turned up their noses at his brew. And rightly so; why settle for the mediocre when any one of a dozen other brewers in the same neighborhood turned out fine lager for the same price?
Eberhard Anheuser had not succeeded in the rambunctious American economy because he was stupid. He knew that he needed help and he needed it now. And he knew just what form that help ought to take: his talented and charismatic son-in-law, who could charm the skin off a snake and sell it back to its owner. In 1865, Adolphus Busch purchased a share of the company. Nobody knew it then, but the changing of the guard had begun. One of the giants of American brewing had just stepped into place. Together, he and a handful of other titans were about to reinvent the industry.
A DOLPHUS B USCH grew up in Mainz, Germany, on the Rhine River, where his wealthy father, Ulrich, owned thousands of acres of vineyards and forests. The second-youngest of twenty-two children, he received a fine formal education at several prestigious schools. But Busch preferred action to theory. He left school in his early teens for two apprenticeships, first working as a poleman helping move timber downriver for his father and then as a helper at an uncle’s brewery.
He was a quick study and forgot nothing, a fact that he would still demonstrate late in life. One evening during a visit to Frankfurt, Germany, in 1895, Busch hosted a dinner for two St. Louis friends who were also vacationing there. Afterward the three men set out for a tour of the city. When they reached the banks of the Main, Busch noticed that a raft-jam had halted river traffic. He jumped out of the carriage and leapt onto the
Good news for the nation’s brewers, another thousand of whom set up shop during the war. But old or new, they all paid a price for their success. In the summer of 1862, the cash-strapped Union Congress began taxing “luxury” items: billiard tables and playing cards, yachts and carriages, and liquor and beer. The legislation levied a tax of one dollar per barrel and required brewers to purchase a federal manufacturer’s license (one hundred dollars annually for those who produced more than five hundred barrels; half that for smaller makers). Over the next three years, the new Internal Revenue Department collected $369 million in taxes, nearly eight million of it from beer.
The German lager brewers, anxious to affirm their loyalty and patriotism (and to defeat the hated Slave Power, as it was called by Union supporters), paid. But they recognized that once imposed, the levy would never go away. Less than a month after Lincoln signed the tax law, a few dozen eastern brewers convened in New York City to ponder the new regulations. The group persuaded Congress to lower the rate to sixty cents a barrel. As the war dragged on, lawmakers hiked the tax back to a dollar; still, the brewers learned a valuable lesson: better to cooperate than to resist; to educate the nation’s lawmakers than to ignore them. That meeting in New York inspired the formation of the nation’s first trade and lobby organization of any kind, the United States Brewers’ Association.
In April 1865, Union and Confederate generals and their troops played out the final scene of the nation’s sad drama in the woods and fields near Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. In St. Louis, the lager-hungry supply clerks vanished and the troops mustered out. Refugees began the long journey south; masons and carpenters packed their tools and headed home.
Eberhard Anheuser’s brewery might not have survived the downturn. His partner had jumped ship in 1864, leaving the old man to manage the place alone. Therein lay the problem: No one would ever accuse Anheuser of being a master brewer; he knew soap, but the mysteries of beer presented an entirely different challenge. Yankee troops and laborers had been willing to drink his beer, but the discriminating Germans of St. Louis turned up their noses at his brew. And rightly so; why settle for the mediocre when any one of a dozen other brewers in the same neighborhood turned out fine lager for the same price?
Eberhard Anheuser had not succeeded in the rambunctious American economy because he was stupid. He knew that he needed help and he needed it now. And he knew just what form that help ought to take: his talented and charismatic son-in-law, who could charm the skin off a snake and sell it back to its owner. In 1865, Adolphus Busch purchased a share of the company. Nobody knew it then, but the changing of the guard had begun. One of the giants of American brewing had just stepped into place. Together, he and a handful of other titans were about to reinvent the industry.
A DOLPHUS B USCH grew up in Mainz, Germany, on the Rhine River, where his wealthy father, Ulrich, owned thousands of acres of vineyards and forests. The second-youngest of twenty-two children, he received a fine formal education at several prestigious schools. But Busch preferred action to theory. He left school in his early teens for two apprenticeships, first working as a poleman helping move timber downriver for his father and then as a helper at an uncle’s brewery.
He was a quick study and forgot nothing, a fact that he would still demonstrate late in life. One evening during a visit to Frankfurt, Germany, in 1895, Busch hosted a dinner for two St. Louis friends who were also vacationing there. Afterward the three men set out for a tour of the city. When they reached the banks of the Main, Busch noticed that a raft-jam had halted river traffic. He jumped out of the carriage and leapt onto the
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