Wild barley grows around the eastern edges of the Mediterranean Sea and has since at least 17,000 BC (the early Stone Age).

Mesopotamia (now Iraq) possibly had a grain-based alcoholic beverage 12,000 years ago, comparatively shortly after they stopped hunting and gathering, settled in one place and started growing crops.

In fact, barley may have been one of our human ancestors' first cultivated crops. Wild barley is hard and when ripe the seeds fall to the ground. It's thought by some that by replanting the ripe grain that remained on the stalk ancient man made the job of harvesting easier - at least easier than separating the barleycorns from dirt. Archeologists have found domesticated barley near Jericho that dates back to about 9000 BC. Modern "six-row" barley in the "Fertile Crescent" (Iraq) appears about 6000 BC.

A stone tablet unearthed in 1981 describes fermentation in Sumeria (their name for Iraq) around 6000 BC. There is a recipe for beer from that area written about 4000 BC. It shows barley, pictographs of bread being baked and crumbled into water. The result is translated as "exhilarated, wonderful, blissful". Written on small clay tablets, these are now being stored at the Louvre in Paris.

The story of Gilgamesh, the mythological king of Erech, in Babylonia (Iraq again), tells of a flood that covered the earth. It also tells how man evolved to be intelligent:

By 2000 BC the Babylonians had at least 20 different styles of beer and exported as far away as Egypt. A tablet in New York's Metropolitan Museum lists Babylonian beers including what could be translated as dark beer, pale beer, red beer, three fold beer, beer with a head, beer without a head, and others. They drank it through a straw (maybe to roughly filter out the chunks).

When Khufu's men built the Great Pyramid at Giza, he had barley fields planted to provide them beer. Beer was buried with the pharaohs. Ramses II had strict laws about how beer was to be brewed. It's thought he offered up thousands of gallons each year to appease the gods.

Hammurabi put down the first written laws (again in Babylon) in 1700+ BC and they included a guaranteed daily ration of beer for all citizens. Workers got about 2 liters, civil servants 3 liters, priests 5 liters. These laws also set down rules for pricing of grain and beer, acceptable contents of wort for different styles of beer. Stone tablets of Hammurabi's code were found in 1902 and are now exhibited at the Louvre.

We also know the China and Tibet had a beery substance (Chang). Pre-Columbian Americans brewed a corn-based beer (Chicha) and archeologists recently found a 3,000 year old brewery in Peru. On the Russian steppes they fermented camel milk (kumiss).

Malted wheat was being used in the British Isles before the Romans brought barley with them. The patron saint of Glasgow, St. Mungo, was known to be a brewer in the 6th century AD.

The Romans picked up brewing from the Egyptians through the Greeks but replaced it by wine making once they got the idea of fermentation. Actually, beer was rarely brewed near Rome and beer was considered truly gauche, but they did take the art of brewing north with them to areas where barley was more prevalent.

The pre-Incan brewery found on a Peru mountaintop dates to about 1000 AD. It was capable of making hundreds of gallons of beer a week. A couple of dozen ceramic mugs were also found at that site. Corn was used as the fermentable and a native pepper-tree berry gave it spice and taste.

The Gauls (in present-day France) invented wooden barrels to replace pottery to hold beer while it was fermenting.

Why ferment? Plain water wasn't necessarily good for you - open sewers and all. Besides, beer, wine, mead, and cider taste better. Then there's the alcoholic content. Not just for the buzz, alcohol also means calories - something you need if you scratch furrows in dirt for a living.

Beer comes from the Latin bibere, meaning to drink - as does imbibe. Ale is from the Old English ealu related to sorcery and possession (as in floating above one's bed and spitting pea soup). The Spanish word cerveza is derived from cerevisia - Latin incorporating the name of the Greek goddess of agriculture, Ceres, and Vis, Latin for strength. The French brassiere and brasseur (brewer) come from the Latin brace, meaning malt - a word that they picked up from the Celtic language.

Homulus lupulus. Practically inedible. Grown by the Vikings. Used in Asia in prehistoric times. Pliny the Elder wrote about hops. "Sicera ex luplis confectam" (strong drink made with hops) is recorded in Babylonian records from 200AD.

In 1970 a boat was unearthed near Whitstable in Kent, England that has traces of hop resin in it's cargo hold. The boat has been dated go sometime between 893 and 974. It's believed thehops may have been shipped from Belgium in a trade for wool. It's not known, though what the hops were used for.

