CELEBRATING INDEPENDENCE
Greetings, my fellow Americans,
With July 4th just starting to come into the rearview mirror, I figured it’d be as good as any to explore one of my favorite topics: beer in the 18th century. (Actually, last week would have been a touch better, but I was jazzed about NA beer, so here we are.)
While beer in the new world had been of the utmost importance all the way back to the first ships to land in and fully colonize the New World, the role of the tavern in 18th century society, as well as the lack of bits and pieces of governmental infrastructure in that young America, colluded to place beer and booze overall in a higher role even in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence than you might expect.
But first, why booze in particular?
Potable Water at the Post Office
Even in a New World awash with food sources, any successful colony required, among other things, access to two salient resources: potable water, and the mail.
The former, ironically, was in fact in great abundance, since the rivers of North America hadn’t been thoroughly polluted like the water sources of the Old World had, but the superstitious early transplants weren’t about to take any chances after having made the arduous journey over, and if memory serves, they stuck to their guns on that issue for over a century.
Nonetheless, they clearly had to make use of those water sources in some fashion, and indeed they did - by doing as they had before, namely adding hooch to the water. While sailors had taken, at that time, to using rum, by and large, to sanitize their water stores, on dry land the use of beer brewing was more common (than on ships; I’m not sure about the relative percentages on land), and indeed, they brewed vast amounts of beer, initially by importing staggering amounts of grain and hops, and eventually by switching to native-grown hops (New York being a particular hop hotbed), and a mixture of grains, including American-native corn. Do I have a source, I hear you ask? Yes, but it’s in storage, so place a tiny asterisk on all of my historical claims for this post for which I don’t offer links, and read this for the full story.
As far as the mail is concerned, I’ll make the anecdotal argument that one of the first buildings that colonies would construct, which is perhaps obvious from that last paragraph, were breweries, and as a corollary, we’ll take it for granted that taverns were probably fairly high up on the list once inter-colony travel began to tick up. And no wonder; back then, taverns served a wide array of functions, from hotel to gambling house, pub to music hall, and even post office to court house - yes, court house. If memory serves, some of these early taverns were even converted to courthouses and various government buildings over time (again, check that book out for corroboration). As such, you’d be reasonable to suspect that public life for quite a few years centered around taverns, particularly for anyone in the business of frequent travel.
The Founding Fathers and their Ties to the Demon Alcohol
The Founding Fathers, being politically active men with a wont to travel and send correspondence (not a typo!), were a natural fit for taverns, and indeed, Thomas Jeffesron was said to have worked on the Declaration of Independence at one such Philadelphia tavern (in fact, Philadelphia was such a hotbed of taverns that I’ve often considered it as a home for 1786). He wasn’t alone, though: while in Philadelphia to participate in the First Continental Congress, John Adams wrote to his wife that “I drink no Cyder, but feast upon Phyladelphia Beer, and Porter.”
And then there was Washington, a man whose beer recipes have been recreated through the years, and who made absolutely sure to keep his troops flush with beer (a quart a day, to be precise), even if just spruce beer (which could be quite unrecognizable as “beer;” one recipe called for molasses and sugar, plus spices and spruce tips, making it more like a rum wash). Far from a man stuck in the field, though, Washington reportedly once ran up a tab including 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of Claret, and 7 full bowls of Punch. A hell of a night, I’m sure.
But What of July 4th?
I was unable to find a specific, detailed description of any of the first celebrations, but we can deduce that beer was probably involved, and perhaps the central beverage. For one, by the time July 4th, 1826 rolled around, the quinquagenarian United States was the home to hundreds of breweries. Whether that sounds like a lot or a little, chew on this insane fact for a while: Americans drank an average of 34 gallons of beer and cider per year in 1790. That’s...absolutely cranked. The better part of a gallon, every week, for every man, woman, and child. Heck, it almost seems conservative when put like that. Fortunately, American alcohol consumption was at a peak at that point, namely in the years following the revolution. All of this is to say, however they celebrated, that Americans were probably quite toasty, probably in large part due to beer, for those first few celebrations.
And I have one last fun anecdote for you: rumor is, our national g.d. anthem was based on a drinking song. Honestly, I’d be shocked if that weren’t true.
Conclusion
The US was more or less built around fermentation and the consumption of beer (and, sure, rum and peach brandy), so of all of the days on which to feel a minimum of guilt about the consumption of beer in particular, July 4th provides a pretty singular opportunity. And for the beers that most closely resemble what might have been available back then, grab a Porter like the Black Mill, or anything amber-to-dark on cask, like King’s Taxes or the freshly packaged The Luckypenny, and use your imagination to add in the horse blanket flavors of Brett, and maybe a touch of lactic and acetic acids.
Cheers,
Adrian “I need a tricorn” Febre