GERMAN FOODWAYS: BEER BREWING BEER IN NORTHWEST OHIO: Creative Home-brewing and the Return to Variety, Region, Authenticity, and the Microbrewery. At the Black Swamp Bootleggers home-brew shop in Bowling Green, Ohio, the presentation of home brewing ingredients portrays an appeal to the classic days of brewing. Many of the malt extracts on the shelves of Black Swamp Bootleggers bear names referring to the "Old Country," Europe, home of the pre-mass market tastes that home brewers recreate: John Bull, Irish Ale, Dutch, Mexican, and Danish styles. "There's dozens of ways to make home brew. You can go all grain. That can take you five to six hours in a day to brew a batch. Those are your well-seasoned brewers who are your purists. They want to experience the entire brewing process." According to "Making Distinctions: The Politics of the Micro brewery Revolution," Charlie Bertsch states, "To Europeans accustomed to a diverse array of beers and anxious about a creeping Americanization of their cultures in the wake of World Wary II, American beers must have see med the perfect example of everything that was wrong with the products of American capitalism. Startlingly homogenous, engineered for consistency rather than potential perfection, characterized almost by the absence of any distinct taste, American beers seemed to reject diversity in every possible manner." Antique brewing and venting materials play a central role in the décor of small scale brewing businesses in the region. "The thing about home-brews is that you're not restricted to what micro-brews or large brewers are doing. You can make beers with coffee in them, beers with hot peppers in them, fruits, vegetables, tomatoes. All sorts of wonderful beers. Just let your imagination run wild." From a nineteenth century source: Beer is made from water and some type of cereal, usually barley, which is used in producing malt, the basic ingredient for brewing. Steeping of the grain in water induces germination, and then the cereal is heated to halt the development producing a substance known as malt. In this stage the grain has flavor and aroma. Next, the malt is ground into malt meal then combined with warm water. At the same time, the enzyme "diastase" in the germinated barley changes the starch to dextrin and maltose, a sugar. The solution, called "wort," is then separated from the insoluble grains and quickly cooled. Yeast is added, and the fermentation process begins. As the yeast feeds on the sugar in the malt, alcohol and carbon dioxide are formed, resulting in beer. Since the repeal of prohibition, the brewing industry in the United State has been dominated by a limited number of large corporations Since the latter part of the nineteen-seventies, small scale brewing such as home-brewing and micro-brewing have seen steadily gaining popularity. In making their own beer, home-brewers have found a practice that enables them to experience a product and a creative process which seemed to have been lost to the stultifying effects of the mass market. Micro-brewers have found a market for a product, and an atmosphere, that hearkens back to simpler days and appeals to a sense of region. The Maumee Bay Brewing Company in downtown Toledo, Ohio, presents itself as a piece of local history. The brewery, pub, and restaurant are housed in the Oliver House, formerly the premier hotel of its day. The pub's association with Major Oliver is even touted on the bottles of their off-sale line. The areas of the building open to the general public are decorated with ornaments fully in keeping with the theme of local history. Advertisements for early Willys models and picturesque portrayal of old downtown Toledo hang on the wall. More importantly, the most visible wall space in the common area is dedicated to the now defunct Buckeye Brewing Company, formerly of Toledo, Ohio. Remains of the Burger Brewing Company of Cincinnati, the Cleveland & Sandusky Brewing Company, and the Detroit Brewing Company also hold well-lit places of honor in what reads like a shine to retired breweries of Lake Erie. "I have a healthy respect for drink. Beer was meant to respected. I don't like hearing about college kids slamming beer and drinking through funnels." "Looking at these demographics (from Zymurgy magazine), a majority of our clientele are not students. They're people who have jobs, who are professionals, who are out in the workforce that are college graduates." The appeal to local history legitimates the micro-brew's existence as a regional (as opposed to national or global) entity. It's been said that the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys. Gender implications aside, applied to the beer, we find that a major difference between the creation of a home-brewing system and a micro-brewing facility is the price of equipment. A home-brewer can conceivably get started for under fifty dollars, while a micro-brewer is very likely to spend in the six-digit range for his equipment. In keeping with the beer paradigm, the process remains essentially the same. Exhibit Images Black Swamp Bootleggers, BG: Products on shelves Black Swamp Bootleggers, BG: Products against three walls Black Swamp Bootleggers, BG: Packets of dried goods Ironmaster Beer Kit: Old English Porter Barrel and surrounding beer-making paraphenilia Bottles of beers on shelves with ingredients Taste A Classic: man and woman circa 1900 dress with Australian Coopers beer on table Maumee Bay Brewing Company: "Ales & Lagers" and "Yesterday's Tradition, Today's Taste" ads painted on brick wall Maumee Bay Brewing Company: patrons at bar Maumee Bay Brewing Company: restaurant with brewing tanks in background Maumee Bay Brewing Company: Wooden beer crates Maumee Bay Brewing Company: Copper beer brewing tanks Researched by Brian Okstad for the 1998 Foodways exhibit "Brewing in Northwestern Ohio: Creative home-brewing and the return to variety, region, authenticity and the microbrewery." Return to German Foodways
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