In 2011, as both blogging and craft brewing burst into the mainstream, Albany native Craig Gravina began to post his thoughts about beer history online. He came across another page, curated by Alan McLeod, who had unearthed a 19th century advertisement in a Newfoundland newspaper about something called “Albany Ale.” McLeod asked the question, “What was Albany Ale?” Together, McLeod and Gravina set out to find an answer. On the way, the two have published a book together, Upper Hudson Valley Beer, co-founded the Albany Ale Project, and supported the brewing of historical beers. As it turns out, Albany used to be America’s foremost brewing city, and Albany Ale was world famous.
The Albany Ale Project and the community of history buffs, brewers, and proud Albanians that have contributed to it aim to educate the public about a largely forgotten history. The group describes itself as “A small working group seeking to learn what Albany Ale was and also what was brewing in Albany from 1640 to 1900.” Really, they are craft historians of beer (this is not to be confused with the craft beer historian.)
Craft beer emerged from a landscape of mass-produced, mass-marketed lagers. The pioneers of the craft movement sought more diversity in flavor and style. The folks at Albany Ale Project saw a similar issue with beer history. The same mass-produced lagers that craft beer rejected made up most of mainstream beer history. Names like Adolphus Busch, Adolph Coors, and Frederick Pabst seem to sire the American beer industry. But what about John Taylor? Harmen Gansevoort? Edward Le Breton? The German brewers all made lager. What about ale?
Gravina explains it well, “Especially in American beer history, there’s this idea that it starts with German immigration and lager proliferation. But there is a lack of appreciation for the brewing before the 1860s. Ale brewing was popular in the Northeast, specifically in Albany due to the Erie Canal. People have forgotten that we had this ale brewing heritage. Part of this is the craft beer industry separating itself from macro-lager.”
The Albany Ale Project is a reminder of the city’s past as well as a design for its future.
The founding of Albany is unique in the broader history of the United States. It was not settled by the English, French, or Spanish. Henry Hudson sailed up his eponymous river from New Amsterdam and established a fur trading post there on behalf of the Dutch West India Company.
From the beginning, settlers in New Amsterdam and Beverwijck (Dutch for “Beaver District,” Albany’s original name), were primarily interested in business. They were not the Puritans of Massachusetts, the royal subjects of Virginia, or the prisoners of Georgia. They were Dutch beer drinkers who would rather sell you another pint than tell you you’ve had enough. Gravina explains, “Dutch culture is formative in Albany’s beer culture. It is the reason that Albany has the beer brewing history that it does.”
The Dutch founders of the city were quick to establish lucrative breweries to quench the thirst of settlers in the New World. Writing in 2014, Gravina reflects, “In the 1630s and early 40s the Patroon, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, had a lock on brewing in the colony. In 1632, he wrote, ‘As soon as there is a supply of grain on hand, I intend to erect a brewery to provide all New Netherland with beer…’” Van Rensselaer was a founder of the Dutch West India Company and his patroonship encompassed much of modern day Albany. Beer was a founding component of the city.
Over time, influential figures continued to garner status through beer. During the 18th century, the Gansevoort family rose to prominence thanks to the brewery of Harmen Gansevoort. His son, Leonard Gansevoort, would fight in the American Revolution, serve in political office, and act as a judge in Albany.
Gravina glosses the eras of Albany beer, tying it back to power and politics in the city. “You have people that come here in the 17th century and they establish themselves as brewers and they are wealthy. They become city founders, they become important people. What you have in the 18th century is the establishment of this brewing upper crust. They have the money and power to influence other important people. They start to establish trade routes, develop agriculture.”
Albany’s political relationship with beer is unique in the broader American context, and the beer they brewed was different from beer in other colonies. Where the British and their colonists would have relied on barley, the Dutch were used to wheat. But, barley did not grow well in New England, and the South focused on cash crops like tobacco. Only the mid-Atlantic, including New York, stuck to small grains like wheat. (Mercier & Halbrook) This meant that the Dutch could continue making wheat beer, and, as Albany slowly became more British in the second half of the 1700s, barley was more available than in other regions.
Gravina says that wheat beer would have dominated until about 1818. “As things Anglicize, barley is introduced and they are focused on growing hops for beer.” Then the Erie Canal opened in 1825. The already business-friendly environment in Albany was supercharged by cheap access to Western New York’s grain and Central New York’s hops. On top of this, New York City, just down the Hudson River, had soiled most of its water. Albany had all of the makings of a beer boomtown.
From the opening of the canal until the prime of the railroad era, Albany became the largest brewing city in America. It had cheap inputs arrive via canal and a massive demand for beer from New York City. An 1825 article states, “The Ale, or strong Beer, brewed in this city, we believe has obtained more celebrity than that produced in any other place in the United States.” (Charleston Courier, 5 Nov. 1825) By 1860, John Taylor, Albany’s most prominent brewer, constructed the largest brewery in America. And this is where the historical scope of the Albany Ale Project begins to fade off.
Gravina notes that the city’s beer history at the end of the 19th century turns local. The industry slowly tinkers out and disappears altogether during Prohibition.
Post Prohibition, Dan O’Connell, who ran the state’s Democratic Party in the city for much of the 20th century, bolstered his power with his Hedricks beer money. It was sold at every pub in the city that wanted to stay in his good will. Then in 1981, Bill Newman opened what most beer historians would consider the East Coast’s first craft brewery. Newman would go on to train the founders of craft brewery heavy hitters like Abita, Bell’s, and Boston Beer Company.
Albany’s beer history is long, but it started with a unique cultural and political environment thanks to Dutch settlement. With New York grain, the port of New York City, and the Erie Canal, Albany was able to brew the first mass-exported beers in America. In Gravina’s words, “The Dutch contribution established one of the earliest industrial sectors in America. They aren’t brewing for a small operation, they are establishing true commercial brewing.”
