The history of beer in Spain

A few weeks ago I was invited to attend the presentation of the book "La Cerveza en España, Orígenes e Implantación de la Industria Cervecera", which can be roughly translated as "Beer in Spain, Origins and Establishment of the Beer Industry". It is written by Xavier García Barber, a History of Economics PhD, who chose the subject for his thesis after noticing how understudied it was in Spain.

Indeed, there had only been a handful of fractional studies on the history of beer in Spain and barely a couple of them which considered it from a mostly economic standpoint. This therefore represents the first attempt to cover the full picture, from its origins to almost-present days in a full length book, rather than an article, or a blog post or two.

I have to say that a lot of the people who actively took part in this presentation were trying to make the rest of the attendants drink the Kool-Aid.  Not in vain, the Asociación de Cerveceros de España, the professional association of large industrial brewers in Spain, had opened up their archives to the author, were sponsoring the presentation and their director general, Jacobo Olalla, spoke at the event.

As a result, highly debatable assertions were made. For example, Jacobo Olalla explained that, unlike what happened with wine in the XIXth. century, brewers never compromised on the quality of their ingredients and their product, something which eventually led consumers to favor beer over wine. As you can imagine, I missed the following few minutes of what was said, as I was too busy trying to stop myself from crying with laughter.

I recovered in time however not to miss the author's presentation.

That's how I learnt that beer, which had historically been a drink of the higher classes  in Spain (or no one, depending on the century), spread to the laypeople when phylloxera attacked vineyards in France and later in Spain, causing a shortage of wine in these countries.

It's also how I learnt of the deep variety of beer styles, mostly of German origin, coexisting in Spain at a certain time. These styles gradually disappeared when lagering and cold conditioning started requiring bigger investments and breweries came to see the profits involved in economies of scale, spurring them to merge and simplify their portfolios.

I have to admit that, as a bit of history freak, I found the analysis of the economic and sociological factors driving beer production and consumption in Spain throughout the years highly interesting. It made me think that knowing the factors that determined these trends in the past could probably help me to see those that would determine the patterns of production and consumption in the future a little more clearly. So I bought the book and got the author to sign it for me.

I've only just begun it so I can't really give you a definitive opinion on the book, but I will say I'm enjoying reading it. It also has an added bonus: with all the interesting facts in it, I can now be even more of a smart-ass when talking about beer. Which is always good.