New York City introduced America’s favorite beer style, and became the brewery capital of the country. 

There’s nothing like a frosty cold brewski on a warm day, or any day for that matter, but especially at a ballpark, cookout, picnic, your favorite tavern, or while reclining in situ (at home). This is nothing new. Folks have been making and guzzling beer for 10,000 years, ever since it was first brewed by Amazonian tribal people (who still make ceremonial beers containing ashes of their dead.) Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs warn of the dangers of drinking too much beer (see illustration below.) Beer has been brewed in the Big Apple since it was just a tiny appleseed...and it was here that beer was transformed into a very different drink, which became a worldwide phenomenon. That’s why New York City beer is iconic.

The first beermakers in the city were the Dutch, who established the colony of New Amsterdam in the 1620s and made their own beer at home (women brewed most of it.) In 1632 the first brewery was built on lower Manhattan’s Brewery Street (now Stone Street.) Since an abundance of grain, malt and hops grew in the vicinity, beer-making soon became New Amsterdam’s largest industry. These early brewers represent a “who’s who” of New York place names, including Bayard, Beekman, Van Cortlandt and Kip.

The Dutch, and the British who later took over the city, made and drank ale: a type of beer which was rich, hoppy, and on the bitter side. Despite these qualities, men, women and children drank ale throughout the day, as was the tradition in Europe. Ale was thought of as nutritious (it actually is), and much safer to drink than the tainted water available from shallow street wells and a polluted pond, New York City’s sole sources of “fresh” water. But change was in the air.

The Revolution (beer revolution, that is)

By in the mid-19th century, New York was home to dozens of massive breweries, mostly in Brooklyn and along the Upper East Side, turning out millions of barrels of a “new” style of beer which was previously unknown to Americans. It was called lager. It irrevocably changed the nation’s drinking habits, and established New York City as Beer Central.

Lighter, less bitter, fizzier and lower in alcohol than traditional ale, lager appealed to just about everyone. According to The New York Times in 1855, New Yorkers were abandoning rum, gin and brandy for the refreshing new brew. By 1860, there were 4,000 establishments selling lager in Manhattan alone. New Yorkers went lager mad!

The big difference between ale and lager is how they’re made: ale uses top-fermenting yeast and warm temperatures (60˚–70˚F), and lager uses bottom-fermenting yeast and cold temperatures (35˚–50˚F). Ale can ferment and age in 3 to 5 weeks, while lager takes 6 to 8 weeks and also requires a lengthy period of cold storage. The advent of refrigeration in the mid-1800s, as well as New York’s first supply of clean water via the Croton Aqueduct, aided in the mass production of lager beer.

And who do we have to thank for this delicious beer revolution? As with most of the edibles in this WebBook, it’s all due to creative, hard-working newcomers: German immigrants, in this case. By 1880 there were over 400,000 of them in the city. Only Berlin and Vienna had larger German populations. Having settled in the neighborhood called Kleindeutschland (now the East Village), they proceeded to brew the lager beer they’d been making in their homeland since the 1400s. And boy, did they brew a lot of it, eventually establishing major national brands.

Grab a cold one and let’s visit Little Germany

By the mid-1800s the cramped east side of Manhattan was overflowing with German immigrants. Many became the best bakers (hooray!) and the most popular brewers (yippee)! Centered on Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, the German neighborhood spanned some 400 blocks. Avenue B was called German Broadway, with workshops, stores, and roofed sidewalk markets. The Bowery was the western border, packed with amusements, theaters and saloons.

As you wandered these lively streets, you might see a magnificent team of dray horses clopping by on the cobblestones, delivering barrels of German lager to a popular saloon. You may even spot a bunch of young boys exiting this saloon, each carrying a couple of growlers (covered beer buckets-to-go) home to their thirsty Dads. Before mass bottling, all beer came from a local tap, and you (or your children) got it “to go.”

