Free The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution by Tom Acitelli Page B

was several times the bitterness of the new Miller Lite (the current iteration is forty IBUs). It also had that citrusy, floral aroma provided by the unfamiliar Cascade hops, and it could be drunk by the session, as the industry parlance goes. At just under 6 percent alcohol by volume, a drinker could tipple more than one Liberty Ale in a sitting and still merely get, as Charlie Papazian had realized of homebrew a couple of years before, happy and not stupid. Most consequently, by being bitterer than most but not
too
bitter, Liberty Ale straddled a coming divide in craft beer. On oneside would be the pale ales that the brewery’s signature steam beer was more akin to; on the other would be India pale ales (IPAs).
    The IPA style, like Anchor Steam itself, has various creation myths, ranging from a single East London brewer named George Hodgson to a recollection that British beers sent to colonial India were dosed with high amounts of hops to preserve them for the long sea voyage to simply a savvy marketing ploy from the mid-nineteenth century. Whatever the origin, IPAs came to be defined as the hoppier, and therefore bitterer, kin of pale ale. And there stood Anchor’s Liberty Ale, starting with the first bottles on June 26, at the root of the coming division, a common ancestor to how both styles would be interpreted by American brewers and how those interpretations would change brewing. Liberty Ale’s debut was an Event in culinary America, one that would spawn not only thousands of pretenders and usurpers but also a vocabulary (hoppiest, hoppier, hoppy, hophead), wider interest in hops and their role in brewing (and American agriculture), and a palatal pivot that would see thousands, millions, of Americans embracing bitterness over sweetness in their favored drinks. Liberty Ale would become quite possibly the most important beer of the late twentieth century.
    No one cared. Or at least no one outside of Anchor’s still small orbit of two-hundred-case bottle runs and restaurant keg deliveries. There were no mentions of Liberty Ale in the media—no reviews, no stories on the rollout, the backstory, the commercial risk, the pioneer move (Maytag didn’t think much of the beer himself; he had to be persuaded to release it). Sales were always modest—the June 26, 1975, bottling produced 530 cases. What had been born Liberty Ale remained on the market as “Our Special Ale,” until it reemerged as Liberty Ale again in the summer of 1983. *
    On the other hand, more than seventy million cases of Miller Lite would hit the market in 1976, its first full year of sales. Still, something had happened. Mark Carpenter traveled to Europe decades after Liberty Ale’s debut. He noticed something curious in the Belgian, Dutch, and French ales he encountered: they were using Cascade hops just like so many beers back home, where they were born.

    * Modern craft beers, particularly India pale ales, might average at least two pounds of hops per barrel.
    * The current iteration of Liberty Ale was reintroduced in July 1983 through 2,920 cases (per Dave Burkhart at Anchor).
CHEZ MCAULIFFE
Sonoma, CA | 1976
    T here was a knock on the brewery door. Jack McAuliffe answered it.
    â€œI’ve heard of this place,” the knocker told him, “can I just look around?”
    â€œFuck no,” McAuliffe replied, his blue eyes running cold, the square jaw clenching that much tighter. “I’m busy, get out of here!”
    McAuliffe was not to be trifled with at his brewery, and that included the pilgrims who often showed up with little notice. Normally, if they called ahead, he was happy to oblige. He would personally give tours of the old fruit warehouse off Eighth Street East in rural Sonoma, California, * the first start-up craft brewery in the United States since Prohibition, charging the visitors at the end for the samples of stout, pale ale, and porter; but the trickle had lately broken into a steady