It's probable hops weren't used in brewing until 1079 when Abbess Hildegarde of St. Ruprechtsberg added it to her oat-based beer. Other sources say hops were first tried at the Cloister zum Würzen in Brabant. Since Gambrinus was the king of Brabant at the time, maybe that theory is credible. Or maybe it's due to his PR agents.

Before hops, many breweries held a flavoring license, similar to a patent, that ensured only they could brew beer with their unique blend of herbs and spices (known as grut or grutrecht in German). Plants such as anis, bay leaves, blackthorn, bog myrtle, caraway seed, coriander, ginger, anise, henbane, juniper, rosemary, sweet gale, Saint John's wort, wormwood, and yarrow were used to flavor beer. Even tree bark. Some of these are hallucinogenic and some downright poisonous in large quantities.

Hops weren't widely used until the 1200s, partly because the Archbishop of Cologne had the rights to brew a specific non-hopped beer and he suppressed the growing of hops to cut down on the competition. This was supported by brewers who wanted to protect their monopoly positions established by their grutrecht patents.

By 1268 hopped beer in France was recorded at very high levels - 5 pounds to the barrel. Of course the strength of hops may have been weaker then, we'll never know for sure. Hopped beer migrated to the Netherlands in the 14th century from Hamburg and was brewed in 126 Dutch breweries.

The craze hit England with the first planting in 1428 but ale brewers petitioned the Lord Mayor of London to define ale as "no hops, herbs, or other like thing be put into any ale or liquore wherof ale shall be made - but only liquor, malt, and yeast.". Henry VIII banned hops in 1524 but his son, Edward VI brought the practice back in 1552. Still, there was a legal distinction - "ale" was unhopped and "beer" had hops.

Interestingly the Pilgrims didn't take hops to Massachusetts and brewed with spruce bark and sassafras root. They did, though order hop seeds from England in 1629. New York state became the major North American hop-growing region until the micro-brewery revolution of the 1970s when Oregon and Washington in the northwest took over with genetic advances aimed at specifically producing a stronger and healthier plant.

Once Rome fell, the Middle Ages took over in Europe and monks were "guardians of literature and science". Heck, they were the only literate people around. King's and court hangers-on couldn't read. They couldn't write down a recipe. Only in the monasteries were people smart enough to brew beer.

In 1295 King Wenceslas granted the city of Pilsen the right to brew beer. Lager brewing wouldn't be found until almost 600 years later. The first clear, golden lager was produced in Pilsen in 1842.

Abbey ales, like Dopplebocks, were brewed by brothers mainly as a Lenten food. Monks have been living in Villers-la-Ville since 1146. They started brewing in the early 1200s but they abbey was destroyed in the religious wars of the 1500s.

The Confederation of Belgian Brewers in Brussels has had a guild house (right) on the Grand Place since 1695. The Maison des Brasseurs is located in truly a premier spot, right next to the City Hall on the most famous square in northern Europe.

They say the first bottom-fermented beer was brewed at the Brasserie de Koekelberg in Brussels in 1886.

By 1900 there were 3,223 breweries in Belgium. At that time the Wielemans' Brewery in Brussels was the biggest in Europe. This dropped to just 2,013 by 1920 due to WWI since there were considerably fewer ingredients available, fewer people to work in breweries, and most importantly, fewer people to drink beer. WWII had the same effect and by 1946 only 755 breweries survived. Consolidation and mass-marketing reduced this number to 134 by 1983.

The French Revolution brought an end to the brewers' guilds in France and laid waste to many of the abbeys that were the source of most French beer. Happily, Napoleon's regime started the brewing industry back up quickly and took control out of the hands of the monks. Innovations and competition soon followed.

Louis Pasteur (1822 - 1895), as we know, found out about pasteurization and that microorganism (yeast) cause fermentation. Both discoveries revolutionized beer production around the world. Pasteurization was actually used on beer 22 years before milk.

Back around 100 AD, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote "To drink, the Teutons have a horrible brew fermented from barley or wheat, a brew which has only a very far removed similarity to wine".

Roman infiltration aside, we know beer was brewed in Germany by 800 BC. A beer jar was found from that time near the present city of Kulmbach.

