As a beer historian, I know the past is a foreign country with strange norms and customs that we can’t always comprehend. So anytime I start feeling sad or annoyed about the state of American craft beer, I reflect on the past and think of all the weird crap Americans have had in our beer throughout the centuries.
The further back you go, the weirder the ingredients get—but maybe that’s unfair to the brewers back then. Malted beans or malted peas are strange to us as 21st century brewers, but they might be normal to an 18th century brewer. And what would that brewer make of adding lactose for sweetness or tossing in some pea shoots to turn the beer a beautiful purple color? So what if their molasses beer and persimmon beer had no barley in them? Typically, they were boiled with hops, just like ours.
American lager follows those early beers of colonial America. Those beers—persimmon beer, molasses beer, strong ale—are not well-known today. Theirs was a time in American history when beer was brewed by enslaved people and women. We might know the names of their beers—ale, strong beer—but likely not the names of brewers, such as Peter Hemings (who brewed ale at Monticello) or Eliza Smith (whose cookbook, the first printed in the United States, features a recipe for strong beer).
In Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood, there is a historical marker honoring what is believed to be America’s first lager brewer. It reads, “In 1840 John Wagner brought lager yeast from his native Bavaria and brewed the nation’s first lager beer.” In many ways, Wagner was a saloon or brewpub brewer. His brewery was in the back of his house, his boil conducted in a kettle on a crane over an open hearth. Wagner’s home brewery was likely in line with those that came before him in 1840, even if—according to another Philadelphia brewer—Wagner was the first to use Bavarian lager yeast.
Whether or not Wagner definitely was the first lager brewer in America, his lager predates the world’s first pilsner, commemorated two years later in Bohemia. There is little doubt among beer historians that America’s first lagers were darker than the popular pale, pilsner-style beers of today.
But what was in them, how were they brewed, and what were they like? From America’s first in 1840 to national Prohibition in 1920, American lager experienced radical changes. We know, because some witnesses kept excellent notes.