The Geography of Beer

Today there is a great proliferation of beer styles, most of which were developed in Europe in the modern era, but some evidence exists for a simpler geography of beer in ancient Europe. Barley was the common cereal used by beer-makers (those outside of southern Italy and Greece), while wheat was also used in much of western Europe as a secondary cereal while millet instead was used in the east. Although many types of plant additives were no doubt used in beer, two main ones became popular: sweet gale, first attested in the region of the Rhine estuary around the first century BC, and hops, first widely popularized in the Ile de France area in the ninth AD. Honey too was often used in beer throughout western Europe, except perhaps for the Iberian peninsula and Ireland. It must be stressed that this picture is based on highly fragmentary evidence, and it may be incorrect in many particulars. It may be hoped that future archaeological discoveries will add much to our knowledge.

This chapter traces the spatial diffusion of beer from the Fertile Crescent region and on to Egypt, then throughout Europe via the Roman conquest. The importance of Catholic monasteries to the development of beer culture in Europe during the Middle Ages is reviewed, along with the rise of commercial brewing and the decline of monastic brewing in early modern Europe. This chapter also discuss the dissemination of beer culture to Colonial America and later in the United States. Topics discussed include the role of German immigrants in the development of nineteenth century beer industry. Twentieth Century topics discussed include prohibition, post-World War II mass production and consolidation, and the rise of microbreweries.

The location of breweries in the United States is closely tied to historical themes. Economic expansion, war, immigration, temperance/prohibition, politics, religion, transportation, and economic depression all shaped the beer brewing landscape from colonial times to the present. This chapter draws upon a brewery database from the American Breweriana Association to geolocate breweries across the United States over time. I provide a time-series set of maps to illustrate the interplay and imprint of the aforementioned themes. Comprehensive time-series maps of this nature have rarely, if ever, been assembled. By compiling maps in this way it is possible to observe geographic patterns and explore historical connections and spatial relationships from regional and national perspectives. In some cases, we find what we expect from known historical events; but we also find inconsistencies, distinctive patterns not accounted for in the history literature. In this way we may come to understand better the regional patterns we see today. Brewery locations today are not only a legacy of the past but also a reflection of contemporary society and culture.

Brewing has been an important part industrialized in the latter portions of Wisconsin’s culture and economy since the first settlers arrived in the early 1800s. Like much of the country, Wisconsin brewers experienced a spatial shift in accordance with the industry’s technology. Starting with many brewers each serving local markets, developments in beer preservation, packaging and transport allowed certain Wisconsin brewers to seize opportunities for expanded market areas. The enlarged economies of scale achieved by these larger brewers provided a competitive advantage that slowly put smaller operations out of business. By the mid-twentieth century, brewing had largely become a national enterprise with fewer local or regional players. Though its market share remained limited, the craft brewing movement represented a reversal of this trend, both nationally and in Wisconsin. Like the early brewers who had settled the state, these new Wisconsin breweries were focused on achieving an economy of scale by developing a local market of consumers.

In 1850, beer was scarce in Mexico; most Mexicans instead drank traditional fermented beverages made from a variety of plants, such as maize and maguey. But by 1930, beer had become one of the country’s largest modern industries, and by mid-century it was the alcoholic beverage of choice for most Mexicans. Today, Mexico is the world’s largest exporter of beer. The geography of beer in Mexico thus has a relatively recent history. Its origins lie in the 1890s, when a number of dominant breweries emerged to command regional markets from their bases in rapidly growing provincial cities. Through the twentieth century, as urbanization accelerated and Mexicans increasingly turned to beer, three of these fought for a national presence. By the 1980s, buy-outs and mergers yielded a duopoly poised to pursue exports aggressively. The historical geography of Mexican beer can thus be mapped globally as well as over a century of shifting regional and national production.

Appellations of beer are not founded in growing regions but rather in brewery locations. Development of global beer culture and modern beer styles are rooted in specific, historical brewing centers around the world. According to the Periodic Table of Beer Styles II, there are 65 existing beer styles. This continues to change as brewers are constantly creating new hybrids styles and in 2013, The BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) recognized 80 individual styles. In the world of beer, there are very few appellations that restrict the use of style names to a geographic areas—such as the styles of Lambic (a spontaneously fermented beer that originates from an area just southwest of Brussels) and Kölsch (a blonde, lightly hopped ale brewed only by the brewers of Cologne [Köln]). Other styles such as Trappist, while originating in medieval Normandy, France are now primarily located in the Western European countries where beer took its monastic traditions. This chapter introduces historical and geographical importance of styles such as Pilsners, Porters, Stouts, Pale Ales, India Pale Ales, Cream Ales, and Steam Beers.

