Exploring “Hopped Up”: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Transformed Beer into a Global Sensation

Approximately a decade ago, upon my arrival at the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery nestled in the mountainous town of Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico, I was thrilled that the manager I had previously communicated with had organized a private tour for me. Established in 1896, the Moctezuma Brewery was rescued from insolvency when it was acquired by the gigantic Cuauhtémoc Brewery of Mexico in 1985. It is internationally recognized for its Dos Equis amber lager and for Sol, the light, golden, pilsner-style beer that is now distributed in more than 70 nations worldwide. On that particular day, the guide and I commenced our visit in the gallery chronicling the company’s history before proceeding to a small room where a team of scientists, enclosed behind a glass partition, monitored the mash tuns—large metal vessels—where the fermenting wort bubbled away.

After a few additional stops, we exited the building and wandered through an interior plaza towards the automated bottling and packaging lines. While we conversed, I noticed the outer wall of the fermentation building (which I was not permitted to enter), prominently displaying the vibrant green and red emblem of the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery alongside the well-known Heineken logo. Knowing that FEMSA, the parent company of the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery, had sold its brewing interests to Heineken in 2010 for a 20 percent stake in the large Dutch corporation, I remarked to the guide, “Así es, Heineken ahora es dueño de Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma.” The guide swiftly corrected me, saying, “No, somos socios.”

Hopped Up, How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity by Jeffrey M. Pilcher (Oxford University Press, 2024, 341 pages).

Correcting my assertion that Heineken owned the brewery, the guide insisted, “No, we are partners”—a statement that encapsulated the global ties, national pride, and brand loyalty that have elevated pilsner to the status of the world’s favored beer style. Hopped Up, How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity, penned by Jeffrey M. Pilcher, narrates the extensive and complex story of how this luminous, effervescent, golden libation became a global commodity. In his most persuasive moments, Pilcher illustrates how nearly all contemporary beers—from commercial brands like Tsingtao to pioneering craft brews such as Allagash White—form part of a beer commodity chain stemming from three pivotal moments in brewing history: the medieval inception of hopped beer, the emergence of 19th-century mass production, and mid-20th-century advancements in efficiency and brewing techniques.

Unlike certain commodity analyses and various beer histories, this account contains no heroes or villains (with the possible exception of the craft brewing sector, which will be discussed further below). Pilcher is not beholden to any specific ideology or entity, including nostalgia, notions of authenticity and purity, or prescriptive theories or historiographies. Instead, he generously explores the evolving meanings and styles of beer as brewing techniques, conceptualizations, ingredients, and individuals created and navigated global networks of trade, skill, and taste over countless centuries. As he posits, pilsner was not merely a catalyst for globalization, but also a product of it.

Some aspects of brewing history are well-trodden ground, and elements of these themes appear in Pilcher’s examination as well. Hopped Up distinguishes itself, however, by investigating how the rich history and interconnectivity of various fermented beverages worldwide contributed to the emergence of pilsner as a global commodity. The book maintains a linear narrative, yet broadens its trajectory geographically, challenging the tightly constructed, narrowly defined origin stories found in certain beer histories. Pilcher links these varied global narratives by revealing their common roots in social transformations such as industrial capitalism, commodification, and globalization that dictated the mobilities and exchanges that defined global brewing. Notably, some of the terminology presumes knowledge that may extend beyond the casual reader’s grasp.

This narrative is grand in scope. Chapter one offers an overview of pre-capitalist drinking cultures and fermented beverages globally. From maize beer in the Andes to the millet-, rice-, and legume-based beers in China, brewers utilized a diverse array of local grains and additives to craft their beverages. Chapter two immerses the reader in the medieval period, when the introduction of hops initiated a golden age of innovative brewing technologies that turned beer into a commodity capable of traversing greater distances than ever. The advent of industrialization in early modern Germany and England quickly followed, leading not only to the proliferation of industrial lagers but also to the increasing mobility of people, technologies, capital, and ideas that reshaped the production and trade of local fermented drinks such as pulque in Mexico and sake in Japan. Pilcher frames this as a globalizing phenomenon, albeit with a distinctly Western perspective. This is to be anticipated; Hopped Up chronicles the history of how pilsner came to dominate global markets and consumer preferences. However, connections between examples outside Europe and the United States concerning the ascendancy of pilsner could be elaborated more explicitly.

