Philadelphia -
Sitting here at the Human Robot brewery in this town’s Kensington neighborhood reminds me of beer’s central role in human development. Yes, that’s right, “beer’s central role in human development.” Of course, beer has long played a major role in the demise of the human condition, as well.
In terms of civilizational progress, however, just consider that beer was the definitive driver in developing and accelerating the science and business of refrigeration. In her 2024 book “Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed our Food, our Planet, and Ourselves,” Nicola Twilley writes that, “Just as the desire for beer is thought to have motivated early hunter-gatherers to take up farming, breweries provided the all-important early investments in mechanical refrigeration; two technologies that remade the world, both fueled by the human desire for intoxication.”
The wave of German and other Northern European immigrants to the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries - especially to cities such as Milwaukee and St.Louis - brought with it huge demand not just for beer, but for very cold beer.
So much innovation stems from human desire and, yes, let’s never underestimate the human desire for intoxication. And the colder the better.