A volume on the geography of beer would be incomplete without a detailed overview of hops, the ingredient that adds bitterness and aroma to beer and acts as a preservative. This chapter explains how European civilizations first used hops in beermaking by the ninth century, and how farmers and brewers spread knowledge of its cultivation to temperate regions across the world. Physical, cultural, and economic geographies have played crucial roles in this story. The history reflects how plants, people, and ideas engaged in global exchanges over centuries as a means to achieve agricultural and brewing success. In the twenty-first century, commercial hop growing occurs in many temperate regions of the world. But that was not always the case, and understanding how this specialty crop developed helps us better understand the contents of our beer glasses.

The geography of beer and breweries, like many industries, has historically been linked to natural resources and the location of critical inputs, notably rivers. While beer and other perishable foodstuffs were historically produced for local consumer markets, new technologies, distribution networks, and multi-national corporations have changed the market considerably and the result has been the dominance of a few large macro breweries serving global consumer demands. Yet, the emergence of new niche markets and the success of micro-brews has resulted in an explosion of regional and local craft production facilities and a renewed emphasis on local water-streams, springs, and lakes. In this paper, we examine the iconography and observed “hydro-geography” of selected local, regional, and even national products to understand the intersection between place and industry, and the geopsychology of competitive marketing strategies and stratagems.

The environmental geographies of beer can be viewed as a coupling of Earth’s elements (yeast; hops; malt; water) and brewing ingenuity. Yeast literally brings life to beer, contributing distinctive flavors and frothiness. Hops do best at cooler latitudes, and in wetter climates, where soils, day length, temperature, rainfall and terrain all influence regional hop characteristics. Brewing malts are cultivated, mostly, in a cool swath of countries just poleward of 45° north latitude. Mixtures of minerals found in local water supplies impart characteristic flavors and mouth feel to beers brewed there. The geographic combination of variations in yeast, hops, malt and water produce, we argue, a ‘taste of the place’ that one can term the ‘terroir’ of beer. Climate change could, however, modify beer terroir. A warming planet would alter the latitudinal range of future hop and malt cultivation, leading to changes in supplies, quality, and prices.

Intensive water and energy use, copious volumes of wastewater and solid waste, and large carbon footprints make the process of brewing and distributing beer a not-so-(environmentally)-friendly industry. However, the rise of craft breweries and their perceived foci on environmental, economic and/or social sustainability trends have promulgated a “greening” in the beer industry at local to global scales. To assess the geographies of sustainability in the craft beer industry, we distributed a mixed method survey to all regional craft breweries in the United States. Overall, more sustainable practices have been adopted at various levels of the craft beer production, including the reduction of water and energy use and increased energy efficiency, the use of organic or local ingredients, and the incorporation of a culture that promotes sustainability. These and related findings showcase certain sustainability trends and practices being adopted by regional craft breweries in the United States.

The origins and spread of the India Pale Ale (IPA) has geographic themes of immigration, diffusion, and globalization. Flemish immigration to the Kent region of England during the 1500s shortly led to the cultivation of hops, inevitably changing British beers styles. Pale malts produced with advances in industrialization in the latter 1600s later incorporated high levels of hopping rates producing high gravity pale ales and October ales, the ancestors of the IPA. These bitter beers where preferred in Tropical India by British colonists to the sweet dark ales. Soon they spread throughout the British Empire and were imported into North America as well. IPAs became highly copied by breweries across the globe until the late 1880s. German immigration to the U.S. and the global distribution of lagers greatly reduced the IPA’s prominence as lagers were more preferred in tropical environments. The Temperance movement was an ideological act of globalization that discouraged the drinking of high gravity beers. The IPA declined as temperance and rationing for world wars made the high gravity IPAs less acceptable to drink over that of lagers. Later the U.S. would be the new home of the IPA, influenced by West Coast brewers. Citrusy American hops changed the IPA profile and further experimentation has led to hybrid IPAs that reflect a fusion of varying beer styles.

