Beer
Given Americans' love of beer, one might be tempted to call it America's drink. In truth it is the world's drink. Originating in ancient Babylon, and passed on in various regional variations for thousands of years, beer is made in virtually every country in the world. Throughout Europe, but especially in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the United Kingdom, the public house or alehouse serving locally-brewed beer has been an institution for hundreds of years. In Belgium, Trappist monks have been producing their distinctive beers since the eleventh century. But it wasn't until the twentieth century that beer was subjected to the peculiar modernizing effects of American mass culture. Mass-produced, packaged, and advertised everywhere, American lager beer in its various similar-tasting brands—Budweiser, Miller, Strohs, Coors, Pabst, etc.—became the drink of the masses. In 1995, American brewers produced 185 million barrels of beer, 176 million of which were consumed in the United States. The vast majority of the beer produced in the United States—over 95 percent—is produced by the major brewers, Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Strohs, Heileman, Coors, and Pabst. However, craft brewers have kept ancient brewing traditions alive and in the 1990s offer their microbrews to a growing number of beer drinkers looking for an alternative to mass-produced fare.
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