NOVEMBER 18, 2000: New York, NY-- It is at this time of year Americans follow the lead of the Pilgrims and devote one day solely to giving thanks. And right about now, brewers think back, and focus in on a handful of words excerpted from the Mayflower’s log, the part about putting ashore at Plymouth Rock instead of the intended Virginia, due to a lack of beer. It’s an appealing story that justifies our sub-culture, our beer renaissance. It’s good publicity. We brewers are a patriotic crowd, aren’t we?

As both Americans and brewers, we find ourselves indebted to one Pilgrim, in particular: William Bradford. Americans need to recognize Bradford’s contribution to American history, both as a player and historian recording the events. Without him, our knowledge of Colonial America, most specifically that of Plymouth, would be even further reduced to textbook myths than it is at present. “Gifted and indefatigable, passionately devoted to the welfare of Plymouth,” remarks George F. Willison, in his 1948 introduction to The History of Plymouth Colony, “Bradford was unquestionably the greatest of the Pilgrims, one of the greatest figures of seventeenth century New England – indeed, of our entire colonial era.” In the process of governing the colony for some thirty years, the indispensable Bradford also helped to mold many American ideas, values and morals, which are still in tact today.

As brewers, we should be thankful that Bradford bore fruit. Sixteen generations later, one of his descendants, Daniel Bradford, stands at the helm, not of a colony, but of the New Brewing World, as publisher of All About Beer magazine and president of the Brewers’ Association of America.

Three hundred eighty years have passed since the Pilgrims first landed on the shores of Massachusetts, in part, for lack of beer. Three hundred seventy-nine years after “the First Thanksgiving,” I sat down with Daniel Bradford and his wife, All About Beer editor Julie Johnson Bradford, to discuss all things Pilgrim, all things Bradford and yes, all things beer, with regard to Thanksgiving.

“The fact that they put ashore for beer,” Johnson Bradford notes, “doesn’t mean that this is a ship full of party hounds, [it means] that beer was a staple. It was safe to drink.” Most Americans, beer drinkers or otherwise, don’t realize that beer’s popularity in Elizabethan and Jacobean times was less an issue of beer appreciation or enthusiasm, as it is in today’s craft beer circles, than it was an issue of public health.

While Willison pointed out that the Pilgrims, “liked the pleasures of the table and the comforts of the bottle, being fond of strong waters and beer, especially the latter,” we must look logically at the time in which these people lived. Of foremost importance was the truth that the water supply both in England and the New World was suspect at the very least. Therefore, water was only consumed by the poorest.

Modern brewers’ mental light bulbs quickly flash at this information, as Johnson Bradford expounds: “People didn’t understand the source of disease transmission, but, over the years, realized that if you drank beer, you were better off than if you drank water . . . It took a lot longer before we realized that the result of [boiling] was killing pathogens.”

Kathleen Curtin, food historian at Plimoth Plantation adds that at this point in history, people still thought in terms of the Great Chain of Being, and that all of God’s creations were comprised of the four elements: fire, air, earth and water. Of these, water is the coldest, wettest and least desirable, being the diametric opposite of fire. Though their reasoning may have been clouded, they learned that water caused sickness, while beer provided much needed nourishment. And so the lack of beer at the time of the Plymouth landing brought about the loudest complaints. When sickness hit, the passengers quarreled with the roguish sailors over who should have what quantity of beer. As it turns out, according to Ms. Curtin’s information, the ship’s captain, Christopher Jones, nobly sent beer ashore, even if the crew should be reduced to drinking water on the return voyage.

So beer was certainly an issue. But...

Join us next week for Part 2 of Beer and the Pilgrims... click here