Neihart/Beer Terroir, 4. History & Culture

We cannot actually taste history, but our ideas of history and culture inform our senses. Chapter 4 investigates this phenomenon. How white brewers, in their newfound home, re-created traditional Euro-American brewing practices was a challenge, but one they eagerly sought to overcome. When miners and their affiliated colonists moved into the Rockies, they imported ideas about foodways and beer. As they transformed the environment into a new way to extract wealth, brewers found ways in turn to build familiar spaces for miners and others. Beer history informed the methods used to produce beer, but their environs posed challenges to this in practice.