Nature’s Brew: An Environmental History of Modern American Brewing

Nature’s Brew uses the relatable history of beer to explore the history of capitalism in the modern United States. More than simply a commodity history, this interdisciplinary dissertation adopts both environmental history and business history lenses to tell a more-than-human history of American brewing and industrial food production from the nineteenth century to today. Nature’s Brew argues that the unique biological and material properties of the organic, mineral, and chemical components used to produce a can of beer played crucial roles in shaping the development and environmental footprint of American brewing. Without human entanglements with things like yeast, hops, alcohol, barley, coal, water, pesticides, and aluminum, the transition to large-scale industrial brewing or even modern craft brewing—which are often not as distinct as craft brewers insist—would not have been possible. By looking at the key ingredients and materials found in beer, Nature’s Brew demonstrates that non-humans were vital in shaping the brewing industry’s trajectory and influenced, enabled, and limited brewers’ choices at critical junctions. The approach used in this project allows us to evaluate the creation of modern capitalistic food systems from a unique perspective, the micro-level. Placing material things under the historical microscope encourages historians to understand how these systems are not purely human endeavors under complete human control.