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Jürgens beerfest beer - Oregon

Posted by DonS on 2015-06-23 08:40:47

It's not so much that CC beer disappeared. It's that there wasn't much to begin with. There was beer-making in the USA in its early history, but actually, drinkers were just as likely to prefer hard liquor, whiskey being the tipple of choice. The earliest commercial brewing enterprise in colonial America was founded by a Dutch settler.

Beer really didn't grow and become prominent in the USA until after the great immigration waves of the mid-to-late 19th century, which brought people in from central Europe, including brewers with skills in new-fangled lager brewing techniques. Those people and their beers just about completely took over the brewing trade. Even where it wasn't practical to brew actual lager, like newer settlements out west, a hybrid beer evolved, using lager yeasts but fermented at warmer temperatures, because industrial refrigeration was a new thing and hadn't become common everywhere (yet). The most well-known example is Anchor Steam beer from San Francisco's Anchor Brewing. Eventually, though, refrigeration became wide-spread, and was even applicable in transport with rerigerated rail cars, allowing big lager brewers to emerge and distribute their products nationwide - and in America, that was significant due to the long distances involved. CC ales could never have survived that kind of journeys made possible by shipping refrigerated lagers.

This lager takeover happened in the USA, Canada, and Mexico, and spread globally, with German-style lagers eventually becoming the dominant global brews of preference. There was even a "Kronenbräu 1308" brand brewed in Canada at one time - the name came, yes, from that little place Herr Gänstaller used to run in Strassgiech!

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTYwMFg5MDA=/z/amAAAOSwm8VU1WWR/$_12.JPG

And even now, there is plenty of lager sold in Ireland, right alongside Guinness and Smithwick's ... and did CC ales survive in Ireland? Not with the advent of nitrogen-pushed Guinness, not so much. And it's not exactly difficult to find lager in the UK either.

Apropos of this, you will find me working the Czech and German beer section of the BSF counter at the Great British Beer Festival on two sessions this August. Drop by if you're there!