Okay, it never even occured  to me that beer would be brewed and shipped
long distances during the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, as some
of the readers are starting to suggest. We all learn something new every
day.

My original query had to do with what was going on in the late nineteenth
century. Something is rattling around in my brain telling me that improved
glass bottle making techniques (especially automation, which considerably
cut the cost of manufacture), combined with beer pastuerization
technologies, combined with increased demands caused by mass German
migrations after the 1850s had all sort of coelesced by the 1880s to make
it as cheap and easy to ship beer in bottles as in kegs. What the
break-even point is, I don't know.

I can't dredge out of my increasingly elderly brain where I got this
notion, and was hoping someone out there had dealt with the matter somewhat
more recently than I. Perhaps Greg Dubell's references will help.

However, Margan, I think there are far more variables than just pre- and
post-Russian for you to be thinking about in Alaska. It is an Alaskan gold
rush site I am dealing with myself. The point at which it becomes
economically feasible to bring vast quantities of higher quality "imported"
beers in bottles versus the locally brewed beers -- if a community had a
brewery -- is one such variable. Early in a community's life, whisky may
have been the drink of choice because it was easier to dispose of than
dozens of bottles of beer if the customs agent came around. I am even
beginning to suspect the proprietor of my saloon may have deliberately
destroyed his stock to avoid the $100 fine (worth about $2000 in today's
dollars).

Any other thoughts?

[log in to unmask]

PS.

The person who wrote the thesis you were looking at obviously did not see
the report I wrote on a Russian deposit  in Sitka, Alaska. There was a good
deal of bottle glass in that trash pit, much of it medicinal and related to
the Russian hospital. To say the Russians had no bottle glass is totally
erroneous.





                      "Grover, Margan A POA02"
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                      E.ARMY.MIL>                        cc:
                      Sent by: HISTORICAL                Subject:  Re: beer in glass bottles
                      ARCHAEOLOGY
                      <[log in to unmask]>


                      03/17/03 10:10 AM PST
                      Please respond to
                      HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY






_When_ did they start shipping whiskey in bottles, for that matter? And
_who_? I was just reading about 'spirits' for the normal working joe being
shipped in barrels in the 19th C. to Russian America. However, they were
getting most supplies from the HBC after 1839.  I was also reading a thesis
that posed the idea that glass was not preferred for shipping because it
broke easily (during overland trips, especially). He took it further,
stating that the presence of bottle glass would therefore be an indicator
of a post Alaska purchase (1867) occupation.


What do you think of that?


Margan Allyn Grover