PILSNER
How the Beer of Kings Changed the World
by Tom Acitelli
The stealthy rise of humble Bavarian-style pilsner as the world’s everyday beer. Acitelli, a James Beard Award finalist who has written widely about beer, wine, and whiskey, shrewdly connects the story of the quintessentially plebeian tipple to time and place, starting with early European experiments in fermentation. By 1900, he writes, “barely fifty years old, [pilsner] was the ascendant beer style and one of the bestselling alcoholic beverages ever.” In a humorously meandering narrative, the author ties pilsner’s popularity to Europe’s cycles of violence and upheaval, which spread it to America alongside immigration, even as the beer barons embraced innovation. For example, although Louis Pasteur originally intended to aid European winemakers, “Pastuerization instead proved much more popular and durable among brewers.” When backlash threatened, “brewers hardly noticed. They were in the midst of a remarkable run of growth.” Yet, temperance advocates harnessed the World War I–era anti-German hysteria to propel their agenda. The resulting Prohibition “all but killed off the American brewing industry and its favored style.” Although the large brewers roared back following the repeal of Prohibition, writes Acitelli, “it was as if [beer] had been run through a decontextualization machine.” Such watersheds as the 1935 introduction of canned beer by a smaller brewer contrasted with the dominance of the giant brewers Anheuser-Busch and Pabst, which increasingly snapped up smaller concerns, as well as competition for market share by foreign entities like Heineken. After World War II, brewers continued to pursue consolidation and new technologies even as their signature product declined in consumer cachet beginning in the 1950s. As Acitelli notes, “so many breweries…had unwittingly set themselves up to fail in the 1960s [once] the positioning of pilsner as a lifestyle choice did not work.” This would only change decades later, as better-marketed beers like Anchor Steam returned via foodie culture and the microbrew explosion. Though sometimes repetitious, Acitelli’s confident, precise approach produces an entertaining narrative.