Weihenstephaner has been in the German town of Freising since 1040. Alteste Brauerei Der Welt. Yep. The oldest brewery in the world. In 35 years it will be 1000 years old. Hope to be around for the celebration. Monks were brewing beer on this site while England was still run by the Saxons. In North America, people were building mounds, making arrowheads, and trading mica. They might have been fermenting grain but they didn't pass down the tradition to following brewers like they did in Freising. Sure there have been changes. They didn't use hops in 1040. They didn't know what yeast was. They might have soaked bread rather than mashing barley. All the buildings have been completely rebuilt. It's now owned by the Bavarian government rather than the Catholic church. But you have to respect the institution and the continuity.

The next step in the evolution was also invented by monks - the public bar. Monasteries have long been, by this time, the hotel chains of Europe where travelers, mainly pilgrims, could get lodging, food, and drink. If you could speak Latin or had a suit of armor these early B&Bs sure beat a night under a tree listening to wolves howl. Kloisterschenken were formed at many monasteries where they could sell beer to passers-by and even local citizens. Kloisterschenken served both on-site and in jugs to go.

By the 1200s brewing was not just done by the church, respectable professionals were brewing in many cities in Germany. These were going to have a drastic effect on the monasteries since the lay-brewers paid taxes on their beer. Kaiser Sigismund in the 1410s was the first to stop the public accessibility to cloister breweries - simply because they refused to be taxed and every drop they sold meant a drop of taxed beer wouldn't be sold. By 1800 only a few monasteries were left in church hands in Germany. Today there are only 11 and only Andechs and Ettal brew beer.

Exports became important for German breweries in the 14th century. Bremen sent beer to Holland, Scandinavia, and England. Hamburg sent beer overland as far away as India. In 1500 there were 600 breweries in Hamburg. Beer was also exported in large quantities from Hanover and Einbeck.

The history of Spaten goes back to 1363 and is still family-owned. It was taken over by Gabriel Sedlmayr, the court brewmaster, in 1807 and passed to his son, Gabriel Sedlmayr II, in 1839 who moved the brewery to Munich and it's present downtown location.

Lagering became fashionable in the early 1400s. Some sources put 1420 as the date the first lager was made.

The famous Reinheitsgebot is touted by Germany to be the "oldest food regulation in the world" and "still remains in force, unchanged" since Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria ordered it in 1516. Well, let them have their myth, but we know better. Firstly, they ignore the code of Hammurabi of about 2000 years earlier and secondly, they ignore similar regulations such as one order by the city of Munich that also says beer must be made from only barley, hops, and water. Lastly, they ignore the simple fact that the Reinheitsgebot outlaws the use of wheat and even yeast in the brewing of beer. Hmmm.

Wilhelm V took the opportunity of a fire in his castle in 1589 to build a new brewery in downtown Munich. Sometimes he'd stop in with some friends and quickly the brewer set up a drinking room for the boss. It was 1610 before the public was allowed to drink Hofbrau beer when the brewery was expanded and a real brauhaus was added. A big reconstruction was done in 1828 and again in 1896 when the brewery first moved out of the building to make way for more restaurant seating. In 1958 the operation became owned by the Bavarian government and a total renovation was started to repair war damage. The current incarnation dates to 1971 when this was completed. The beer is now made in Reim, about 10 miles east in a huge plant. Recently they opened new licensed brewpubs in Cincinnati and Las Vegas.

Friedrich Wilhelm I started the tradition of the Stammtisch in Berlin in the early 1700s. He set up a table for his friends at the court bar. That tradition still is observed at almost every bar in Germany. By the way, Friedrich's son was a brewer before he took over the throne in 1740 and became Frederick the Great.

Oktoberfest is an annual celebration started to honor Prince Ludwig's wedding in 1810.

1830's Bavarians Gabriel Sedlmayr of Munich and Anton Dreher of Vienna developed the lager method of beer production.

Bock beers were developed in Einbeck in northern Germany and have been brewed in the winter since the 14th century. Duke Maximillian the first ordered a brewer from Einbeck to go to Munich and teach them how to make bocks in 1612. The word bock may come from it's German meaning "goat" or from a corruption of "Einbeck", who knows. Maybe the "goat" theory holds water since the goat is the symbol of Capricorn which would be the season when bocks were traditionally made for spring consumption.

