Where there's smoke . . . .

So in a semi-serious effort to cover parts of the noble history of beer I may have overlooked a few milestones here and there. I lean towards the absurd or unsafe when I'm delving into a subject as you may have gathered and beer offers ample fuel for that fire. As my beer rant comes to a close I wanted to look at a purely North American story, that of what's called 'steam beer".

The orginal steam beer came out of California starting in gold rush times. It was not, according to what I can find, any hell. But any good struggling state has to have some beer. This beer was brewed using the hot process, meaning the ingredients were boiled up before fermentation. The alternative, of course, is the cold one, where ice cold water and chilled fermenatation produce the distict German style beers. California in the 1880's, as well as now, lacked daily cold temperatures and a glacial water supply. I suspect they lacked the patience and just wanted to get on with making beer. European nations like Germany had the cold and a network of wonderfully chilly caves to store and ferment their beer. Recipes from the time included grains like grits.

It was consumed for the most part by the labourers and working classes. The high temperatures it was made and stored at caused the beer to be very carbonated. The miners grew to prefer the excessively fizzy beer, although in the early years it couldn't have been very tasty. Beer was needed to slake the parched throats, and whatever was available went into its brewing. batches varied (a common theme)until ice was more widely available and with the industrial revolution, commercial refridgeration.