Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of respecting the beer. My name is Gary Ardnt with me. Again, is Bobby Fleschman brewer extraordinaire. And once again, Joel Hermanson, and we are here to talk once again about history. Everything we've talked about so far with respect to the history of the beer, you could almost say that early beer and beer making was all homebrewing to a certain extent. Even if like it was a monastery that was producing large quantities of it, we would still kind of consider it having been done in a method very similar to homebrewing, which is very different than the way beer is produced today. It's done at industrial. So. In this episode, we want to talk about the origins of the industrial production of beer. And where would you say that that began? Where was the transition point from this beer being widespread, but locally produced and produced kind of on a, you know consume it as you make it kind of basis to what we see today?

I think a, a wonderful stat to share with you on this is the fact that, that, that last 30, 40 years of the 19th century, there's more change that happens in that time period to beer that maybe happens in all of the time preceding those, those brief decades, going back all the way to the ancient world, there are remarkable changes in beer. You talked about the transition, and just to frame this contextually, this is in that period after the 30 Years War, in which the brewing industry takes a long time to recover as a result of the calamity that was, and it returns more to that cottage industry phase. I think when Europe goes, or when, particularly when England goes through its agricultural revolution in the early 1700s, and they, they initiate something called scientific farming. And the process of, of farming had changed dramatically. They're using a three field system, they're using fertilizers. So their grain yields are, are growing exponentially. And subsequently they have more, excess grain to work with. They also have a population that was lowered thanks to the, to the 30 years war and the subsequent plagues that, that affected it. So you can't really just jump in and say, Oh, well, it was the, it was the malting roaster. And it was the, the processes that were changed with, you know, malting and drying and things like that. You can't, you can't jump into that. I don't think without talking about the agricultural side. So I would say that as, as kind of my initial foray into the question, The other thing that I would point out, and I'm going to lean more on Bobby to talk a little bit about this style of beer cause this is something that we haven't focused that much on, but when beer had been malted and dried before I would say before the beginning of the 19th century, it always had a smoky quality about it, which is actually its own style, that Rauch beer. And there's going to be some substantial changes. to the technology that gets rid of the smoke. Do you want to talk a little bit about that style of beer?

Yeah, I think I mentioned a little bit on another podcast about the Rauk beer that's, that you'll still find today in Bamberg, Germany. that's sort of the home of and the vestibule, or what's the word I'm looking, vestige of the style. And yeah, there was a time when all beer would eventually be sour over time, and there was a time when all beer was smoky because you directly heat the grain in the process of kilning and malting, and that heat source is wood burning, and the smoke's making its way into the acid from the, from the smoke, making its way into the husk of the grain. And it's just part of the it's just part of the flavor profile. No one would have consumed it and said this is smoky or not. That's just part of that baseline profile. We recognize it today, obviously, but back then they wouldn't have. So, yeah, you're this, this, this change, though, with the advent of coke, coke is a derivative of coal and it's, it's used as a clean source of heat and doesn't produce these, these smoky flavors. But also this is an industrial age. But also they've found ways to indirectly heat their mash. So there's a barrier, physical barrier between the two, the heat source in the, in the mall. So, yeah, that lead weight, all kinds of stuff. And then also the smoke gives you darker colors and you're able to make lighter kiln malts. And then the Pilsner malt is invented and the rest is literally history because the number one beer in the world is a Pilsner today. Still today, but there's a, there's a several light beers coming, popping up in Europe as soon as you can make those. And I think previously we talked about glassware. how that grew up alongside having clear beer or lighter colored beers. And it would be a, a signature of prestige to have a glass with that liquid.

Because before that you would use pewter because you didn't really want to see your beard. It's all black. Because it was, you know, things floating in it.

Let me ask you a hypothetical question. I podcast once about language, and a lot of linguists say that we could talk to Queen Elizabeth I better than she could talk to her grandmother, that there was a period. In the 16th century where the English language changed so much that it just became unrecognizable. If you were to take somebody from say the 16th century and bring them today and serve them a beer, do you think that they would recognize it or, or vice versa? If you were to travel back in time, how different would their beer be to a modern palette?

That's a great, the only way I can answer that is the, is by giving you my own account of having tried. And I'm not throwing anyone under the bus now because I think that styles are always, there's no, from on high, there was no list of beer styles that existed before earth. We had to make it, these styles. I've had a slushy in the last year. Slushy is a beer that is 30 percent fruit and it's got all these different flavors. Vanilla sometimes shows up in it. And I had it and I could not myself recognize that as being a beer. I'm not saying it's that extreme, but I might, I would imagine they would have some sort of reaction that, that, that's related to that. Hopefully it wouldn't be as extreme as mine was to it, but who knows? Cause these are wildly different flavors.