The performance and composition of the U.S. brewing industry have changed dramatically over the past three decades. More specifically, the industry has experienced contradictory shifts in both aggregate production volume and number of firms. While aggregate beer production in the US has increased modestly, per capita beer production has decreased steadily since the early 1980s, dropping 26 % from a record 26.2 barrels per person in 1981 to a low of 19.5 barrels per person in 2011. However, the number of brewing establishments increased substantially during the same period, expanding from 48 breweries in 1981 to nearly 1,700 by 2011–a 3,500 % increase. So what explains this counterintuitive story? And how has this story manifested itself over space? This chapter seeks to answer these questions by analyzing the economic geography of the U.S. craft brewing industry. Specifically, our empirical approach consists of three exercises. First, we examine the temporal changes in the aggregate production volume and the total number of brewing establishments for each state. Second, we examine state-level variation in total beer production, total craft-beer production, percent craft beer production, and per-capita craft beer production. And last, we map the precise location of craft beer establishments to show the spatial and temporal distribution of active craft breweries in the US. Our results are three-fold. First, we find the change in total brewing establishments and total beer production has manifested itself rather unevenly over space. Second, we find that craft-beer production at the state level has also increased in a spatially uneven manner, as the largest production still occurs in the states with a history of high beer production. Last, and in contrast to our first two exercises, we find that within states, the location of active craft-brewing establishments have spread from major urban centers in the 1980s to many non-urban locations by 2011. We conclude that although growth in the craft-brewing sector will continue to be highest in areas with already high levels of brewing activity, there will be significant growth in regions that currently have few brewing establishments.

The global beer industry has transformed dramatically in recent decades. Two key trends include (1) consolidation resulting from mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, and (2) the largest firms expanding into new regions. While beer was previously a very local product, these trends have combined to result in approximately half of global sales being controlled by just four firms: AB InBev, SABMiller, Heineken, and Carlsberg. Notably, these top four companies are all headquartered in Western Europe. The primary products of the largest firms are pale lagers, with ales and numerous other potential beer varieties produced only in much smaller quantities, if at all. Why are these changes occurring now? Many other industries, including soft drinks, have seen a small number of companies achieve global dominance earlier than the beer industry. Recent policy and technological changes, however, have eroded many barriers to consolidation and geographic expansion for beer firms. They have enabled the largest firms to exert more political and economic power, and to move closer to the endgame of a global monopoly. These trends are not inevitable, however, and are countered by (1) the rise of specialty brewers and their much more diverse selection of beer varieties, and (2) cultural barriers to the global branding and marketing of beer.

Since the mid-1980s, over 2,300 microbreweries and brewpubs have sprouted and flourished in the United States. We argue that this expansion is about more than just beer. It is also about a desire on the part of many Americans to re-connect with place.. Such breweries are often proudly and self-consciously local, and often use imagery and stories associated with a particular place as a means of promoting their brews. This active, conscious creation and maintenance of attachment to place is termed neolocalism. This chapter provides an overview of the geography of microbrewing and its historical development in the United States. It then analyzes how ale names and visual marketing imagery used by microbreweries tap into this powerful concept of neolocalism, and how these images serve to create local loyalties and identities. We argue that such imagery offers a valuable window into the neolocalism movement and the process of place attachment.

From modest beginnings, when every brewery was locally oriented and small in scale, Canada’s brewing industry went through a prolonged period of consolidation through the mid-twentieth century. During this time, the larger, national brewing companies expanded through merger and acquisition, and increasingly standardized the products offered in markets across the country. More recently, a microbrewing renaissance emerged in the mid-1980s, which saw dramatic growth of new, small scale, craft brewers oriented principally to local markets again. The new microbreweries often invoke geography and place in their branding and marketing strategies, to emphasize their connection to their locations. This strategy is known as ‘neolocalism’, and it is evident that microbreweries are much more likely to use this strategy than the national brewing companies. This chapter documents some of the ways in which Canadian microbreweries use neolocalism to connect to place, and through an analysis of brewery and beer brand names, demonstrates the difference in tendency of microbreweries versus national brewing companies to do so. In addition, the response of the national brewing companies to the new competition from microbreweries reveals a new approach to merger and acquisition—one which embraces neolocalism and place-connection.

This chapter analyzes the distribution of geocoded social media data (also referred to as a cyberscape) that references “beer” and related terms. Drawing upon an ongoing research project that archives every geocoded tweet in the world, this chapter explores differences in the frequency and geographic distribution of the everyday commentary made by Twitter users about beer. While the sheer volume of activity, close to a million geocoded beer tweets in 2012, is notable in its own right, it is only when comparisons between subsets of the data are made that the most intriguing spatial patterns emerge. In order to showcase these patterns of differences within online social media, this chapter compares beer tweets to twitter commentary on other topics, i.e., contrasting the geography of wine and beer tweets as well as examining differences within the online conversations about beer, i.e., how do references to light beers or regional “cheap” beers vary over space. These geographical differences (e.g., where are the hot spots for “beer” vs. “wine” or “Bud Light” versus “Coors Light”) illuminates how the commentary and views expressed online, reflect offline practices and preferences. In short, the visualization of “beer space” produced by mapping tweets represents the complex intertwining of offline preferences for specific brews which are expressed via an online practice of presenting ones views.