Rob Kasper describes a cherished local industry that rose before Baltimore’s streets were paved in the 18th century, that flourished with the influx of German immigrants in the mid-19th and that came perilously close to vanishing forever in the late 20th.

But “Baltimore Beer: A Satisfying History of Charm City Brewing” by the longtime Baltimore Sun feature writer, is more than just an account of the fortunes of the city’s masters of using malt, water, hops and grain to create an ethereal buzz.

It’s also the tale of how a blue-collar city, stripped of most of its manufacturing jobs by America’s economic riptides, lost and later rediscovered an industry that for at least a century helped it define itself.

The rise of the craft beer movement of course occurred across the nation, starting a few decades back.

“It dovetailed, in my mind, with people’s interest in American cuisine and American food,” Kasper told The Brew in an interview. “I also think that there was enough disposable income so people could try different beers.”

But William Faulkner might have been thinking of Baltimore when he wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Here, the rebirth of locally-brewed beers has had a special poignance. “Baltimore has time and time again shown itself ridiculously loyal,” Kasper says.

English colonists brought beer to America, of course. But it was German families with names like Rost, Bauernschmidt and Wiessner who built the breweries and beer gardens that made Baltimore a town of lagers as well as ales.

They came, Kasper says, because of the Revolutions of 1848, popular revolts that shook nations across Europe – and in particular the states that would become modern-day Germany.

These refugees and their descendants wanted German-style beer. To make it, they built breweries. To drink it communally, as they did in the homeland, they built vast beer gardens ­ including Carroll Park. The Zion Lutheran Church on East Lexington Street, founded by wealthy Germans, was nicknamed the Brewer’s Church.

The 20th century brought two wars with Germany and the fading of German cultural traditions. Prohibition devastated the brewing industry, try as Baltimore might to pretend the Volstead Act didn’t apply to the banks of the Jones Falls.

Repeal took beer back to the bar and the kitchen table, but corporate consolidations, the advent of refrigeration and the plummeting cost of shipping goods, first across the nation and later the world, applied relentless competitive pressures.

Local brands went out of business or became the property of out-of-state owners through mergers and acquisitions.

Signature Baltimore labels like the National Brewing Company’s National Premium became just one in a line of products after a merger or acquisition, Kasper says.

When it was still brewed by a local company, National Premium was served in “regal” 12-ounce bottles, was considered one of the best of its era. But by the time it’s out-of-town owners stopped brewing it, Kasper says, it was only available in plebian cans.

The Return of Baltimore Suds

The story of Baltimore and its beers has something like a happy ending. America’s thirst for quality turned out to be unquenchable. A significant fraction of drinkers decided that the mass market stuff they were buying wasn’t nearly as good as the brews made by craftsmen and craftswomen, who didn’t have to appeal to least-common-denominator tastes.

The craft brew movement came to Baltimore in 1988, with the founding of the British Brewing Co. in an industrial park in Glen Burnie.

A year later Hugh Sisson , once an aspiring actor, opened a small brewing operation in the family’s Cross Street bar, Sisson’s, turning it into the state’s first modern-era brewpub.

The same year, Theo DeGroen, originally from the Netherlands, opened the Baltimore Brewing Co. at Albemarle and Lombard Streets, near the Flag House, producing beers that developed a cult following.

DeGroen broke more than one city beer lover’s heart when he moved to Germany to run another brewery, and decided he couldn’t keep his Baltimore brewpub open. “That was some of the best beer Baltimore’s ever seen,” Kasper says wistfully.

In his book, Kapser composes this requiem for the Baltimore Brewing Co.: “In February 2005, after fifteen years of brewing German-style beers that made men weep with joy, that helped transform scholarly librarians into high-fiving football fans and that encouraged city building inspectors to rub shoulders with professors, doctors and museum docents, the Baltimore Brewing Co. stopped brewing.”

The good news, Kasper writes, is that the tradition DeGroen started wasn’t lost.

Some of his former employees went to work for the Victory Brewing Co. in Pennsylvania. Kasper says their Victory Prima Pils, sold here, “is very close to the pilsner that DeGroen brewed.”

Today, he writes, the city is in the midst of “a beer boom.” The ranks of craft brewers in Maryland is poised to expand to at least twenty, and National Premium is planning a return to the market.

Among Kasper’s favorite local beers? Resurrection Ale, by the Brewer’s Art on Charles Street, is one. Another is Loose Cannon by the brewer Heavy Seas, which recently opened an alehouse on Central Avenue and Bank Street.

Kasper, who has written movingly about barbecue as well as beer, says he is also fond of Frederick, Md.’s, Flying Dog brand, which pays Gonzo artist Ralph Steadman – who illustrated Hunter Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” – to design its labels.

“They’re wonderfully artistic, if sometimes hard to read,” Kasper says.

“Baltimore Beer: A Satisfying History of Charm City Brewing,” by Rob Kasper. Foreword by Boog Powell and photography by Jim Burger. Published in 2012 by The History Press, Charleston, S.C.

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– And in other suds-related news: for more than you knew you wanted to know about beer cans, check this 2010 Brew story by Mark Reutter.