I think your, your cask beers would, would be closer,

closer, but again, without the smoke. And, if we talk a little bit. About porters in a moment, I kind of recapping what I've said previously that the porter is based on sort of three different beers. It's sort of a stream of milds and brown ales and stouts and different sourness levels. So they were, they were finding ways to deal with that sourness at some point. But yeah, everything had a certain palette to it. I think the sugar sweetness actually was much higher in these beers. Hoppiness was much higher to balance that sweetness. I don't know, Gary. That's a good question.

I don't think they would like 547.

Well, they did actually hop beers as much as that, but, but they were also extremely sweet. So they just, they seemed much more in balance that way. Not to say five 47 isn't in balance with our intentions, but yeah, there is a drift in our palates.

And we we've mentioned it several times. Five 47 is a double IPA that you make. It's one of your signature beers, I think,

and has its own bell.

And Joel is a very big fan of it, which is why we've mentioned it.

It's a big ambassador.

Has anyone ever tried to make. Like these historical beers?

Yeah, I would think dogfish head probably of all the the commercial breweries out there that do it Nash Nationally, they they probably have tried the more than most to do that, you know

I I don't I'm sure there's European brewers that probably dabble in that more than then they would stateside.

Because you also get, you have to get a yeast that's not super awesome at making beer by modern standards. It's the one that can't actually finish all the, consume all the sugars that are there. And so they built recipes around that. That's why they use so many hops. You wouldn't have noticed it, for example.

And for those listening you can tune into episode two where Bobby's wife, Alison, will talk about the fact that really brewers don't make Beer. Yeast does. Yeast is, yeast is the driving force behind this entire.

We just run the resort.

Right. Make them comfortable and they're going to do the rest. Yeah. They're going to do the rest for you. Flush them down the drain.

But while they're here, they're going to get the best.

You talked about. Coke, which allowed for higher, you know, coke is usually used in steel making.

Right.

It allows for higher temperatures. And it also, as things get more industrialized, probably allows for more consistent temperatures. True. You know, you'd have a recipe that was like, you know, boil us for, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen actual recipes. There's a YouTube channel called Townsend where this guy makes 18th century recipes and the recipes are always very vague. It's like, yes, take a duck and throw some salt on it and cook vigorously. And that's all they say. So as we're moving towards this modern era, we're developing things that are like Coke that probably allow for more consistent heating. What are some of the other big technical innovations that radically change brewing in that period? Cause you're talking about that late 19th century,

Enormous changes, the rotating roaster is, is another one.

Oh yeah. You're looking into Germany. Yeah. I'm sorry, England. You get the, the roaster allows you to make what's called black malt or, and they, it actually is called even today it's called black patent malt because that was a patent on that machine. So we still call it that.

Now, all of a sudden you have the ability to manipulate color. Yeah. Which otherwise you have.

What is this, what does this device do?

It's a tumbling roasting machine that it's not that much different than a coffee. One, I think 50 percent of the time you would have though in these times a fire breakout, so they didn't have. They didn't have any control because we're talking about 450 degrees and up in temperature. So you're, you're always just on the edge of igniting the whole damn roaster. So only in the very modern times that we've been able to control that. And so no one dared make those malts intentionally until we had that under control.

Yeah. So that with respect to the transformation of beers color. and different profiles of it. I think we'd be naive if we didn't mention railroads which certainly brought beers from one place to another at a much quicker pace, probably extended the dominion of beer. I think that, that is certainly one, an instrument that I know you use a lot was developed in the 19th century. If you could give us just a super fast overview to the hydrometer.

Well, and thermometer. They're both because of brewing. But, but yeah, the hydrometer is a floaty device and you can calibrate it so that it floats higher if it, if the liquid it's in is denser and you can put markings on it. And once they were able to independently determine the density of that, of that liquid, and they could calibrate their, these floating devices, it's important to measure the amount of sugar. That's going into the word, which becomes the beer. And out of that, they can predict the level of alcohol and the government loves it because the government can step in and say, Oh, when it hits this mark, nevermind what beer you're making, they're going to charge you this much for that beer so that they were basing their taxation on the amount of sugar and not the amount of alcohol. And there've been others that. Modern. We in modern context, we actually do measure the alcohol, but back in the day, that was the way it was done. I think in Scotland you have shilling beers and various numbers, and that was based on the strength of that work.

So in other words, standardization again, where you can come back and be reliable Yes, to the production of, of one style,

Two countries are responsible for industrial brewing more than any others. Belgium really stuck with its roots. It's very much based with monasteries and some of the sour beer brewers of with intent and the saison brewers in France. But then you look at the Germany, as we talked about in the last episode with Ryan Heitzke about standardization and then England as well, they became such a global superpower. They, they just industrialization changed. everything there and they're able to make, they were ahead of Germany for a while in terms of, production volume, but also in terms of technology, they were taking it everywhere in the world. They had such a huge market for their beer.