Dopplebocks were first brewed by the order of Italian monks of the order of St. Francis of Paula in Bavaria for the caloric value during their Lenten fasting periods. At least that's what they claim.

Mechanical refrigeration was developed by Carl von Linde in the early 19th century specifically to control fermentation at the Spaten Brewery in Munich. This allowed them to brew all year long without shipping ice up from the alps.

It's known that James IV of Scotland bought a barrel of Blackford ale in Perth in 1488 for 12 Scottish shillings. This might be the first recorded commercial beer sale.

Aberdeen records show 152 women were professional brewers in 1509. Edinburgh had over 300. In the 1500s a brewing and malting guild, the Incorporation of Maltmen, was formed in Glasgow. They achieved a ban on importation of beer into the country.

Dockworkers in London in the early 1700s were partial to "Entire", "Entire Butt", or "Three Threads", each being a mixture of ale, beer, and two-penny beer (a stronger ale). In 1722 someone figured out how to make an ale that satisfied that thirst and marketed it as Porter.

India Pale Ales were actually, just as legend says, with extra hops and extra alcohol so it would still be drinkable after a long sea voyage to the troops in India in the 1700s. Six months on a hot ocean required a lot of protection.

In the late 1700s Russian Imperial Stout was made in great quantities and shipped to the Baltic States and Russia. Similarly to IPA, it was massively enhanced with alcohol and hops so the ale could be stored, literally, for years.

Both England and Scotland were busy exporting beer in the early 1800s. Scottish Export style was made stronger for much the same reason as IPAs, although not to that extreme.

In 1810 Guinness decided "to try whether the publicans will encourage a stouter kind of porter." They called it Superior Porter which became Extra Superior Porter and then Extra Stout.

Columbus, on his last voyage, recorded native Indians making beer from corn and tree sap (thought to be the black birch). He compared it to English beer but then he was Italian, what did he know.

Sir Walter Raleigh's colony in Virginia (1587) and Jamestown (1607) had breweries.

In 1612 a commercial brewery was opened in New Amsterdam (New York City to us) after a brewer came over from London in response to an ad in the newspaper.

Stories that the Pilgrims cut short their trip in 1620 and landed on Pilgrims' Rock because they were running out of beer should probably be discounted since there are many myths about the Pilgrims that just don't hold up. But we can reasonably believe they did, as thought, set up a brewery in Massachusetts shortly after they landed.

George Washington did have a brewery at Mt. Vernon but it was only for the family's consumption. He has passed down a recipe for Small Beer. Thomas Jefferson also had a private brewery at Monticello.

Samuel Adams as a brewer is mostly exaggerated. He did have part-ownership of a commercial brewery in Boston but there are no records of him every lifting a mash-paddle.

Steam beer was concocted during the California gold rush of 1849. They had lager yeast but didn't have refrigeration so they brewed it at warmer ale yeast temperatures. Fritz Maytag (of washing machine fame) revived the style in 1971 at his new Anchor Brewery in San Francisco.

1850s. German immigrants start Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Coors, Stroh, Schlitz, and Pabst.

The late 1800s saw refrigeration, automatic bottling, pasteurization, and distribution by double-walled, ice-cooled railroad boxcars. In the 1870s, this allowed Adolphus Busch to make Budweiser a national brand.

WWI had a bad effect on many brewers, being of German origin and with German names. Many closed or sold to other companies.

Canada had prohibition in all of the provinces except Quebec during WWI In Ontario, it wasn't illegal to brew beer, it was only illegal to sell it in the province. Ontario customers ordered beer from the U.S. who sent the order to an Ontario brewery where the customer could pick it up with a pre-paid U.S. receipt. Prince Edward Island kept prohibition in effect until 1948.

The most far-reaching factor affecting beer in the United States was the 18th Amendment enacting Prohibition on Oct, 3, 1919. By that time 26 of the 48 states already were dry by local laws. Heck, 3 had already gone dry by 1905. Oklahoma and Kansas didn't go back to "wet" status until 1948. Mississippi not until 1966. Today you still see "dry" counties in many states in the South.

Before Prohibition, breweries were consolidating but when the 21st Amendment ended Prohibition on Dec, 4, 1935 only half of the breweries re-opened. St. Louis, for instance had 22 before Prohibition but only 9 reopened afterward. The first post-Prohibition commercial beer sold was F.X. Matt's Utica Club in New York.

