A Hobbled History of Beer: 1700-1799AD

A Hobbled History of Beer:
The 18th Century (1700AD - 1799AD)
by Cub Lea
Last updated 09/00

Intro | Prehistory | -200AD | 200-1000AD | 1000-1400AD | 1400-1599AD | 1600s | 1700s | 1800s | 1900s | Canada

Solidifying tradition

While many of the most enduring styles had been brewed, if not nearly perfected, centuries before this time, by the 1700s brewing had become known around the world as one of the great crafts of the Northern Europeans, and beer the subject of great rivalry between nations, even between towns. While the image of your average British pub patron includes the obligatory glass of hearty dark stout, it was actually bitter pale ales that the British preferred above all else at this time. This proved to be a costly preference since these were the most fragile and shortest-lived beers made, except perhaps for those finicky bottom-fermented lagers brewed around the Alps.

It wasn't until the last decade of the century that an export ale recipe was discovered which could survive trips around the horn of Africa to the distant ports of the East Indies, where this especially bitter India Pale Ale fetched premium prices from expatriates, soldiers and traders and established a place in beer lore that endures to this day. Trade missions to the Indies were commonplace by the latter half of the century. Along with trade came conquest, and soldiers of the British empire sent to fight for Mother England were not typically drawn from poorer classes and weren't about to settle for just any local swill when they could afford the best. Rum wouldn't begin to find favor on ships until the West Indian sugar cane trade opened up in the 1700s, and even then it was only economically viable for return trips from the New World.

So the brewing of beer for export was serious business. British soldiers stationed in the New World also required regular beer rations in keeping with the lifestyle they would have known at home. It wasn't until well into the 1800s when local brews were considered plentiful enough - and of sufficient quality - to negate the need to transport real British ales across the Atlantic to the remaining colonies in Upper and Lower Canada. Fortunately, a less pungent ale could survive the cooler crossings from the British ports to Boston and Halifax.

Brewing north and south

Brewing flourished in the colonies both north and south of the St. Lawrence River. French settlers realized that while Quebec's soils were fertile, they didn't take well to the growing of the grapes which carpeted the fields of so much of their homeland by this time, so beer became the obvious substitute. A little further south, a strong brewing tradition had already been established in New England. Most of the US' founding fathers were either brewers themselves or quite tolerant of the practice. Jefferson and Washington both boasted of their own breweries, and a handwritten recipe from Old Dollarhead himself, dated 1757, survives today as a record of George's taste for suds. Even Ben Franklin recorded that he and his cohorts in the Boston press would drink a pint of beer with every meal, and two more in the evening, and the press' reputation for heavy drinking begun at about this time would persist for a full two hundred years.

But once you traveled south of Virginia, a very different drinking pattern emerged. The regionalization of beer drinking along lines of latitude, established in Roman times in Europe, seemed to be mirrored in the New World. But where southerly states in Europe preferred wine, the southern US regions didn't have the benefit of soils suitable for vinifera grapes. Instead they became heavily dependent upon West Indian rum.

Documents from this period describe the difference in both the health and work capacity of the northern settler, whose blood was less sedated and body less wracked by the "demon rum". (Yes, that's where the phrase comes from.) But records of the period are rife with reports of every manner of petty rivalry, so it could just as well have been sour (or non-existent) grapes. Some have said it would have been just as easy for a writer in Georgia or Louisiana to speak of a northern cousin as "compelled to excessive work" as a means of keeping the blood warm and dispelling the endless cold of the hostile climate in the northern colonies, a cold which rum can ease much better than beer.

Even though the water available to the colonists was almost always superior to what their families might have had in Europe, North Americans adopted the same practice as the English, eschewing water either for beer or grog (watered-down rum) in the belief that it was healthier. Handbills of the period even warn visitors to Philadelphia to avoid drinking from local pumps, recommending instead that they refresh themselves with grog, and these notices continued to be posted well into the 1800s. Clearly this edict would be less harmful to beer-drinking northerners who heeded this advice than rum-sipping southerners. It's clear from records of the time that heavy drinking was encouraged, especially in the summer months to combat the heat, both in northern and southern states. Clearly this edict would be less harmful to beer-drinking northerners who heeded this advice than rum-pounding southerners.