American Beer, Czech Roots, and Me

Growing up in Nebraska
Today Nebraskans consume 37 gallons (138 liters) per capita which is almost double the U.S. average of 21 gal. (78 l.) and equivalent to the Czech national average of 35 gal. (132 l.).  The Czech national average is the highest in the world; more than Germany, Austria or Ireland. Nebraska holds its own with the big boys when it comes to drinking beer.


When I was a kid in Nebraska, back in the 40’s, I remember a polka they would play at almost every wedding dance. It was the Pivo Červené (Red Beer) Polka. The refrain was, „Pivo, pivo, pivo červené. Pivo, pivo, pivo červené!“ A lot of folks around the area drank red beer. It was a mixture of about 10 ounces of beer with 2 ounces of tomato juice. I don’t know how red beer got started in my part of Nebraska, but I do know they have it in parts of Canada, where they call it „red eye“; and in parts of Mexico, where they call it „cerveza preparada.” I attempted to research red beer while I was in the Czech Republic. With my terrible Czech pronunciation, I asked the waiter for a červené pivo and he brought me a červené vino. When he brought me the red wine, I said that was not what I wanted. I could not make him understand that I wanted a red beer. He got very angry and said that he couldn’t take the wine back and that management would make him pay for it. Needless to say, we paid the our check and got out of there. Thus ended my red beer research in the Czech Republic.

In my part of Nebraska, it was common courtesy to offer a beer to guests who came to our home. When the neighbors helped us shell corn or thresh wheat, the day would always end in breaking out a case of beer. The beer and a sincere thank you was the only payment a neighbor expected for a day’s work.
The beer of choice was Storz; a working man’s beer brewed in Omaha which was the closest brewery. Omaha also had the Klug and Metz breweries, but Storz was generally preferred. All three Omaha breweries were run by German immigrants. The beers were a pale lager; their attempt to approximate the popular Pilsner of Bohemia that the Czech immigrants favored.

Czech Beer History
Czech beers have an extraordinarily long history. Hops have been grown in Bohemia since at least AD 859 and became so famous that the king forbade the export of cuttings. The Zatec or Saaz variety of hop is still regarded as the world’s most delicate.

Beer-making in the cities of Pilsen and České Budějovice (or Budweis) dates from the 1200s from breweries in monasteries, and later in royal palaces. A few hundred years later, two breweries were founded in the city that made beer which they called "Budweiser," both being beers from the city of České Budějovice (Budweis), Czech Republic.

Those beers were dark or hazy, but in 1842 Pilsen produced the world's first bright, golden beer, using the lager method. It was the development of golden lager, called pilsner, 150 years ago that sealed the Czechs' place in the history of beer. To this day, breweries all over the world strive to imitate the original Pilsner, but in producing that unique spicy flavor, they come up short every time. The original Pilsner beer has a bit more aroma, more the taste of malt, more hops and is a little drier. Connoisseurs argue that a true Pilsner must always be produced with hops from Saaz (Zatec), and breweries from all over Europe import it for that reason.


The “Real” Budweiser
In the latter part of the 19th century an American brewery owner named Adolphus Busch was traveling in Bohemia when he tasted and was impressed by the local style of beer in České Budějovice. The beer, better known elsewhere in Europe by the German version of the name of the town, Budweis, was Budweiser Budvar, the original Czech "Bud." It was known in Bohemia as the "Beer of Kings" because King Ferdinand of Bohemia had made it the beer of choice in his royal court in the 16th century. Mr. Busch liked the name and slogan so much that he used variations of both when he returned to his own brewing enterprise in St. Louis. "Budweiser: King of Beers" (the brand and slogan) now belongs, in the U.S. market
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. In 1876, the US brewer Anheuser-Busch began making a beer which it also called "Budweiser." In 1907 the US and Czech brewers made an agreement that Anheuser-Busch could market its beer as Budweiser only in North America, while the Czech brewers had the rights to the European markets. Anheuser-Busch markets its product as "Bud" (in France and elsewhere) and "Anheuser-Busch B" (in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.) The United Kingdom and Ireland are some of the few places where both Anheuser-Busch and Budvar beer are both sold under the name "Budweiser."

In 2007 Anheuser-Busch signed a deal with Budějovický Budvar, the maker of the Czech Republic's Budweiser, to import Budvar Budweiser into the United States and sell it under the name Czechvar.

Collecting Beer Cans
When my children were young, once a year we would travel west from North Carolina to visit the grandparents in Nebraska and Oklahoma. That was a 1400 mile trip each way. We would spread the trek over 4 or 5 days. Each day we would try to find something to pique the children’s (and our own) interest. We would stop at a motel that had an indoor swimming pool to relax (for us) and burn off energy for the kids. Another day we would stop at some tourist attraction, like the St. Louis Arch, in Missouri or Santa Claus, Indiana. We checked out many of the pro football and baseball stadiums.


