Ambitious Brew : The Story of American Beer (Hardcover)

by Maureen Ogle (Author)
Key Phrases: contract brewers, contract brewing, few brewers, New York, United States, Adolphus Busch (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Conventional wisdom has it that giant breweries, driven by corporate greed, have flooded the U.S. with inferior-tasting swill, and the only beer worth drinking is from scattered boutique microbrewers. Nonsense, says Ogle: companies like Miller and Anheuser-Busch are actually near-perfect embodiments of the American dream (in which "liberty nurtured ambition, and ambition fostered success")—and if their beers became noticeably blander 50 years ago, it's because consumers wanted it that way. Ogle (All the Modern Conveniences) looks back at the early years of brewers like Phillip Best, Frederick Pabst and Adolphus Busch as they rose to success making European-style beers for fellow immigrants, converting plenty of native palates along the way. Such men, she claims, should be heralded as captains of industry like Gilded Age icon J.P. Morgan. This material is strong, as is Ogle's analysis of the slow but steady rise of the Prohibition movement, but her narrative loses momentum as she tries to encompass the post–WWII era and add the most successful microbrewers to her list of heroes. Her exuberant musings on the American spirit become distracting, but there's more than enough drama in the family sagas to keep even the soberest of readers turning the pages. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Maureen Ogle...approach[es] [her] subject with solid research and engaging prose.... Her stories...add substantially to our knowledge of the fragmentation of American brewing in recent years.... [This] work [is] [a] welcome...addition, [a] book that readers will enjoy." (K. Austin Kerr Brewery History (UK) )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; 1 edition (October 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151010129
• ISBN-13: 978-0151010127
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #365,433 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A story for beer aficionado's, history buffs, or brewing insiders, November 10, 2006

By	Brett A. Saffell "Joe Sixpack" (Milwaukee, WI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Once I had penetrated the first three chapters of this book, I found it a fascinating and quick read. However, those first three chapters took about two weeks, despite a persistent interest in beer and brewing. I covered the remaining five chapters in two days.

The first several chapters (and 40 or so years of chronology) cover the beginnings of American brewing by explaining the origins of the Best brewery (which would become Pabst), the Uihlein's (Schlitz), and Adolphus Busch. These chapters passed slowly, and didn't entertain the way that popular history can (like Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World or Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, Stephen Ambrose, etc).

However, I was extremely engaged by everything that followed. I thought the explanation of the causes and context of Prohibition was excellent. The narrative of changes in brewing in post-World War II America (consolidation, the dawn of modern marketing) was also very interesting, and did a nice job integrating societal and business changes into that story. I erroneously thought I'd experienced first-hand the rise of craft beer in America, but Maureen did a very nice job educating me on the true origins of this trend.

I was bogged down by the beginning of this book, but thrilled with the middle and end of it. This book would be a great resource for beer connoisseurs looking for an understanding of why American brewing is what it is, and as a cautionary tale for brewing executives.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Like a text book, January 17, 2008

By	John Nixon (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've read a lot of books about beer and this one took me a long time to read. It was kind of like reading a text book because it was very 'factually detailed'. I was expecting this book to have more of a personality than it did. I learned a lot about the business end of beer but not so much about the social aspect of it. Many of the chapters seemed to take much too long to get to their point.

4.0 out of 5 stars Great history of American beer industry, May 28, 2009

By	AC (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer (Paperback)

This is a very good book about the history of American brewing post-1850. If you're looking for a book that looks at brewing in colonial or early American history, this isn't going to help you. It's basically about the roots of the current American brewing industry and how it got its start with German immigrants. A lot of detail is spent on why pilsner was so popular, why American tastes changed for blander beer, and how microbrewing has changed the industry. The author's research shows that the industry was less to blame for light, pale, bland beer, and was instead a response to changing tastes of the American public. There's quite a bit of information about the interesting characters who ran the big breweries and the rise and fall of various brewing companies.