In the mid-1800s, when lager beer was still pretty new to the United States, Americans had to figure it out where it fit into a society that wasn’t much newer. The country was growing, it was urbanizing, it was incorporating new ethnicities and communities, and it was redefining morality almost by the day. All of these things came with public health challenges that were just as new. It didn’t take long for beer to get tangled up in the maelstrom.
