Beer: The Industrial Revolution

While the new nation was being created, the industrial revolution was ushering in the use of steam machines in the factories of Europe and would soon change the way breweries were run. No longer small and under the hand of a single brewmaster, his assistant, and family, the breweries of the new generation were more like factories.

With the Industrial Revolution came the rise of the clipper ships and the opportunity to bring lager yeast to the United States. Lager (anaerobic) yeast could not survive the long sea voyage from Europe to North America. If it was not used soon after being transferred from active fermentation, or proper propagation, it was rendered useless. Ale (aerobic) yeast, a far hardier organism, was, and is, less fragile. When lager beer reached the market in the United States in the nineteenth century, it was regarded for some time as little more than a novelty. With the development of industrial refrigeration that could produce it and with the immigration of central Europeans, Germans, and Czechs, who had a thirst for it, lager beer soon eclipsed traditional ale. The novelty was fast becoming the norm.