美国国家公共电台 NPR How The Story Of Beer Is The Story Of America

(SOUNDBITE OF BEER CAN OPENING)

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

If you crack open a beer this Fourth of July, history might not be the first thing on your mind. For Theresa McCulla, though, the story of beer is the story of America.

THERESA MCCULLA: If you want to talk about the history of immigration in America or urbanization or the expansion of transportation networks - really any subject that you want to explore you can talk about through beer.

SHAPIRO: It's McCulla's job to find those connections and tell their stories. She's the first brewing 2 historian at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. She's only been on the job since earlier this year, and already she has combed through the Smithsonian's archives and pulled out treasures that show beer's part in American history, whether that has to do with advertising 3, technology, gender 4 roles or even popular entertainment.

MCCULLA: And so this is...

SHAPIRO: It says "Budweiser's A Friend Of Mine."

MCCULLA: "Budweiser's A Friend Of Mine."

SHAPIRO: Wait, is that actually a musical?

MCCULLA: It is a piece of sheet music...

SHAPIRO: No. It's a song called "Budweiser's A Friend Of Mine"?

MCCULLA: Yes, it is. Yes. And so this premiered at the "Ziegfeld Follies 5" in New York on Broadway in 1907.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BUDWEISER'S A FRIEND OF MINE")

BILLY MURRAY AND THE HAYDN QUARTET: (Singing) Bud Budweiser's a friend of mine, friend of mine, yes, a friend of mine.

MCCULLA: The lyrics 6 of this song tell the story of a man who goes out drinking in a bar and sings about how he prefers his Budweiser to his wife because his beer does not talk back to him. But the song concludes with his wife pouring him a schooner 7 of Budweiser at home so he does not need to drink elsewhere. And so all is well.

SHAPIRO: Or you want to talk about immigration? More than a million German immigrants came to the U.S. in the second half of the 1800s. And they were beer drinkers.

MCCULLA: They brought new kinds of brewing yeast 8. They brought different kinds of brewing methods. And suddenly they produced this lager beer, a kind of very light, crisp brew 1 that became very popular with Americans.

SHAPIRO: Those immigrants transformed the kind of beer Americans drink and established a new industry in the process. The drink went from heavy English-style ales to the cold, quaffable 9 style that's common today. And instead of homebrews, by 1900, many cities had entire neighborhoods full of breweries 11. McCulla says one thing that's especially interesting about the story of American beer today is that it has come full circle from the early days of homebrews to mass-produced beer through the crash of Prohibition 12 and now back to a resurgence 13 of microbreweries.

MCCULLA: We now have so many breweries in this country we have exceeded the pre-Prohibition number of breweries. We've reached over 5,000 breweries at this point. And so it's truly the golden age of - to be a beer drinker.

SHAPIRO: I didn't have to travel far from the Smithsonian to see that entire cycle in one place.

CATHERINE PORTNER: I'm Catherine Portner, and I'm the president and co-founder of Portner Brewhouse here in Alexandria, Va.

SHAPIRO: The sign outside of Portner's says established 1869, re-established 2012. Catherine's great-great-grandfather, Robert Portner, was a German immigrant. At its peak, his company was the biggest employer in the city of Alexandria. More than 600 people worked for him, churning out more than 6 million bottles of beer every year. Some of the early marketing 14 materials are in the Smithsonian's collections.

PORTNER: Original advertisements that we still have note Robert Portner's brewing company as the original King of Beers.

SHAPIRO: This is long before Budweiser started using that phrase. Portner's company was forced to close during Prohibition. And that was it until Catherine and her sister, Margaret Portner, re-opened the brewery 15 just a few miles from where the original one stood. There are historical artifacts in cases along the walls. The kitchen serves up pub food with a German twist. And at the in-house brewery, they've recreated some of the original Portners' brews 10 based on the notes their great-great-grandfather wrote in German. Catherine fills a couple glasses from the tap.

PORTNER: This is the Hofbrau Pilsner that we have reconstructed from the Robert Portner Brewing Company.

SHAPIRO: The color is a cloudy yellow.

Cheers.

PORTNER: Cheers.

SHAPIRO: It doesn't taste like a glass full of American history or immigration or technology, even though on some level it's all of those things. It just tastes like a really good beer.