It was brewed using bottom fermenting yeast in wide shallow vessels yet, due to the California climate and the dearth of refrigeration, it fermented at a temperature more closely associated with ale making. Synonymous with central California and San Francisco in particular, “California Common” straddled the dividing line between lager and ale. Mechanical refrigeration, first unveiled in the Spaten brewery in Munich during the 1870s, had yet to reach America’s Golden State and California brewers, unlike their Bavarian and Bohemian brethren, couldn’t store their beer in chilly cellars cut deep into Bavarian mountains.Įven though the temperate Californian climate was hardly conducive to brewing lager, the Germanic brewing community remained loyal to lager yeast and brewed a beer known as “steam beer,” also referred to as “California Common.” See steam beer. However, lager was a beer type brewed with bottom fermenting yeast which performed best at low temperatures. In 1875, the Boca Brewery near Truckee produced California’s first lager. The vast majority of Californian breweries were set up by German speaking immigrants and, in the late 19th century, they wholeheartedly embraced the new lager beer type which, having been first brewed in the European town of Pilsen in 1842, was fast capturing the imagination of American beer drinkers. By the late 1880s, the recipes for beers brewed as far away as Britain make mention of “California hops.” In and around Sacramento, Emil Clemens Horst owned the largest hop acreage in the world and in 1909 was responsible for inventing the hop separator, a mechanical instrument that eased the process of hop-picking. Hops were first introduced into California in 1854 and, until Prohibition, Sonoma County was a major hops supplier to both California and beyond. Between 1890 and Prohibition, the Buffalo Brewing Company in Sacramento was the largest brewery west of the Mississippi.Ĭalifornian breweries could call upon a wealth of local brewing ingredients. Californian breweries that opened in the 1850s included the Bavarian Brewery, the Albany Brewery, the American Railroad Brewery, the Union Brewing Company, John Weiland Brewery and, of course, the Pacific Brewing Company which is now known as the Anchor Brewery Company. The first Sacramento brewery was set up in 1859 by Hilbert & Borchers while San Jose’s first brewery was the Eagle Brewery. By 1860 that number had increased to more than 800 saloons supplied by more than two dozen breweries while San Diego, Sacramento, and Los Angeles, bolstered by the completion of a railroad in the 1870s, also became home to blossoming beer scenes. San Francisco was rapidly growing from a small settlement into a busy boom town and panning for gold was seriously thirsty work.īeer was the panner’s pick-me-up and by 1852, San Francisco boasted more than 350 bars and pubs serving a population of little over 36,000. It was the height of the Gold Rush and more than 300,000 entrepreneurial “49ers” had arrived in California in search of shiny flecks of fortune. It wasn’t until 1849, a year before California was officially an American state, that Californians embarked on their first ale-making endeavors with the Adam Schuppert Brewery opening its doors on the corner of Stockton and Jackson streets in San Francisco.ġ849 was a very good time to open a brewery.
It may have begun brewing a lot later than other states but, given its influence on the contemporary craft brewing scene, it has more than made up for lost time and currently boasts some of the nation’s most innovative breweries and beers.Ĭalifornia began brewing nearly 250 years after America’s first brewery was formed in Manhattan in 1612. The state of California’s influence on American beer culture cannot be underestimated.
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