AMBITIOUS BREW is the story of how beer became American. In the mid-nineteenth century, a wave of German immigrants, dismayed by Americans' penchant for whiskey and drunkenness, re-created their beloved, old-world bier culture. Fifty years later, the American-style lager beer they invented was the nation's most popular beverage---and brewing was the nation's fifth-largest industry, ruled by titans Frederick Pabst and Adolphus Busch. But brewers' ambitions collided with Americans' continued hostility toward alcohol. A powerful temperance movement resulted in Prohibition: a constitutional ban on alcohol. In 1933, beer returned, but the nation's brewers struggled to recapture the glory days of the nineteenth century. As consumers turned up their noses at flavorful beer, beermakers responded with bland and "lite" beers. The age of bland beer ended in the 1980s, when homebrewers and entrepreneurs--- microbrewers, they called themselves---began a different brewing industry. Breweries like Sierra Nevada, Dogfish, and Anchor flourished, and so did wildly inventive beers. A new golden age of beer had begun. Grab a beer and enjoy the surprising story behind your favorite brew.