Hopped Up subsequently examines the new technologies, often-conceived geographies, and mobilities of goods, inputs, skill, people, and ideas throughout Europe that facilitated the emergence of pilsner as a commodity. Following this, chapter four presents a captivating analysis of how European-style beers trailed the global currents of imperial trade and rivalry. As European immigrant brewers superseded European exporters, Pilcher probes into how they contended with local fermented beverage makers, who stubbornly adhered to their domestic brewing traditions despite regulations, commercial pressures, consumer preferences, and the colonialists’ racial anxieties working against them.

The ensuing chapters delineate the vast, albeit uneven concentration of the brewing industry globally throughout the 20th century. Consolidations driven by more effective technologies and transportation, as well as by mass marketing that heavily relied on nationalist endeavors, resulted in a surge of large-scale industrial brewers who submerged regionally unique lagers in a deluge of pilsners. This phenomenon was particularly pronounced in Europe, yet owing to the region’s extensive and varied brewing legacy, the degree of concentration there was moderate compared to that of the Americas and China. Chapter five’s sharpest analysis scrutinizes how local racial initiatives played a crucial role in the consolidation of the industry. According to Pilcher, as the nation emerged as the primary political entity, beer was harnessed as a means of expressing shared identities and economic advancement that solidified the transition towards pale lagers and drove alternative beverages out of the market. Chapter six expands on this narrative, exploring the mergers and managerial transformations thatreshaped the framework of the sector in the latter part of the 20th century. By emphasizing non-European scenarios, this section illustrates how corporate aggressors established international conglomerates that prioritized profit over product excellence. Initially, advertising executives, followed by investment bankers, sidelined brewing experts as they hurried to export “exotic” beers from regions such as Jamaica and South Africa for consumption by affluent consumers in Europe and the United States. Contemporary marketing may have attached labels of authenticity or tradition to many of these beers as they reached shelves globally, but these notions only retained significance due to beer’s commodification.

One might think Pilcher would direct the majority of his critique towards these global aggressors, yet he instead reserves his most pointed criticisms for craft brewers, particularly in the United States and Europe. While praising their creativity and passion for revitalizing unique beer cultures in the face of conglomerates like AB-InBev and Carlsberg, he questions their assertions of spearheading a revolution. For instance, he highlights that while craft brewers advocate for rugged individualism, they depend on the same global technologies and supply chains as the larger brewers, and have developed parallel knowledge networks and professional associations. In spite of their diverse messaging, he argues that their IPAs and sours are capitalist products just like the mass-produced beers they disdain. Pilcher also condemns their self-righteousness, contending that their social interactions, fabricated language of connoisseurship, and workplace customs are entrenched in white-male exclusivity that has rendered the craft beer realm a challenging environment for non-male and non-white brewers. Perhaps neither better nor worse than the conglomerates, his resentment stems from what he perceives as the movement’s deceitful claims to moral supremacy, which are contradicted by its misogyny and questionable labor practices.

Because Hopped Up traverses such extensive historical terrain, I occasionally yearned for a touch more profundity. Nonetheless, it is a brilliant voyage through the narrative of one of the world’s most famed beverages penned by one of the world’s leading scholars of food and drink. And it is a narrative that persists. In 2023, FEMSA detached itself from its holdings in Heineken, reselling them back to the conglomerate for over $3.5 billion. Although entirely foreign-owned, Sol continues its rise as one of Mexico’s rapidly expanding beers. First brewed in 1899 in the mountains of Veracruz, millennials in the United States now propel its international sales, attracted to the beer by its recent “Taste the Sun” promotion. Surely brewers in 1840s Plzen were unaware that their newly created beer would eventually transform into a pilsner-style brew with ownership in Europe, markets in Asia and Africa, and an identity linked not to Bohemian hops, but to the Mexican sun.

Susan Gauss is a historian and author of Made in Mexico, Regions, Nation and the State in the Rise of Mexican Industrialism, 1920s-1940s (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010). She is an Associate Professor of Latin American and Iberian Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her current inquiries concentrate on Mexico’s brewing sector. She was a 2011-12 David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Visiting Scholar.