HOW LAGER CONQUERED THE WORLD
THE McDONALD’S OF BEER CAPITALIZES ON ITS REPUTATION AS SAFE — AND CLEAN
Like a Big Mac or a Coke, a Budweiser is one of the global economy’s more reliable pleasures, cheaply available almost everywhere. Historically, like the double- patty burger and the iconic cola, the global dominance of light, fizzy, relatively bland, central Europeanstyle lager — from Budweiser to Molson and Corona — relied as much on cleanliness and consistency as it did on taste, as anyone who has tasted a Bud can tell you.
In a talk to a gastronomy conference at the University of Toronto Mississauga this weekend, food historian Jeffrey Pilcher will argue that lager conquered the world, after first conquering ale, because it was viewed as clean in an age preoccupied with hygiene.
In Language of Beer: Sensory and Social Constructions in the Rise of a Global Commodity, he also describes how the modern craft beer trend has risen in resistance to this gastronomic hegemony.
Lager is basically the McDonald’s of beer. It is safe, dependable, but most importantly, it seems clean, because it is bottom fermented at cold temperatures, unlike ale, which is brewed warm, in a more inviting environment for pathogens.
In the 19th century, as international trade kicked into high gear, the global popularity of lager “resulted from associations with discourses of hygiene,” writes Pilcher, professor of historical and cultural studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
In an interview, Pilcher points out that Louis Pasteur — the grandfather of germ control, whose technique of heating liquids to make them safe to drink made possible many modern commodity beverages, from milk to juice — was a lager man, praising its microbiological safety.
Every society has its own tradition of brewing, Pilcher observes, whether it is African sorghum beer, Japanese sake, or South American chicha. But somehow lager became king, with a status so strong that some ales even started to masquerade as lagers, such as Kölsch, the regional beer of Cologne.
The loser in this history was warm- brewed ale, which once had an empire of its own behind it in Britain, with a massive colonial export market in India. But although the fruity flavours were popular, it was hard to shake IPA’s unappetizing association with six months spent in the sweltering hold of a clipper.
Lager likewise spread along familiar imperial pathways, with more lasting success. For example, Tsing Tao, the Chinese pilsner, a pale kind of lager, was created by German settlers in 1903, shortly after the failed anti-imperialist Boxer Rebellion. It was first brewed according to German law.
Lager’s story in the last 50 years is comparable to cola, and other drinks show similar trends in certain subcultures.
For example, there is another paper at the conference on the socio- cultural history of Chinotto — the Italian soft drink made from the bitter fruit of the myrtle- leaved orange tree, the same used to flavour the aperitif Campari — and how it became a crucial marker of identity for the Italian diaspora. It is best known in Canada under the brand Brio.
Pilcher’s main focus is how migration, trade and empire each powered the global mass market taste for beer. But in the last 50 years those aspects have blurred in the rising global economy, in which aspirational aspects have pushed aside the old fear of germs.
Today, for example, a single merged company, with roots in the triangle between Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati, brews a third of the world’s beer, Pilcher notes, but seems to spend most of its efforts on marketing.
“It’s not brewers who run beer companies any more, it’s marketers,” Pilcher said.
Just as the rise of industrial fast food inspired movements like Slow Food and nose-to-tail eating, the rise of lager created a space for the craft brewing trend of recent years, Pilcher said. A century ago, for example, the aromatic pong of Belgian farmhouse ales were a commercial liability, advertising spoilage and sickness.
“Now, that’s precisely the point,” Pilcher said, and he compared the current push against bland lager toward flavourful craft ales to the push against white bread toward brown. Both cultivate a “countercultural identity,” he said.
IT’S NOT BREWERS WHO RUN BEER MAKERS, IT’S MARKETERS.