But one thing my son, Greg, and I did practically every day is hunt for new and different beer cans. When we would stop at night we would check out a few convenience stores or wherever they allowed beer sales in that particular state. Sometimes we would check out a friendly neighborhood bar. Once we explained what we were looking for, the people were always very helpful. I remember one morning we were driving through a suburb of Cincinnati and we spotted a neighborhood bar with an “open” sign in the window. Greg and I went in. The bar was deserted except for a couple of old men propped up at the bar and the bartender. We told the bartender we were hunting old and unusual beer cans. He went over to the cooler and reached down into the ice water. After a couple of attempts he came up with a can we had never seen before. He hollered to one of the old men, “Hey, Joe. Remember when we used to drink this stuff?” Hard telling how long it had lain in the bottom of that cooler, but today it was part of our collection.

It was a father and son project. I would drink them and he would display the empty cans on shelves in his room. You would think drinking the beer would be the fun part, but you don’t know how really bad a beer can be. I tasted some really bad beers in emptying all those cans. I am proud to say I was able to complete my part of the task and only had to pour one or two of them down the drain. When we stopped, we had collected around 1,200 different and unique cans; the vast majority being American brewed beers..
When we started collecting, there were several large national brewers, like Budweiser, Falstaff, Miller, and Pabst to name a few. Plus, there were some strong regional brewers like Coors, Shiners, and Strohs. Storz out of Omaha popular in rural Nebraska and was a favorite of my Dad. But even at that time the large national brewers were putting pressure on the small local and regional brewers, putting many out of business. The Storz Brewing Company in Omaha was one of the victims and ceased operations in 1972. Every trip out west we found fewer and fewer brands of beer as the big brewers began to take control.

National and International Brewers
Today a few large multinationals dominate the beer market. Four brewing companies control and brew half of the world’s beer. They are Belgian/Brazillian Inbev, London-listed SABMiller (South African Breweries Miller), Dutch Heineken, and Danish Carlsberg.

Anheuser-Busch was long the icon of American beers. The most popular brands were Budweiser, Michelob, Busch and Natural. Anheuser-Busch’s St. Louis home in the heart of America, its logo with the American eagle, and its eight horse hitch of colossal Clydesdales pulling the beer wagon were known from coast to coast. InBev now owns Anheuser-Bush. Other InBev brands I am familiar with are Beck's, Labatt, Löwenbräu, Staropramen, Stella Artois, and St. Pauli Girl.

Miller Brewing Company is owned by SABMiller. Some of the bigger brands include Hamm's, Icehouse, Leinenkugel's Mickey's, Miller, Milwaukee’s Best, Olde English 800, Red Dog, and SouthPaw: and international beers such as Foster’s, Grolsch, Peroni, Pilsner Urquell, Radegast, and Velké Popovice, .
Heineken International distributes Amstel, Dos Equis, Heineken, and Starobrno.

Carlsberg is a Denmark-based company owned by the Carlsberg Foundation is in fourth place. The Carlsberg Tuborg brand is not well known in the U.S. but is a household name in Norway.

A North American brewing company is the Molson Coors Brewing Company. It was created in a 2005 merger between the Coors family in the U.S. and the Molson family in Canada. With headquarters in both Denver, CO and Montreal, QC it is a North American brewer, however all of their U.S. operations are marketed by SABMiller. The most popular of their brews include: Coors, Killian's Irish Red, Blue Moon, Keystone, Zima, and numerous Molson beers. The Pabst Brewing Company wants people to know that they "will be the last of the famous iconic U.S. brewers to be fully independent and American-owned." Blue Ribbon, which is currently enjoying a resurgence in popularity--along with Schlitz, Stroh, Schaefer, Rainier, Olympia and quite a few others brewed by the Pabst Brewing Company. The beers of Pabst Brewing are indeed American owned, but they are contract brewed by SABMiller.
American Craft Beers

American Beers
If you want to drink American and support local producers then you need to check out the craft brewers. An American craft brewer is small, independent and traditional.

• Small: Annual production of 6 million barrels of beer or less.
• Independent: Less than 25% of the craft brewery is owned or controlled by an alcoholic beverage industry member who is not themselves a craft brewer.
• Traditional: A brewer who specializes in malt beers.

Due to the resurgence of the commercial craft brewing industry in the 1980s, the United States now features many beers, offered by over 1,938 brewpubs, microbreweries and regional brewers. 51 other large brewers. Volume of craft brewed beer is growing at double digit rates while the volume of the large brewers continues to fall. Over 200 craft brewers are created every year in the U.S. Here are some of the best craft brews, in my opinion:

1. Yuengling Lager by D.G. Yuengling & Son of Pottsville, PA; my personal number one favorite.
2. Shiner Bock, a German/Czech-style beer by the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner TX
3. Samuel Adams brewed by The Boston Beer Company, Boston MA
4. Fat Tire Amber Ale by the New Belgium in Fort Collins, CO.
5. Saranac “Traditional American Lager” by the Matt Brewing in Utica, NY”.
6. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale brewed by the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico, CA
7. Anchor Steam by Anchor Brewing Company, in San Francisco, CA,.
8. Pete's Wicked Ale by Pete’s Brewing Company of San Antonio, TX,.

Czech Imports Available in the U.S.
Czech imports have limited distribution in the U.S. and are not available everywhere. The following Czech beers are imported: Czechvar, Krusovic Cerne Dark, Krusovic Imperial, Pilsner Urquell, Primator Lager, and Zatec. Here in Wilmington, NC only Pilsner Urquell and Budvar are available.