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Article Excerpt
"The story of beer is the story of Canada" (1)
Beer has been a significant element in human history, including the history of Canada. Defined generally as an alcoholic beverage made from a malted grain (usually barley), water, possibly a herb or spice for flavour such as hops, the whole being fermented with yeast, beer has been brewed for thousands of years. Archaeological evidence abounds--hieroglyphics, statuettes, written records--illustrating the human occupation of making beer going back six to nine thousand years. (2) Brewing was arguably one of the first scientific endeavours. (3) Indeed, brewing is widely regarded as both an art and a science. (4)
Although certainly not accepted wisdom, an argument can be made that the civilisation of man is itself related to the production of beer. (5) The argument goes something like this: the production of beer requires the input of some grain, such as barley. Barley grew naturally in the Fertile Crescent, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Once beer was established as a desirable drink, it became necessary to cultivate the basic raw materials to ensure an adequate supply. Furthermore, given the influence of annual variations in the local climate, and their impact on crop growth and development, it became important to devise the calendar to help regulate barley production. Supporting this line of thought, barley is known to have been cultivated in Mesopotamia at least 4000 years ago; coincidentally (or not!) Sumerians and Mesopotamians were also the first people known to have made beer. The shift from hunter-gatherer to cultivator could therefore conceivably have taken place to serve the needs not of food production, but of beer production. (6)
Whether this is an accurate account or not, it is now evident that all the great civilisations in human history brewed some beverage that bears a relation to beer, including Scottish, Irish, English, Norse, Egyptian, Aztec, Chinese, and virtually every other. This includes a tremendous variety of distinct types of beer, although they all share the basic defining characteristics described above. In some cases, it was shrouded in mystery, tied to religious beliefs and practices--in Sumeria, for example, Ninkasi was the goddess of beer. (7) The Greeks and Romans called beer "cerevisia" (similar to the Spanish "cervesa", alternatively spelled "cerveza," still in use), derived from "Ceres", the Roman goddess of agriculture, and "vis," Latin for strength. (8) In English speaking societies, brewers in the past have referred to yeast as "God-is-good," (9) a reflection of their reverence for the mysterious process that produced their drink, and in Medieval Europe, brewing was largely the domain of monastic orders. (10) On the other hand, brewing was a practical response to the poor quality of accessible water supplies, though the reasons for beer's relative safety remained a mystery until more recently. (11) Indeed, Arnold, the patron saint of brewing, was known for promoting beer as a relatively safe drink in comparison to unclean water. (12) In addition, archaeologists have proposed that beer was a nourishing beverage that may well have been a significant component of workers' diets in ancient times as they toiled long hours in the desert heat. (13) While categorized as beer on the basis of the basic characteristics of their production process and ingredients, the beers brewed in ancient times would probably be unrecognizable as beer to the modern consumer. The drink gradually evolved over time to become the beverage so popular today.
Modern beer--that is, beer made from malted grain rather than bread, more or less by the techniques that continue to be practised today, according to recipes similar to those used today--was developed in the 1800s, principally in Germany and Austria (lagers and wheat beers) and England and Ireland (ale and stout), but also in other parts of Europe. Its transplantation to North America followed the movement of communities of Germans to the United States and British to Canada. The origins of most of the major breweries in both countries are similar. For example, John Molson was a British immigrant to Canada in the 1700s; Anheuser-Busch and Millers were both started by German immigrants to the United States, while countless others have similar origins. Following the initial expansion of brewing in North America around these immigrant-entrepreneurs, the modern brewing industry has coalesced, partly due to competition and its resulting attrition of the less efficient or lower quality producers, partly due to phases in legislation around alcoholic beverage production, such as prohibition in North America, and partly due to technological changes such as mechanical refrigeration.
Brewing in Canada
"Along with back bacon, winter and hockey," according to writer Stephen Beaumont, "beer practically defines Canada." (14) Beer has been brewed in Canada for at least 450 years, and most likely much longer. While the Jesuit Brother Ambroise is usually named as the first brewer in Canada (the Jesuits established a brewery in Sillery, Quebec, in 1647), (15) and Louis Hebert, Canada's first farmer, is claimed to have brewed beer in 1627 to celebrate a birth, (16) Canada's First Nations had already been brewing spruce beer, likely for generations. In fact, Jacques Cartier and his crew could well have died from scurvy had they not been shown how to make this brew when they were staying near Stadacona (now Quebec City) upon their arrival in North America, in 1535. (17) Spruce beer, however, bears only the slightest similarity to modern beer.
Canada's first commercial brewery is traced to 1668, when Jean Talon, the Great Intendant of New France, established "La Brasseries due Roy" [sic] in Quebec City. (18) It was an ingenious solution to several coincident problems. There was a surplus of grain and a shortage of safe drinking water, and the local economy was struggling because more money was being spent on imported goods like French brandy than was being earned through exports--a classic example of leakage effects in a small open economy. (19) Brewing provided a market for the surplus grain, was a source of safe liquid to drink, and competed with imported liquors to help keep more money within the local economy, thus becoming one of Canada's first instances of "import-substitution industrialization." The brewery proved that the colony could achieve self-sufficiency in certain industries, and was even so successful that it began to export beer to the West Indies. Beer, it appears, was an important early domestic and export industry, if not in volume then at least symbolically, demonstrating the economic potential of the colony. However, for most of the next century, brewing existed primarily as a cottage industry. Certainly many of Canada's early settlers brewed some form of beer in their homes, and perhaps some of the wealthier Canadians operated their own small brewery, (20) but the business of brewing remained a very unstable infant industry. As it turns out, Talon's commercial brewery only lasted a few years, and several others also came and went during the tumultuous first years of the domestic brewing industry. However, what is clear is that Quebec was the geographic epicentre of the development and expansion of the brewing industry in Canada.
Stephen Beaumont divides Canada's brewing history into four eras: Traditional Brewing, Prohibition, the Decline of Distinction, and the Renaissance. (21) The last is marked by the birth of the new microbrewers, and the period preceding it by the consolidation of the national brewers, along with their marketing of increasingly indistinct, and generally bland lagers.
Traditional Brewing
In 1786, John Molson established in Montreal the first of what became the modern Canadian breweries. It is now North America's oldest continuously operating brewing company. Others soon followed, and by 1860, Canada is estimated to have had over 150 breweries. At this time, most were local, independent operations, as most towns had at least one brewery, serving only the local market. Furthermore, they distributed their product through local taverns, as the bottling of beer for sale to the "home consumer" did not become popular until the 1890s. (22) The lack of a well-developed transportation system meant that brewing remained a small-scale operation oriented to local markets only. The economics of production could not, at that time, have supported an industry requiring the large-scale transport of a product composed principally of water--a ubiquity. Besides, the technology of brewing itself was limited to small-scale craft production--small...
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