WWII shortly followed and this sent many more breweries out of business. Another spate of local breweries being bought by national giants found the U.S. with less than a dozen brewing companies by 1968.

Only after Fritz Maytag re-started the Anchor Brewery (1971) did more entrepreneurs start follow suit and the micro-brewery revolution of the 1980s onward ensue. The first brewpub was New Albion (1976) in California.

1992 Market shares: A-B, 44.5% - Miller, 21,8% - Coors, 10.4% - Stroh, 7.4% - G. Heileman, 5.3%. Total 89.4%.

Commercial brewing, like everything else in Indiana, started about the time of admittance to the Union in 1816 and, except during Prohibition, it hasn't stopped yet.

Probably the first recorded commercial brewery in Indiana was the Greiner Brewery in Madison which was started in 1823 but there are verbal histories of a brewery in Richmond in 1807.

The first instance of prohibition in Indiana was in 1855. This law didn't last until the Civil War (1861).

Finland - The saga Kalewala devotes 400 verses to beer and 200 to the creation of the earth. Go figure.

Norway - The epic Edda from the 13th century says wine is reserved for the gods, beer for the mortals, and mead for the dead warriors.

Czechoslovakia - In 1834 Balling, a brewer, invents the saccharometer to measure the specific gravity of wort. This is still used today to better regulate beer production.

