Craft Beer History --- Live and in 3-D

As many of you know, I wrote a history of beer in America, a project that deposited me smack dab in the middle of the craft brewing industry. The last two chapters of the book examine the late 20th-century beer renaissance known as craft brewing --- including a long section about the godfather-grandfather-guru of that moment: Jack McAuliffe. (Okay, one of the two 3-Gs, the other being Fritz Maytag; the book also covers his contribution.)

Jack's original beer, New Albion Ale, is once again available, courtesy of Jack's daughter, Renee DeLuca. You can learn more about her new enterprise in this story from Sean Scully of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. (Why that particular newspaper? It's in Sonoma County, home of many superb craft breweries, including one of the world's finest, Russian River Brewing Company. Among RRBC's claims to fame is that owners Natalie and Vinnie Cilurzo also own the original sign from Jack's original brewery, New Albion Brewing. It hangs above the bar.)

As I've told many reporters over the years, although I'm proud of the book, I am perhaps most proud that it enabled Jack to get the credit he's due as the (inadvertent) founder of today's craft brewing industry. And to see his beer return, well, okay! I can die happy.

And by the way: As Renee notes in the article, the beer will strike many geeks as simplistic. It is! It's a basic, delicious beer. No bells. No whistles. Simply a tribute to the art and craft of brewing.

Thanks to both Renee and Jack for adding a bit of 3-D history to history.

On That Date, No. 6

“Animal rights activists told farm organization representatives at a Chicago conference that they kind of hog production they will accept involves a pasture system, for farrowing as well as growing and finishing.

[Conference] speakers make it clear that the animal rights movement considers confinement production of hogs ‘abuse and torment.’ They were particularly critical of stalls and crates for sows during gestation and farrowing and the films they showed indicated pasture production is the only system they consider acceptable.

“While speakers insisted that vegetarianism is not necessarily a part of the animals rights movement, many of the speakers were vegetarians; much of the literature distributed to registrants extolled the merits of a vegetarian diet; and the lunch entree was a cheese sandwich.”

____________

“Only Pigs on Pastured Condoned by Welfarists,” National Hog Farmer 26, no. 3 (March 15, 1981): 20.

On That Date, No. 5

“In Georgia there is a man who hatches, feeds, raises, kills, plucks, freezes, and sells 10 million chickens a year. He also owns the hens that lay the eggs that hatch into the broiler chicks; and he makes the pies that contain the chicken meat that isn’t sold as frozen broiler. His name is Jesse Jewell, and his operation is just about the perfect example of what may be the agriculture of the future.

“The revolutionary economic organization that propelled Jewell from a small-town feed dealer to the largest integrated producer of broilers in the country is called vertical integration. Some hail it as a long needed reorganization of farm economics that will bring greater efficiency to agriculture; others see it as the slimy tentacles of a tyranny that is changing the American farmer into an employee -- a piece rate worker.

“Nearly everyone who has studied the dynamic growth of integration agrees that as this system, which now dominates the broiler industry, is applied to hogs and cattle and other farm enterprises it is bringing about the greatest change in American agriculture in a generation.”

_____________

Grant Cannon, “Vertical Integration,” Farm Quarterly 12, no. 4 (Winter 1958): 56.

On That Date, No. 4

“We are no longer a nation of farmers living in sight of our food supply,” a writer reminded the readers of one national magazine. “The journey between us and [our] food supply, once only as long as from our own field and garden to our back door, has been lengthening year by year.” _____________

Mary Hinman Abel, “Safe Foods and How to Get Them,” Delineator 66 (September 1905): 394, 396.