The Thanksgiving Story... of Beer

Have you ever wondered, like I have, whether the Pilgrims drank beer at the first Thanksgiving? Or perhaps what other type of interesting roles beer may have played in the Thanksgiving story? You could research it on the interwebs, and you would find a treasure trove of useful and not so useful tid bits to both enlighten and confuse you to no end. Or, you could continue reading this blog post, in which I will attempt to answer your questions, based on my own research of the endless cascades of information the interwebs has to offer. This is of course, like all of the posts found on this blog, one beer-obsessed blogger’s opinion. Let’s begin.

A very valid question.

 

Like so many attempts to define the role of beer throughout history, this one falls into the category of “it’s difficult to say for sure.” Record keeping, or more accurately a lack thereof, is once again betraying those of us who seek the truth today. We’ve all heard the story that the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, rather than their actual destination of Virginia, because they were out of beer. One diary entry indicates:

 

“We could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer.”

 

Obviously, the question you have to ask yourself, based on this excerpt, is “without beer, would there have even been a Thanksgiving in the first place?”

 

But for every claim of diary entries, usually the diary of the captain of the Mayflower, suggesting a lack of beer caused the Pilgrims to make landfall early, there are also indications that the entire story was concocted by BIG BEER in order to sell more beer. So let’s stop looking for the smoking gun for a second and examine what we know about the Pilgrims and their voyage.

 

Been there bro. Been there.

The first question I asked myself is “Did the Pilgrims actually drink beer in the first place?” After all, they were religious puritans who were fleeing oppression in England. As easy as it is to assume that they wouldn’t drink due to religious beliefs, I think that the answer is actually yes. Bottom line – water was not safe to drink back then. Wine and beer were what people drank – to live, particularly on long sea voyages and when trying to eke out an existence in a new place.

 

So if they did drink beer, what kind of beer would it have been? Again, consider the facts. This adventure started in 1600s England. Based on the beer timeline, we know that most of your traditional English beers (porters, stout porters, pale ales and IPAs) weren’t invented yet. The closest contemporary style to what I’m assuming they would’ve had is some sort of bitter ale. Also, keep in mind that it was probably a small beer, or beer brewed with low gravity, because a) it was common at the time and b) higher gravity means more sugar, which means higher likelihood of spoiling. They didn’t understand the science at the time, but they did know that weaker beer didn’t spoil as quickly, which was particularly important when traveling across oceans in a wooden ship.

 

Then, of course, there is this business of the Pilgrims being dumped off on Plymouth Rock due to low beer supplies. Most people who make this claim point to the diary of the Mayflower’s captain, Christopher Jones, as the proof. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, Captain Jones either didn’t keep a diary, or it was lost, because nobody has actually ever seen it. The diary entries that we do have, that indicate beer supply problems, weren’t written until years after the actual events.

 

You never want to show up empty handed.

Here’s what we do know. The Mayflower didn’t leave England on time. It was supposed to set sail in the spring with its sister ship, the Speedwell. At first they were delayed due to debt negotiation problems, and then, when they finally did get underway, the Speedwell began to take on water. They turned both ships around, left the Speedwell in England, crammed everyone from both ships onto the Mayflower, filled the remaining space on the ship with as many supplies as would fit, and set sail for Virginia on September 6th. Imagine this for a second. Yes, they were probably well below comfortable levels on provisions, but they were also racing against Mother Nature to get to their destination before winter. When they reached the Americas on November 9th, they knew they were in the wrong spot, but as House Stark would say, winter was coming. I agree that the “running out of beer” theory is better storytelling, but it’s much more likely in this blogger’s opinion that the real reason wasn’t that they were out of beer, but rather that they were out of time.

 

Another popular tale, often told with the above “running out of beer” story, is that the first building the Pilgrims built in Plymouth was a brewery. Not likely. They had just spent the better part of two months on a ship, winter was upon them, and people were starting to die. The first structures they built were shelters – four of them, in order to protect the 102 settlers who made landfall. In fact, of those 102 settlers, only 45 survived the first winter. I find it very unlikely that anybody’s priority would’ve been a brewery.

 

We shall call it Thanksgiving. And it shall be
celebrated throughout the land. And we will all drink
beer and get loaded! AMERICA!!!

It’s also unlikely that the first Thanksgiving included beer. The famous dinner with the Native Americans, which was actually a three-day long harvest festival, occurred in October of 1621, long after the Mayflower had left and the supplies from England were gone. There is evidence that the Pilgrims planted barley during the first year in Plymouth, but there is no indication that it was used to brew beer, and most likely wasn’t since barley wasn’t grown in the New World in large enough amounts to support a brewing operation until the late 1700s. It is possible that they drank beer during the first official Thanksgiving celebration feast two years later in July of 1623, as more colonists and more supplies would’ve arrived by then. Beer probably became more and more common with every subsequent celebration of Thanksgiving, particularly once the founders took to growing barley and brewing beer in America. And of course, when George Washington proclaimed the first nation-wide Thanksgiving celebration in America, you can bet he served beer.

 

So what have we learned? It is likely that the Pilgrims drank beer, though certainly more for health reasons than celebratory reasons. It is, however, unlikely that lack of beer was the primary reason for the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock as opposed to continuing on to their destination of Virginia. It is also unlikely that their first building was a brewery, and it is equally unlikely that they drank beer with the Native Americans during the Thanksgiving harvest festival in 1621. Finally, it is likely that beer played a significant role in early observations and celebrations of the Thanksgiving holiday in America.

 

Here’s to craft-brewed happiness… Cheers!