American Beer Facts

1. Beer was the reason the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. It's clear from the Mayflower's log that the crew didn't want to waste beer looking for a better site. The log goes on to state that the passengers "were hasted ashore and made to drink water that the seamen might have the more beer." On their arrival, the pilgrims immediately built a common house, which included a brewery!
2. Pennsylvania has had more breweries in its history than any other state. In 1910 alone, 119 of the state's towns had at least one licensed beermaker.
3. Bottle caps, or "crowns," were invented in Baltimore in 1892 by William Painter. Painter proved his invention's worth when he convinced a local brewer to ship a few hundred cases of beer to South America and back and they returned without a leak.
4. In the US, a barrel contains 31 gallons of beer.
5. The first beer cans were produced in 1935.
6. In 1788, ale was proclaimed "the proper drink for Americans" at a parade in New York City.
7. The United States two-dollar bill features three brewers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams. In fact, George Washington installed a brewhouse on his grounds at Mount Vernon.
8. The beer-drinkingest day in America isn't Super Bowl Sunday but...the Fourth of July.
9. George Washington loved London porter, a forerunner to stout, and led one of the first-ever "buy-American" campaigns in an effort to get citizens of the new nation to start drinking American-made porter instead of the British variety.
10. Anheuser-Busch uses rice in its Budweiser formula; with Bud Light the No. 1 selling beer in America and Bud No. 2, Anheuser-Busch consumes about 15% of the entire U.S. rice crop.
11. The first six-pack of beer was produced by the Pabst Brewery in the 1940s. The brewery conducted numerous studies, which found six cans were the ideal weight for the average housewife to carry home from the store.
12. The average American annually consumes 23.1 gallons of beer.