The centerpiece of German life was the Bowery’s Atlantic Garden, the biggest and by far most popular beer hall in the city. Here lager was king, and here’s where many non-Germans first tasted it. The vast, balconied arena has been described as “a combination theme park, pleasure garden, variety stage and saloon,” and was tremendously popular with families. 3,000 people at a time enjoyed bowling lanes, shooting galleries, billiard tables, live bands, and endless tankards of the foamy stuff. Surprisingly, the Atlantic Garden was renowned for its wholesome atmosphere, a place women and children could enjoy. It remained a Bowery fixture for generations before its eventual demise.

By the 1880’s 14th Street had become the heart of the most prestigious part of the city, home of the Academy of Music opera house, Steinway Hall, Tammany Hall, and August Lüchow’s restaurant. Known as “The Capital of 14th Street,” it earned a featured role in the musical Hello, Dolly! An immigrant from Hanover, Germany, Lüchow bought a small cafe near Irving Place with a loan from William Steinway, the piano magnate. Over the ensuing decades, Lüchow expanded the cafe to eight times its original size, including a huge beer garden. It was soon America’s most famous German restaurant. Lüchow became the American agent for Würzburger beer, and shortly thereafter Pilsner brand beer, making them enormously popular. The restaurant closed in 1982, one century after it opened. 

Kleindeutschland’s decline was heralded by the General Slocum Disaster. On June 15, 1904, a paddlewheel boat jammed with 1,300 local church women and children caught fire in the East River. Only 279 survived. The incident tore a hole through the neighborhood’s heart, and it never recovered. During this time many Germans were already moving to Williamsburg, Brooklyn or to Yorkville on the Upper East Side, and were being replaced by masses of arriving Jewish immigrants. 

Big Lager

If you know which is “the one beer to have when you’re having more than one,” or recognize the voices of Bert and Harry Piel, or can sing the jingle, “my beer is Rheingold the dry beer,” then congratulations: you are a true, long-term, dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, and I’d like to buy you a beer sometime. We’d have a lot to discuss!

Many famous American beers were created by Gotham’s German immigrants. For example, in 1842 Frederick and Maximilian Schaefer brought their lager recipe from Europe to NYC and made one of the first cold-brewed and cold-aged beers in America. F & M Schaefer became the fifth-largest brewery in the country, at one point producing 5,000,000 barrels a year (beer amounts have always been measured by barrels.) The Schaefers opened their brewery way uptown on sleepy, bucolic Park Avenue and 51st Street, with caves along the East River for lagering their beer. Over the decades they kept expanding and in 1914 sold their now-valuable real estate to Saint Bartholomew’s Church, then located their new brewery on Kent Avenue on Brooklyn.

The Schaefers were leaders in promotion. If you ever saw the Brooklyn Dodgers play at Ebbets Field (lucky you) you’ll remember the big Schaefer scoreboard; the H would light up if there was a hit, and the E would glow if it was an error. Visitors to both the 1939 and 1964 New York World’s Fairs could dine at Schaefer Center, where many of the dishes were made with beer. You may recall the summertime Schaefer Music Festival at Central Park’s Wollman Skating Rink, which featured some of the biggest pop names from 1968 to 1976. Schaefer was acquired by Stroh’s in 1981, which was then acquired by Pabst in 1999, where Schaefer evidently survives as a “virtual beer,” whatever that is.

If you’re a long-time Mets fan, then your beer is Rheingold, “the dry beer.” Founded by Sam Liebmann and headquartered in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Rheingold produced a third of the state’s beer. Recognizing that his customers came from many cultural backgrounds, Liebmann was among the first to feature African Americans in advertising, such as Jackie Robinson, Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan. Mets broadcasts were liberally peppered with the “My Beer is Rheingold” jingle (composed by Emile Waldteufel – why do I know this stuff?!) A surprisingly popular promotion from the 40s to the 60s was the annual Miss Rheingold Contest. Young ladies vied for beer drinkers’ votes in order to be the featured attraction in Rheingold ads. It was a big deal: two of the winners actually appeared (briefly) in the original Star Trek series. Rheingold shut down operations in 1976, when they were unable to compete with the national mega-breweries.

