A Hobbled History of Beer: The 17th Century (1600AD - 1699AD) by Cub Lea Last updated 09/00

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The 1600s marked the official commencement of serious settlement of the New World.

One of the most noteworthy episodes in the history of beer occurred when the Pilgrims landed at what would later become Massachusetts. The ships that brought these exiles to American shores were ships-for-hire, not owned by the Pilgrims, and as a result many of the decisions made onboard the Mayflower and its sister ships were out of the hands of the passengers. The Mayflower's ship's log clearly states that the Pilgrims were most eager to settle farther south, but they were overruled by ship's command. The reason? There wasn't enough beer left in the ship's stores to justify traveling farther south, and the crew was apparently concerned about it. Beer was considered an indispensable provision, offering an alternative source of B vitamins to Transatlantic sailors who would go weeks without fresh food.

Oddly enough, this shortage of beer might well have saved the Pilgrims' sorry butts. In the late 1500s, just a few hundred miles further south, Sir Walter Raleigh's entire Roanoke colony was decimated, apparently due to an inability to adapt to the region. (But apparently not before they managed to figure out how to brew beer from maize). At Massachusetts the Pilgrims found potable fresh water, sufficient "game and gather" to survive the first winter, and natives who were secure enough to share their land with these new arrivals.

These early settlers were viewed as religious fanatics in their day, but if Ned Flanders can make his own home brew, why not a Puritan? They took to the cultivation of barley for malting and brewing almost immediately, building brewhouses their very first winter in the New World. Hop roots were sent for, and arrived in 1622 with the very next shipment from England.

The Puritan pilgrims got most of the attention, but the Dutch beat them to market. New Amsterdam, later New York, had its first commercial brewery by 1612, and its first public brewery by 1633. The Dutch settlers advertised for brewers in London, and the son of the successful applicant carried on the family tradition as New York's first native-born non-Indian brewer.

Of course, all this was of little interest to your average European. Of more immediate interest was the discovery in 1602 by Dr. Alexander Nowell that ales kept longer when stored in cork-sealed glass bottles. Despite this discovery, it would be nearly three centuries before bottled beer would make any serious impact in the marketplace.