What about bottling?

Before we get to bottling, we'd also be remiss to, to ignore the, the technology of steam power. Which can, you know, all of the machines that are, that are, you know, powering these, these breweries that are starting to appear in Europe, putting steam in them as a,

No, obviously if you're going to have a gigantic brewery, it's going to be machine based and it's going to require a source of power. But the reason I bring up bottles is because even if you had this industrial facility, If it's just creating kegs of beer and it ships it out, there's going to be a limit, I think, in terms of freshness that as far as how far you can transport it and how long it can stay. What did bottling do? Because once you bottle something, you're sealing it, which is kind of different from the way beer had been served You know, up until that point,

Right. I would say though, at the end of the day, the, the bottle and the cask are going to, to some extent, age. Similarly, the, the bottle though allows for, more individual purchasing. So I can only, I can only speak to what I would imagine would have been a distribution that you wouldn't have seen before the creation of the single serve packet.

Yeah. And I think World War I accelerated the use of, of bottled beer because when you're supplying that much beer to the men in the front lines.

Steel cans as well, right? They had steel cans. I'm not sure what they were lined with, but yeah, it's probably nothing. Yeah. So that's frightening.

Yeah. And you know, that, that time period after World War I is you approach, you know, the Volstead Act here in the United States, but in the depression as well, that's when people start to drink more at home. And, you know, prior to that, if you were drinking, you were going out. to drink, as opposed to, you know, drinking at home. Well, we're, we're particularly here in Wisconsin. We're used to, you know, to doing both. Yeah. That, that wasn't really an option before.

Fast forward hundreds of years, just a quick comment. Since the pandemic, we've seen people shift, hard into cans that take it home and it's, it's shifted our, our, our approach.

Oh, with regards to what the cans were aligned with, I believe there were 10. so a tin can is not a can made of tin. It's okay. It's a can that's lined with tin. Got it. And, I know this because I did an episode on food canning and the first canning of like beans and stuff like that. I believe it was the lining with tin that allowed it to kind of happen. Got it. So I'm guessing that probably did the same thing with beer.

I assume.

Yeah.

So the greatest technology though. of this time period is not the heat structure for malting, it's not the rotating drum roaster, the train, the steam power, bottling. It is the isolation of yeast and the science behind yeast.

Microbiology. Yeah.

Louis Pasteur, they, they change every, I mean, people forget he actually worked in a brewery. Yeah.

The, the thing that I, I, maybe I've mentioned this previous episodes, but biochemistry was born, microbiology were born from, from the field of brewing. There's a lot of, we just glazed over a lot of engineering accomplishments that the Germans were able to give the world from, from brewing. But I was going to say in the Louis Pasteur Context. Louis Pasteur was able to show that you can take a yeast cell, kill it, split it open, and then you can put sugar into what remains of it. And then that sugar will change. it'll go from starch to sugars. It'll break down the chains. And so what he was able to demonstrate at that moment is you don't need something alive. to cause biological processes to occur. So what he understood at that point, and, and I maybe even named, was the amylase enzymes. He was able to identify their enzymes inside of yeast, they don't require the yeast to be alive, and out of that was born biochemistry, and out of that was born everything that we appreciate in modern medicine.

Gotta come back to that quote. From Charlie Bamforth, beer is the basis of modern static civilization. It seems that all of these, these things are being generated from beer. I mean, we started with agriculture and now we're at, we're, you know, at microbiology. It seems that there are so many intersections for this.

So that's, this is a long winded answer of why would I choose this career, right? Everyone's like, why'd you choose it? It's just beer. No, it's clearly not just beer. There's a lot here. It will never end.

As we go through the 20th century. And I should say we are recording this in Wisconsin, and I would say for most of the 20th century, this was the center of beer making in the United States. Many of the biggest brands, Schlitz, Pabst, Miller, Blatts, whatever they were all located here. And as these beers became bigger many communities. At least in Wisconsin, I'm guessing in many other places, had a local brewery where we are. There was an Adelaide Brewery just a block away. Other communities had them and they all kind of died out. I would say 1960s, 1970s, and we wound up in this place where we had only large industrial beer, you know, makers and strangely enough, that almost was the seeds of it's, you know, every revolution as the seeds of its own demise. Was that kind of then the start of craft beer making and craft breweries? You think, I mean, you can see the cycle where it gets industrialized and it gets so industrialized that it kind of loses something.

Well, the T Tolar movement, it's definitely where this story begins. And, and I think that even the women's right to vote, I think there was, there's a whole long story.

The suffrage movement and the temperance movement are highly intertwined in a way that I think has been forgotten today.