Yankees fans may remember the golden voice of sportscaster Mel Allen announcing “There goes another Ballantine Blast!” whenever a Yank hit a homer in the 40s, 50s and 60s (that’s a lot of homers!) P. Ballantine and Sons was one of the oldest beer brands in the U.S., and at one time was the third largest brewer in the country. Founded in 1840, the brewery was best known for its XXX Ale, but added lager to its line in 1879. Due to its promotional successes (such as its Yankees partnership during a dozen world championships) Ballantine grew to become one of the largest privately-owned companies in the nation. Pabst wound up buying the company in 1985 and launched limited quantities of Ballantine’s XXX Ale, India Pale Ale and Burton Ale in the 2000s.

Ballantine wasn’t the only brewer making ale. Due to its large Irish population (and all those Irish bars) Manhattan hosted over 20 breweries specializing in ale and porter, such as David Jones on East 6th Street and Millbank Brothers on Madison Street. Nearby McSorley’s Old Ale House, which made its own Irish ales, has been serving the community for almost 170 years, making it the oldest continuously-operated bar in America. Its window sign proclaims, “We were here before you were born.” Despite this long tradition, the great majority of beer sold in New York (and the rest of the country) has been German-style lager.

After receiving awards for introducing new breeds of roses, new types of bees, and inventing a centrifuge for extracting honey, one would think Düsseldorf farmer Michael Piel would be satisfied. But, no, he wanted to get into experimental beer brewing. In 1883 he sailed to New York and joined his brothers Gottfried and Wilhelm to form the Piel Brothers Brewery in the East New York section of Brooklyn. Michael used his innovative genius to harness modern refrigeration instead of underground caves for the lagering process. Brewers from around the world visited the Piels plant to study his scientific advances, a heady achievement for an American beer maker. In the 1950s the brothers hired the Young & Rubicam ad agency, which created the animated spokesguys Bert and Harry Piel, voiced by the illustrious comedy duo of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding (a.k.a. Bob and Ray.) These amusingly droll ads became extremely popular, and today Bert and Harry paraphernalia fetch high prices on the collector’s market. Sadly, on September 20, 1973, the Piel Brothers plant closed after 90 years of operation.

Things were really “hopping” up in Yorkville, where the city’s largest breweries were located. George Ehret from Baden, Germany presided over the largest brewery in the nation: Hell Gate Brewery between 92nd and 93rd Streets and Second and Third Avenues, built in 1866. He was soon producing 100,000 barrels a year. A year later Jacob Ruppert opened his own gigantic lager brewery right across the street. Both were immediate successes. Although many will not recall Ehret’s products, Ruppert’s Knickerbocker Beer, introduced in 1951, was a leading seller. (You may remember the 200-foot electric Knickerbocker sign over Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx, which could be seen in Manhattan and Brooklyn.) As in Germany, the workforces lived in company-owned housing close to the breweries, called “brewer hostels.” These big brewers not only owned their own ice factories, stables, barrel-makers and banks, but also dozens of saloons (which would sell only their owner’s beer.)

Jacob Ruppert’s son, Jacob Jr., started out as a brewer in his dad’s factory, and went on to enjoy a remarkable career as a National Guardsman, U.S. Congressman, and owner of the New York Yankees. The father and son’s amazing achievements are chronicled in Meet the Rupperts, which you can enjoy by selecting below: (there’s another link at the end of this chapter)

We mustn’t forget to mention Schlitz, “the beer that made some other city famous,” whose huge Brooklyn plant brewed one million gallons annually to quench the tri-state’s thirst. It closed in 1971. Earlier in the century, Prohibition hit the breweries hard, and many of the smaller operations closed forever. By the 1950s, there were only 5 breweries left in New York, making 10% of all beer in America. It was a dying industry. By 1977, for the first time since 1626, not one drop of beer was made in New York City.

Brewing is back!