The Albany Ale Project has sparked an interest in the early centuries of Albany’s history. Contributors to this historical project mine for newspaper articles and ads describing beer, hunt for recipes in defunct brewery files, and brew beers with ingredients and techniques contemporary to a time when Albany was still an industry giant.
But Albany Ale is not exactly a style of beer. It is a moniker used to represent beer that was exported from the city. Gravina says, “Taylor and those guys from 1830 to 1860 aren’t focused on local beer. They are focused on exporting it to the rest of the world. Stylistically it doesn’t really become a thing. From the 1860s to mid 1880s, as lagers started to come in, Albany Ale’s hallmark became its strength. Nine percent on the low end, 13 percent on the high end.”
So is the Albany Ale Project reviving a beer? It is tough to say. The community involved in the project has brewed several ales based on historical recipes. C.H. Evans Brewery, Frog Alley Brewery, and even a Seattle brewery, Machine House, have collaborated with Albany Ale Project contributors to brew ales based on century-old recipes.
Laura Clough, brewer at Frog Alley Brewing Company in Schenectady, was tasked with brewing a 1905 Amsdell Brewer recipe that Gravina sent to her with his own historical annotations. Brewing the recipe was a challenge. Everything from cursive handwriting to measurements, from alpha content in hops to mineral levels in water, impeded Clough’s normally meticulous brewing process.
Clough says that the experience revived some of the history of the brewing process for her. “I had to embrace the process of brewing, which has been around for a very long time. I had to brew with my heart more than my head, and that was a cool change up. Normally, I know exactly how long to boil, how much of each ingredient to put in. To some extent, we just had to let go. But you still want to make a palatable beer at the end.”
The beer, which they called an IPA, wasn’t aggressively hoppy and wasn’t New England hazy. It was sweeter than expected, but Clough says it was good. Tasting through a modern lens, some customers were surprised and didn’t understand the history of beer in the Capital Region. For a craft brewery like Frog Alley to delve into a historic beer, Clough quips, “First you need a beer recipe, and then you need a beer historian who can talk you through the meanings in the recipe.” But that beer historian can also help to educate the drinker. Why is this beer important?
The beer that Frog Alley attempted to recreate was a mix of six-row barley, corn, and glucose syrup. Once again, Albany Ale exists somewhere outside the definition of style. To revive the heritage of Albany Ale is to revive something different than just a brew. Albany Ale, it seems, is an economic model, an export of Albany ingenuity.
Gravina seems to know this too. He has spent a decade delving into the historical facts of beer in Albany, and this has morphed into a new approach. As it turns out, the real revival is bringing the story, and the beer, to the people–sometimes while clad in clothing from the 1800s.
This is where Maeve McEneny-Johnson comes in. She is the Community Engagement Manager at Discover Albany where she promotes something that the mayor’s office calls CHAT, Cultural Heritage and Tourism. The idea is to bolster the tourist economy in Albany by creating authentic experiences–not for tourists, but for “visitors.” One successful strategy has been recreating heritage foodways from Albany’s past.
McEneny-Johnson met Gravina at their local Allen Street Pub. She remembers their conversation, “Craig said, ‘Well, I want to tell the history of Albany through beer.’ And I said, ‘I want to go to neighborhoods that people don’t necessarily think of as a tourist destination, but the history is there.’” So the two began planning and guiding beer-centric tours around the city.
Historic beers, even if they aren’t perfectly accurate, are a key part of this heritage tourism. According to Gravina, “There are two communities that I am part of: beer historians and everyone else. Maeve and I are really focused on everyone else. The tours that we do are really focused on promoting the city of Albany. Beer is the hook.” It seems that promoting business by educating visitors about Albany’s past is the truest revival of Albany Ale. It is the mix of beer, business, and heritage that has made Albany’s brewing story so unique in the first place.
Following the rise of craft beverage, they see drink as a way to connect existing interests with Albany’s unusual history. The Capital Craft Beverage Trail, started in 2015 by three Albany producers, has now ballooned to 55 producers. The craft distilleries, wineries, and breweries, themselves, often draw on Albany’s heritage to create local beverages. C.H Evans Brewing, for example, is the reincarnation of a local family brewery that operated in the nearby town of Hudson from 1786 to 1920.
This industry has been supported by a barrage of booze-business-friendly legislation put in place by the state government that sits in Albany’s downtown. In Albany’s Warehouse District, where buildings which once stored cargo arriving on the Erie Canal stand empty and abandoned, the craft beverage industry has brought new life. The business of drinks in the city is back.
McEneny-Johnson and Gravina see heritage beverage tourism as a way to support Albany’s business and connect with its past. McEneny-Johnson explains, “Craft beverage is popular and lucrative, but what makes us different? Our history. What makes us so unique is that we have this unusual story.”
Just as brewing 19th century beer recipes requires collaboration between the brewer and the historian, reviving Albany Ale is a broader public effort that combines the technical know-how of craft brewers with the retrospection of the beer historian. They see their heritage beverage tourism model as a potential export as well. “We want to set up a model of tourism or lectures that can be used in other cities.”
Albany Ale was only ever called Albany Ale outside of the city. Approaching this economic and beverage revival with an export mentality only accentuates the fact that the Albany Ale Project is reviving something bigger than just a beer.
Mercier, Stephanie A., et al. “Native American and colonial agriculture.” Agricultural Policy of the United States: Historic Foundations and 21st Century Issues (2020): 7-23.
“Albany Ale.” Charleston Courier, 5 Nov. 1825, p. 1. Readex: Readex AllSearch.
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