BC
10,000	Iraq	Mesopotamia may have grain-based alcoholic drink.
6000	Iraq	Someone in Sumeria carves a tablet with a description of fermentation.
4000	Iraq	Someone in Sumeria carves a tablet with a pictorial recipe for beer.
2580	Egypt	Cheops has barley planted to brew beer for the workers on the Great Pyramid.
2000	Iraq	Babylonians have 20 styles of beer and export some to Egypt.
1700	Iraq	Hammurabi's Code guarantees beer to all citizens.
1000	Peru	A brewery (using corn) is abandoned to be found 3000 years later.
100	Germany	The Teutons are recorded by Tacitus (Roman) to ferment barley into a horrible brew.
AD
50	Rome	Pliny the Elder writes about hops.
200	Iraq	Bobylonian records describe Sicera ex luplis confectam (strong drink made with hops).
415	Egypt	The library at Alexandria is burnt. We'll never know how many beer recipes were lost.
800	Germany	A beer jar was lost near Kulmbach, to be found 1200 years later.
1040	Germany	The monastic Weihenstephaner Brewery is founded. It still is in business.
1079	Germany	It's widely reported that Abbess Hildegarde of St. Ruprechtsberg (city? monastery?) was the first European to use hops (in her oat-based beer). This might be discounted because even though many sources say St. Ruprechtsberg is in Bavaria, there's no such place.
1200s	Germany	The Archbishop of Cologne suppresses the growing of hops because he has the royal rights to make non-hopped beer.
1268	France	Hops are recorded as being used in beer.
1295	Germany	King Wenceslas of Bohemia grants the city of Pilsen the right to brew beer.
1300s	Netherlands	Hopped beer is recorded as being brewed at 126 breweries.
1363	Germany	The brewery that will become Spaten is started.
1410	Germany	Kaiser Sigismund forbids monastic beer to be sold, thus ensuring people will buy beer brewed by laymen - which is taxed.
1428	England	The Lord Mayor of London defines ale as not having hops.
1489	Germany	Germany's first brewers guild is formed.
1492	North America	Columbus records the Indians making beer from corn and tree sap.
1516	Germany	Duke Welhelm IV writes the Reinheitsgebot, saying only barley, hops, and water may be used in beer.
1517	Germany	The Reinheitsgebot is first sidestepped.
1524	England	Henry VIII bans hops outright.
1536	England	Edward VI re-legalizes hops. Ale is unhopped. Beer has hops.
1553	Germany	Beck's brewery is founded.
1587	North America	Sir Walter Raleigh's failed colony on Roanoke Island had a brewery.
1589	Germany	Wilhelm V of Bavaria builds a brewery in downtown Munich. This will become the Hofbrau Haus.
1602	England	Alexander Nowell figures out beer keeps longer in glass bottles (with a cork) than it does in wooden barrels.
1607	North America	The colony at Jamestown had a brewery.
1610	Germany	Wilhelm V's brewery first sells beer to the public in a new bar added to the brewhouse.
1612	North America	A commercial brewery opens in New Amsterdam (NYC). Owners are Adrian Block and Hans Christiansen. The first non-native North American was born in that brewery in 1614 and grew up to be a brewer there.
1620	North America	The Pilgrims start a brewery in Massachusetts.
1629	North America	The Pilgrims order hop seeds from England.
1630s	North America	Registration and taxation of breweries expands through New England. Boston (1634), Providence (1639), and New Hampshire (1670) are recorded as having breweries.
1670	North America	The first commercial brewery in what is now Canada opens in Quebec. La Brasserie du Roy (the King's Brewery) closed by 1675.
1674	North America	Harvard College has a brewery.
1683	North America	William Penn's colony builds a brewery. Also, Philadelphia gets its first Brewery (on Front St. between Walnut and Spruce).
1695	Belgium	The Brewers Guild opens the Maison des Brasseurs in Brussels.
1700s	England	India Pale Ales are sent to India. They have more alcohol and more hops to protect them during the trip.
1722	England	Some brewery figures out how to make Porter - a beer that has characteristics of "Entire Butt", a mixture of ale, beer, and strong 2-penny beer.
1738	North America	Georgia gets a brewery - in Jekyll Island.
1740	Germany	Frederick the Great leaves his job as a brewer to take the throne of Germany when his father dies.
1757	North America	George Washington writes a recipe for Small Beer.
1765	North America	The British Army builds a brewery in Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) and brewing spreads west of the Alleghenys. Later that same year a French colony in Kaskaskia, IL, gets a colony further west.
1786	Canada	Molson Brewery is founded.
1843	Czech.	Balling invents the saccharometer to measure specific gravity.
1862	France	Louis Pasteur discovers pasteurization.
1807	Germany	Gabriel Sedlmayr leaves the Bavarian court to go to the Spaten brewery.
1810	Germany	Prince Ludwig's wedding day is celebrated by a big party that becomes the annual Oktoberfest.
1810	Ireland	Guinness brews it's first Stout, then called Superior Porter.
1800+	Germany	Carl von Linde develops mechanical refrigeration for Spaten brewery so they can better control fermentation.
1808	USA	The first temperance society starts. Formed by a Congregational Church in Moreau, Saratoga County, NY.
1812	USA	St. Louis' first brewery opens. Owner: Jacques Delassas de St. Vrain. It burns down in 1812 and is not rebuilt.
1818	USA - Indiana	There are records of a commercial brewery in Richmond owned by Ezra Boswell about 1818. It's possible a Buhl's Brewery there dates back as far as 1807.
1826	USA	The American Temperance Society forms in Boston. By 1829 they boast 100,000 members.
1829	USA	Yuengling brewery opens in Pottsville, PA. It is still operating and still family-owned.
1830	Canada	Thomas Carling opens his brewery in London, Ontario.