Today, smaller craft breweries located throughout the city are booming. These start-ups don’t need to sell millions of barrels a year; they just want to satisfy their community with ales, pilsners and lagers with unique new flavors, such as sour, sweet or fruity. At these brewjoints you can enjoy what beer used to taste like, when it was hand-crafted. Here’s a short round-up of where you can explore the latest New York-made brews:

Brooklyn has the largest selection of craft breweries. There’s Big Alice Brewing, Grimm Artisinal Ales, Interboro, Other Half Brewing, Talea Beer Company, Threes Brewing, Transmitter Brewing, and the Kings County Brewing Collective. In Queens you’ll find Alewife, Evil Twin Brewing, Fifth Hammer Brewing Company and Rockaway Brewing Company. The Bronx features The Bronx Brewery and Gun Hill Brewing Company, while on Staten Island there’s Kills Boro Brewing Company. And there are a couple of breweries in Manhattan to enjoy: Torch and Crown Brewing Company, and most notably McSorley’s Old Ale House which offers their house-made light or dark ale.

What about wine?

This seems like a good place to mention that other beverage which goes well with food. Believe it or not, the Big Apple has been home to several nationally-known wineries, despite the fact that there’s never been a grape vineyard in sight. Colonial New Yorkers imported their wines: canary, port, cherry and muscadine wines were common by the late 1700s. Giovanni Delmonico opened a wine shop in 1824, which grew to become a café, then a world-famous restaurant. Soon all high-end eateries were offering a wide range of imported wines.

In much of the downtown area, especially Little Italy, folks made their own wine at home. Then commercial wineries on the Lower East Side began to crush and ferment upstate grapes to make holiday kosher wine for the burgeoning Jewish community. These are the wines that New York City is especially known for.  

Gotham’s commercial wine industry began in 1899, when Sam Schapiro immigrated from Galicia and opened a small restaurant catering to other immigrants. In 1907 he opened Schapiro’s Winery at 124 Rivington Street, where, unbelievably, it remains today. Their posted slogan reads “the wine you can almost cut with a knife” (kosher wines can run very sweet and viscous.) The greatest wonders of today’s Lower East Side are the surviving old food enterprises now run by the original owner’s progenies; today the winery is operated by great-grandson John Schapiro.

George Robinson and Leo Star used observant, supervised Jews to harvest their Hudson Valley concord grapes, in order to produce strictly kosher Manischewitz wine, sold nation-wide. Monarch became one of the top four privately held winemakers in America, producing 5 million gallons a year. In the 1950s, Monarch saw their sales booming when there were no Jewish holidays. They discovered that African-Americans were enjoying Manischewitz. Monarch soon had to add thirteen huge wine tanks to their Bush Terminal winery to accommodate its new popularity. When Astronaut Eugene Cernan stepped onto the moon in 1972, he blurted out the company’s tagline: “Man-O-Manischewitz!”

Winemaker to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, Baron Philip Herzog escaped the Nazis and fled to New York. His grandson, Eugene Herzog, started making a kosher wine named Kedem, as well as kosher grape juice. The Herzog family still runs the company, called the Royal Wine Corporation, which is also the largest importer of Israeli wines in the U.S.

Kosher wines also appealed to non-Jews during Prohibition, when sacramental wines (used for religious purposes) were exempt from the Volstead Act. To get a permit to sell this wine, one needed to provide a list of their congregants; new “congregations” sprang up overnight. Sales of sacramental wines increased by 800,000 gallons a year.

Today there are craft wineries in the city, as well as craft breweries and craft distilleries. The wineries need to import their grapes from elsewhere, like California, Washington and New York State. They invent interesting blends, add flavors (like chocolate), and serve them to their local customers as “NYC wines,” many on tap instead of in bottles. These are indeed lovely places to sit and enjoy some wine: City Winery in Chelsea, Tribeca and Midtown, The Red Hook Winery in Brooklyn, and Brooklyn Winery in Greenpoint. To sample some of the real deal, Rooftop Reds in the Brooklyn Navy Yard has established the city’s only vineyard atop its 15,000-square-foot roof, harvesting and crafting some pleasing Bordeaux.

New York’s ingenious drink crafters continue to work harder than ever to create the next wave of liquid refreshments. So let’s raise our glasses to our future intoxicating history. Cheers!