Kent audience samples beers while exploring American brewing history

KENT — Cartoonist, author and Connecticut-based beer expert Em Sauter transformed the Kent Memorial Library into a tasting room during her presentation, “The Illustrated 250 Year History of American Beer” on Thursday, July 23. Audience members sampled three beers while learning how brewing shaped American history and culture.

The first sample was called Plucky, Sauter said, before explaining that beer comes from any fermented grain and has been around for millennia. Ancient beer was brewed mainly by women, she added.

Sauter traced the history of the fermented beverage back to Egyptian times, noting that they brewed beer for the pharaohs with the belief they would have it in the afterlife.

“They would drink it through straws because it contained a lot of sediment,” she said.

Sauter then delved into the various types of beer that developed over the centuries. By the 17th and 18th centuries, porter, a dark variety, was popular. Pale lager was first brewed in 1842 in Czechoslovakia. At this time glassware also came into vogue, so imbibers could see what they were drinking.

Sauter said beer brewing can be credited for transformative innovations such as refrigeration and pasteurization.

Em Sauter, cartoonist and advanced cicerone — otherwise known as a beer expert — is the author of several books written and illustrated on the topic of beer. Ruth Epstein

Beer brewing probably came to America with the founding of Jamestown in 1609, Sauter said. “Pilgrims drank it for its caloric content and because it tasted good,” she said, dispelling the myth that early English settlers consumed it primarily because the water was unsafe.

Sauter said Native Americans later taught the Pilgrims to brew beer using malt, corn, beans and pumpkins, although she joked “it wasn’t very good.”

As breweries began to sprout up in America, brewery owners became extremely wealthy. Anthony Morris is credited with starting the first brewery in Philadelphia, and many others opened leading up to the Revolutionary War as a way for colonists to show they weren’t going to support the king or British beer.

Sauter noted that many of the Founding Fathers had a connection to beer. George Washington’s Mt. Vernon and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello had breweries, John Adams had a barley crop and Samuel Adams was a maltster.

Following the Revolutionary War, beer fell out of favor, giving way to hard cider, bourbon and whiskey.

At this point, the second tasting — an American lager called Sway — was distributed.

Sauter said many of the beer companies were founded by immigrants, listing those of Budweiser, Miller High Life and Coors. Yuengling, she said, is the oldest continuing brewery in the United States, located in Pennsylvania.

Turning to Prohibition, which ran from 1920 to 1933, Sauter said breweries used various ingredients to survive, including malted milk, cream, soda and malt.

The first beer can came into existence in 1935 in Richmond, Va. By the mid-20th century, 80% of all beer sold in the United States was sold in either bottles or cans.

The 1950s was the “golden age of advertising for beer,” Sauter said, showing an illustration of “Miss Rheingold,” the face of Rheingold beer who was elected in a voting-based beauty pageant. Diet beer came on the scene in the 1960s.

The third and last sampling, Dwell, was passed out as Sauter described the history of home brewing, which was illegal until 1978 when President Jimmy Carter signed legislation to allow the activity.

Sauter made mention of hops, which brought several questions, but she said the topic is a complex one and needed a session all on its own. She said almost all beer now contains hops because of their preservative nature.

While beer has seen high and low points, in 2018 it really took off and three breweries were opening a day around the country. Lately, there’s been a reduction. Currently there are approximately 9,570 throughout the country.

Sauter ended by imploring listeners to explore beer, drink it, have fun, adding, “But do it responsibly.”