1830	Germany / Austria	Gabriel Sedlmayer (Munich) and Anton Dreher (Vienna) co-develop bottom-fermenting yeast, colder fermentation, and lager beer.
1830s	USA	The first temperance movement continues to grow. By 1833 it's reported there are 5,000 societies with 1,250,000+ members total.
1830s	USA - Indiana	Several breweries were built in Southern Indiana in the 1830s. Records don't give absolute dates. (see also IndianaBeer's Southern Indiana History page) Zix Brewery (Joseph Zix, an immigrant from Baden-Baden Germany) near New Alsace, Dearborn County. Balthasar Hammerle in Dover, Dearborn County. This business lastest past 1856. Jacob Salmon Brewery in Madison. Southern Indiana Ice & Beverage Company made Ackerman's Beer. This company closed after the flood of 1837. Bottomley and Ainslie Brewer in New Albany opened in 1840. George Hager started a brewery in Terre Haute in 1935.
1833	USA	Chicago's first brewery opens. William Lill & Co.
1839	Germany	Gabriel Sedlmayr II moves the Spaten brewery to Munich.
1842	Czech Republic	The first clear golden lager is produced in Pilsen.
1846	USA	The first US prohibition law is passed in Maine.
1847	Canada	John Labatt Brewery opens in London, Ontario, joining Carlings.
1849	USA	August Krug forms a brewery in Milwaukee which becomes Schlitz.
1849	USA	The Adam Schuppert Brewery in San Francisco, California's first brewery, is opened. In a completely separate development Steam beer evolves in the gold fields of California.
1850s	USA	German immigrants start Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Coors, Stroh, Schlitz, and Pabst.
1850s	USA	Prohibition laws are passed in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Hampshire, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, and Minnesota.
1862	USA	The Federal government slaps a $1 per barrel tax on beer to help finance the Civil War.
1868	USA	The Siebel Institute brewing school opens.
1870s	France	Louis Pasteur works on yeast and pasteurization.
1870s	USA	Budweiser becomes a national brand due to pasteurization and refrigerated rail cars.
1871	Germany	The Brewers' Union is established in Dresden.
1874	USA	The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is formed.
1886	Belgium	The first lager is brewed in Belgium by the Brasserie de Koekelberg in Brussels.
1886	USA	Alaska's first brewery opens - by Abraham Cohen in Juneau.
1888 - 1892	USA	During this period many brewery mergers take place and syndicates, many British-owned, consolidate other breweries. New York, Milwaukee, St. Louis, New Orleans, Chicago are hard hit. Price wars ensue as decreases from $6/bbl to $4/bbl are common.
1892	USA	William Painter invents the Crown Cap in Baltimore.
1892	Germany	Rober Smith invents the wood pulp coaster in Dresden.
1898	USA	Beer tax is raised to $2/bbl to help pay for the Spanish American War. (It was taken back to $1 in 1902).
1898	USA	Hawaii's first brewery opens.
1899 -1905	USA	Big mergers in Boston, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh.
1900	USA	Carrie Nation commits destruction of private property at the Carey Hotel in Wichita, KS.
1912	USA	Joseph Schlitz Co. first uses brown glass bottles to help prevent light spoilage of their beer.
1914	USA	The first national prohibition amendment fails to pass the House by a 2/3 majority (197 - 190)
1914 - 1919	Canada	During WWI, all of the provinces except Quebec had prohibition at one time or another.
1919	USA	18th Amendment ratified (January 16) to take effect in one year. Woodrow Wilson vetoes the Volstead Act but it is overridden in congress.
1933	USA	The Blaine Act is passed on February 17th. It allows 3.2% beer to be made. It's taxed at $5/bbl.
1933	USA	The 21st Amendment is ratified on Dec 5.
1935	USA	American Brewers Association formed.
1935	USA	Kreuger Brewing sells the first beer in cans. Pabst shortly followed suit as did Felinfoel and Tennants in the U.K.
1935	USA	Terre Haute Brewing is the first to offer twist-off bottle caps.
1938	USA	Ballantine sells the first 6-pack. (Coca-Cola was already sold by the 6)
1940	USA	Terre Haute Brewing is the first to put brewing dates on the label.
1940	USA	Federal tax at $6/bbl.
1944	USA	Federal tax at $8/bbl.
1949 - 1958	USA	In another spate of consolidation, 185 breweries merge and/or close down.
1951	USA	Federal tax at $9/bbl.
1959	USA	Coors sells the first beer in aluminum cans.
1959	USA	The pull-tab is invented by Ermal Faze of Dayton, OH
1960	USA	The last cone-top cans are made. (By Rice Lake Brewing Company)
1962	USA	Iron City markets the first beer in pull-tab cans ("Snap Top"). They increased sales 233% in one year. Schlitz shortly followed suit
1965	USA	The modern-day revival of the Anchor Brewery opens - the start of the "microbrewery revolution".
1966	USA	Mississippi ends state prohibition.
1971	USA	The modern-day revival of the Anchor Brewery opens - the start of the "microbrewery revolution".
1971	Germany	Renovations to repair WWII damage at the Hofbrau Haus are finally complete and it is re-opened. Now owned by the Bavarian government.
1975	USA	The non-detachable pop-top is invented. First used by Falls City Brewing.
1976	USA	New Albion Brewing in California is the first U.S. brewpub. It doesn't last long.
1982	USA	Yakima Brewing opens up the brewpub revolution.
1990	USA	The federal tax on beer goes from $9 to $18 per bbl.
1990	USA - Indiana	The Broad Ripple Brewpub is the first in Indiana.
1997	USA - Indiana	The Evansville Brewing Co., which had bought the Sterling plant from G. Heilman in 1972, closes its doors. Thus ends the big brewing legacy in Indiana.
1993	USA	92% of all US beer is made by Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Coors, Stroh, Pabst, and G. Heileman.