Talk about a butterfly effect. We've just opened up 17 different podcasts, but yeah,

I, and to be fair, America had a huge drinking problem in the late 18th and early 19th century.

It was opportunism though, for, for people to take advantage of that. But yeah, I think to answer, just answer your, your question on it's on its face. Yeah. I think that the, the craft beer movement definitely came about because of industrialized and, and monopolized nature of the beer industry, for sure. Yeah.

I collected beer cans as a kid in the 1970s and there weren't a whole lot. There were some regional breweries you'd find cans for. But it's not like it is today. You know, Appleton had its brewery. Oshkosh had its brewery. Now there's how many different places that brew beer in just this city, which is not a huge city.

Right. It's when, when we, when we were moving here, planning this, there was one brewery and I think now there are some small ones, but I think there's seven now just in our town. Yeah, that gives you some.

But in some ways I suppose you can think of this as a continuation of that same process. That the industrialized the industrialization has made the tools and the technology so available and abundant, right? That's something like this is possible.

The problem now is the economics. That's the only thing. Now, the barrier for the small breweries, there's a volume you have to hit for it to make sense and and that's where we are in the craft beer industry. And that's that's for a whole other episode for sure.

Before we close this up, what are your, your kind of your thoughts on the process of industrialization? Do you think it was, I mean, obviously it was good. It allowed, you know, beer to become more standardized, but what do you think was lost? If anything, because there's always a, a trade off, right?

Yeah, I think, right. I think we've definitely lost. I think even today we're, we've discovered what are called kveik yeast from Norway, Sweden, some, I forget which countries they originate. These are yeasts that are made, used to make loggers quote at high temperatures. And these yeast were lost to the, they were lost forever until they were discovered in the last 20 years. So I think we're now we're, we're actually playing catch up. Trying to connect back with those, some of the styles that existed, I think is a treasure trove. I don't think they're gone forever. It's not like we're reaching back 10, 000 years trying to discover. yeah, I think we, we probably did lose something there. What did we gain? Well, we have a stable supply chain and we have ingredients available to us because of the biggest brewers and tech now technologies that are used within and outside of the beer industry.

In the island of Falsbard up in Northern Norway, they have a seed bank where they're keeping copies of like all the various seeds for plants. Is there anything similar for yeast? Maybe not a doomsday fall, but like, you know, someplace that's trying to categorize and create a library of these yeasts.

So it's easy today, quote, easy today to cryo store yeast for perpetually for their forever. I would say in the last, well, 60 years. That's been the case. I'm just throwing a number out there, just having a very little knowledge about it. But I know that any brewer who's of any scale keeps their beer on ice, so to speak, even if they're not using it, even if they haven't used it in 60 years. Budweiser probably has, but Their own series of yeast. They've gone through over their, their time. That's still cataloged away. Yeah. I don't know if there's like one global one because there's a lot of proprietary nature behind this, but the big boys, definitely the medium boys to little guys, maybe not so much collecting wild yeast in your backyard as a whole whole new thing. And it was done inadvertently all over time. It's uncountable number of yeast.

There's probably incredible biodiversity in the yeast species, too, that

I'll read up on the origin of lager yeast, and we should talk about that at some point. Because that's a remarkable story. I need to make sure I get all my notes right. Because I'm not a microbiologist, but I'll do my best to tell that one.

He could be by your next episode.

Well, let's bring one on. I'll find one.

All right. We are going to be talking more about the history of beer in the future. There's a lot more to be said and there's a lot more deep dives we can do on some of the topics we touched about, but I think that does it now. Joel, do you have any last thoughts about beer history?

Well, I do. I, I, I would be remissed cause we kind of glossed over it. early as something that was going to change beer, but then we never came back to it. But we should just give a quick shout out to refrigeration, which was a late 19th century phenomenon that that, that revolutionized brewing almost as much as yeast probably did.

Yeah. Ultimately it's what led to Anheuser Busch being the largest brewer in the world. Now they're, they're AB and Bev and, and, but yeah, for sure they, and they had the rail, they had access. To the rails and refrigeration on the trains. There's so many things that are happening. Yeah, for sure. Refrigeration is And then the rest of the world benefits as well, right? I think

my takeaway from our discussion today is just there's so many intersections between these, these technologies. And, you know, we've come back to it that that beer is the basis of modern static civilization. It's just a great way to look at, I think the history of beer that it seems to beer is almost like a grain that when you soak it, it sprouts, it seems to sprout all these things, whether it's writing or government or technology, it's, it's, it's an exciting thing. And I'm just glad you were able to have me on today.

All right. Well, until next time. If you're a beer lover, make sure to join us on our new Facebook group, where you can talk to other beer aficionados as well as the podcast hosts, and you can support the show over on Patreon. Links to both are located in the show notes. And until next time, make sure to join us for another episode of Respecting the Beer.