But there is much more to the story than that. The beginning of the book almost exclusively covers the story of these German immigrants creating what we think of as American beer in the 19th century. Maureen Ogle did an incredible job researching the people (Frederick Miller, Adolphus Busch, Frederick Pabst, Philip Best.) and ingenuity behind the brand names. Now that I'm done, I am sad to have finished it.

I'm not sure what took me so long to read it as a fan of both non-fiction and beer, Ambitious Brew is a must read. ‘Ambitious Brew’ goes down as brisk and refreshingly as, well, you know.” - New York PostĪ cousin of mine gave me this book as a gift years ago. “As much a painstakingly researched microcosm of American entrepreneurialism as it is a love letter to the country’s favorite buzz-producing beverage . . . Historian Maureen Ogle tells a wonderful tale of the American dream-and the great American brew. Included here are the stories of ingenious German immigrant entrepreneurs like Frederick Pabst and Adolphus Busch, titans of nineteenth-century industrial brewing who introduced the pleasures of beer gardens to a nation that mostly drank rum and whiskey the temperance movement (one activist declared that “the worst of all our German enemies are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, and Miller”) Prohibition and the twentieth-century passion for microbrews.

Grab a pint and settle in with Ambitious Brew, the fascinating, first-ever history of American beer. A “fascinating and well-documented social history” of American beer, from the immigrants who invented it to the upstart microbrewers who revived it ( Chicago Tribune).

Ambitious Brew by Maureen Ogle