The brewery built its own refrigerated rail network to keep the fragile lagers fresh as they traveled across the country. The company was also the first to pasteurize beer, allowing it to become the first national beer brand.
Anheuser-Busch was one of the few breweries that managed to stay open during the plus years of Prohibition. To keep the business running, the brewery pumped out non-alcoholic products. Clydesdales were given to August Busch Sr. Those very same horses delivered the first beers to the White House after the official end of Prohibition on December 5, IE 11 is not supported.
For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Politics Covid U. News World Opinion Business. Share this —. Follow NBC News. By Michael B. Sauter and Alexander E. Michael B. Two realities spawned such a local focus. First, the influx of German immigrants throughout the middle and late 19th century including Donald Trump's paternal grandfather created a demand for beer in a nation best known, libation-wise, for whiskey.
Second, beer tastes best fresh, and shipping it all that far just wasn't an option before innovations such as the aluminum can, refrigeration and the Interstate Highway System, never mind the rise of preservatives now used by macro-producers.
America lost this local focus on freshly made, distinct beer beginning with Prohibition in the s and early s. The picture became that much fuzzier after repeal, which launched an arms race between the biggest surviving breweries, including Anheuser-Busch. By the s, it and four other breweries produced nearly half of the nation's beer. Analysts were predicting only one or two American brewers would remain by That, of course, did not happen.
Right around the time AB and its nearest competitors were starting to carve up the national beer market like a game of Risk, much smaller operations call them craft or micro started arising — first in California, then in Colorado, then New York State, then everywhere.
Some of this was due to a sharp per-barrel excise tax cut in , some due to the legalization of homebrewing two years later. A lot of it also appeared due to pockets of Americans simply getting fed up with the tepid fizz AB and its rivals were cranking out. Many a homebrewer has turned pro since the s. Today, there are more breweries in the United States than ever before — more than 4, — making a kaleidoscope of styles and style iterations.
Although Both Adolphus Busch and Abert Anheuser started out in beer backgrounds — Busch as the owner of a brewery supply company and Anheuser as the owner of a brewery — Busch was decidedly the beer expert.
Anheuser was a well-off soap manufacturer who came into ownership of a failing local brewery called the Bavarian Brewing Co. Thankfully, Anheuser and Busch joined forces, Busch applied his German beer expertise, they dropped that awful beer recipe, changed the name, and the failing Bavarian Brewing Co. Any food or beverage company knows that part of the secret to success is consistency.
You might notice that every bottle or can of Budweiser tastes exactly the same as it should. The secret to consistency across the brand and all 12 United States AB InBev breweries is that they all use the same yeast — derived from the same culture originally used by Adolphus Busch in the first batch of beer he brewed in the s.
According to Fox News , the special yeast is shipped from St. Louis to all of the company's breweries across the country weekly, thereby assuring that each batch of beer produced will taste consistently the same, thanks to the special, centuries-old yeast.
Budweiser confirmed this bit of information on its website, stating that the "30 billion or so yeast cells" in each bottle of Budweiser all descended from the same original culture. Ancient yeast is not the only secret to getting Budweiser to taste consistent. Like most iconic beverages, Budweiser has a secret recipe. But ever since food and health personality Vani Hari, aka, "Food Babe," pressured AB InBev — among other major brewers — to release the ingredients they use in their beer in , Budweiser has finally made its long-secret recipe available to the public.
The beer consists of only five ingredients — most of which should not be too surprising to even the casual beer fan: Water, barley malt, hops, and yeast.
But the fifth ingredient — rice — is a bit of a head-scratcher. So, why rice? Budweiser says it gives their beer a "crisp taste and smooth finish," but critics of the brand claimed that the company used that as an excuse to dilute the beer because rice is cheaper to use than malted barley. Milk isn't the only beverage that requires pasteurization to survive storage and shipment. We may take it for granted that most macrobrewed beer is pasteurized, but Budweiser actually did it before anyone else.
According to Anheuser-Busch's website , Adolphus Busch became the first brewer to use the the little-known pasteurization process to ship his beer safely without fear of spoiling in the s — before pasteurizing milk was even a thing. Busch was a real innovator.
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