I usually ignore nitwit writers like Maloney who make such sweeping pronouncements about craft beer, but when beer history is discussed, I have to chime in.

Beer did take over cider as a national drink, but for numerous reasons. Part of the general trend towards beer, actually lager beer, over cider was due to the second wave of immigration, especially Germans. Cider consumption was one of the last vestiges of English influence as Americans turned instead towards establishing their own national food and drink, a trend that began with a new country and the search for a national identity. Of course the fact that we tweaked foreign food and drink and made them our own is another story.

Not only were Americans moving towards beer as a favored drink, they were moving from ale to lager. The shift in taste from ale to lager beer took time, but Americans and other immigrant groups eventually grew a liking to lager beer, not coincidentally after a Civil War excise tax was imposed on beer and the already tax-laden distilled liquors in 1862. While beer was taxed at $2 per thirty-one-gallon barrel, the significantly higher-based liquor tax drastically changed the drinking habits of the everyday man, turning him from the now costly whiskey to lower-priced lager beer. By 1865, a federal tax was being imposed at the exorbitant rate of $62 per barrel on whiskey, and as a result, German lager was evolving into the affordable drink of the working class with help from the Internal Revenue System.

As settlers pushed beyond the Mississippi, they were accompanied by brewers, mostly Germans, who were looking for a place to settle down, establish a lager beer brewery, and develop a market. In their path, lager beer breweries sprang up in such German-populated areas as Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, and even settlements in Texas, while some East Coast breweries too began to abandon ale in favor of lager. As a balanced accommodation for those customers who insisted on drinking ale, some breweries deferred and brewed both types of beer.

It’s also interesting to note the correlation of the growth of the U.S.beer industry as Germans were fleeing the post-1848 political turmoil in Europe and arriving in the U.S. The German-American brewers took their beer seriously and pushed hard the concept that the brewing of beer should take a more scientific approach. This philosophy, along with the employment of mechanical refrigeration, was being demonstrated in Europe with impressive results in the quality of European beers. Many of the limitations that had plagued American brewers since the colonial era were being overcome by the scientific discoveries and inventions of the Industrial Revolution; the adaptation of a number of these findings directly benefited the U.S. brewing industry.

As for your thought that cider held high popularity until Prohibition? It didn’t. Just look at the entire saloon system. Did you ever hear of cider saloons? Did you ever hear of names like Schlitz or Rupert being bantered about when speaking of cider or a national cider industry? Cider’s fading role as a popular drink was sealed as British-American culture was replaced with food and drink influences from a third wave of immigration from Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Lithuanians, Jews, Russians, Greek, Turks, and even more Irish, Germans, Scots, and English entered the U.S. through various ports of entry from around 1885 to the beginning of World War I. A majority of these new immigrants would settle in big cities such as New York, Buffalo, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago and bring with them food and drink tastes with a decidedly foreign flair.

http://barstories.blogspot.com/2007/05/pastoral-nostalgia-or-blue-collar-chic.html

Re: Cider history in thr U.S.—It’s funny you brought this particular point up because I, too, was a little taken aback by the point that beer overtook cider in the late 19th c. After doing some digging myself (I can dig again and email my sources if you’re that desperately interested), I was left with the impression that while cider was indeed exceedingly popular during the 19th c, ale seemed to have been equally so. I think the author took the introduction of lager at that time (circa Civil War), and stretched it a little. Lager swasn’t particularly popular before then because the refrigeration-during-brewing/storing-technology just wasn’t up to par until that point. Hence his connection to industrialization.

That said, I don’t know about sales numbers. And lastly, the whole agricultural-vs-industrial product argument is bunk in my book (see above-mentioned post)

Best,
Jessie