Brewery

A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of beer has taken place since at least 2500 BC; in ancient Mesopotamia, brewers derived social sanction and divine protection from the goddess Ninkasi. Brewing was initially a cottage industry, with production taking place at home; by the ninth century monasteries and farms would produce beer on a larger scale, selling the excess; and by the eleventh and twelfth centuries larger, dedicated breweries with eight to ten workers were being built.

The diversity of size in breweries is matched by the diversity of processes, degrees of automation, and kinds of beer produced in breweries. A brewery is typically divided into distinct sections, with each section reserved for one part of the brewing process.

History

Beer may have been known in Neolithic Europe and was mainly brewed on a domestic scale. In some form, it can be traced back almost 5000 years to Mesopotamian writings describing daily rations of beer and bread to workers. Before the rise of production breweries, the production of beer took place at home and was the domain of women, as baking and brewing were seen as "women's work".

Miller Brewing Company

The Miller Brewing Company is a beer brewing company owned by SABMiller, headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The company has brewing facilities in Albany, Georgia; Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin; Eden, North Carolina; Fort Worth, Texas; Irwindale, California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Trenton, Ohio. On 1 July 2008, Miller formed MillerCoors, a joint venture with rival Molson Coors to consolidate the production and distribution of its products in the United States, with each parent company's corporate operations and international operations remaining separate and independent of the joint venture. The stock ticker symbol is SAB.L.

History

Miller Brewing Company was founded in 1855 by Frederick Miller when he purchased the small Plank Road Brewery. The brewery's location in the Miller Valley in Milwaukee provided easy access to raw materials produced on nearby farms. The company remained in the family until 1966.

In 1966, the conglomerate W. R. Grace and Company bought Miller from Mrs. Lorraine John Mulberger (Frederick Miller's granddaughter, who objected to alcohol) and her family. In 1969, Philip Morris (now Altria) bought Miller from W.R. Grace for $130 million, outbidding PepsiCo. In 2002, South African Breweries bought Miller from Philip Morris for $3.6 billion worth of stock and $2 billion in debt to form SABMiller, with Philip Morris retaining a 36% ownership share and 24.99% voting rights.

Miller

A miller usually refers to a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a cereal crop to make flour.

Description

Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalents in other languages around the world ("Müller" or "Mueller" in German, "Molnár" in Hungarian, "Molinero" in Spanish, "Molinaro or Molinari" in Italian etc.). Milling existed in hunter-gatherer communities, and later millers were important to the development of agriculture.

The materials ground by millers are often foodstuffs and particularly grain. The physical grinding of the food allows for the easier digestion of its nutrients and saves wear on the teeth. Non-food substances needed in a fine, powdered form, such as building materials, may be processed by a miller.

The most basic tool for a miller was the quern-stone—simply a large, fixed stone as a base and another movable stone operated by hand, similar to a mortar and pestle. As technology and millstones (the bedstone and rynd) improved, more elaborate machines such as watermills and windmills were developed to do the grinding work. These mills harnessed available energy sources including animal, water, wind, and electrical power. Mills are some of the oldest factories in human history, so factories making other items are sometimes known as mills, for example, cotton mills and steel mills. These factory workers are also called millers.

Milwaukee

Milwaukee (/mɪlˈwɔːkiː/) is the largest city in the State of Wisconsin and the fifth-largest city in the Midwestern United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the City of Milwaukee has a population of 594,833. Milwaukee is the main cultural and economic center of the Milwaukee–Racine–Waukesha Metropolitan Area with a population of 2,043,904 as of an official 2014 estimate.

The first Europeans to pass through the area were French Catholic missionaries and fur traders. In 1818, the French Canadian explorer Solomon Juneau settled in the area, and in 1846 Juneau's town combined with two neighboring towns to incorporate as the City of Milwaukee. Large numbers of German and other immigrants helped increase the city's population during the 1840s and the following decades.

Known for its brewing traditions, major new additions to the city include the Milwaukee Riverwalk, the Wisconsin Center, Miller Park, an expansion to the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and Pier Wisconsin, as well as major renovations to the UW–Milwaukee Panther Arena. In addition, many new skyscrapers, condos, lofts and apartments have been constructed in neighborhoods on and near the lakefront and riverbanks.

Miller Lite

Miller Lite, also known simply as Lite, is a 4.2% abv pale lager brand sold by MillerCoors of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. Miller Lite competes with Anheuser-Busch's Bud Light beer. The company also produces Miller Genuine Draft and Miller High Life.

History

Miller Lite was essentially the first mainstream light beer. After its first inception as "Gablinger's Diet Beer," developed in 1967 by Joseph L. Owades, PhD, a biochemist working for New York's Rheingold Brewery, the recipe was given (by the inventor of the light beer process) to one of Miller's competing breweries, Chicago's Meister Brau, which came out with the Meister Brau "Lite" brand in the late 1960s. When Meister Brau ran into financial problems and sold its labels to Miller in 1972, the recipe was relaunched simply as "Lite" on packaging and in advertising (with "Lite Beer from Miller" being its "official" name until the late '90s) in the test markets of Springfield, IL, Knoxville, TN and San Diego, CA in 1973, and heavily marketed using masculine pro sports players and other, so-called, macho figures of the day in an effort to sell to the key beer-drinking male demographic. Miller Lite was introduced nationally in 1975. Miller's approach worked where the two previous light beers had failed, and Miller's early production totals of 12.8 million barrels quickly increased to 24.2 million barrels by 1977 as Miller rose to 2nd place in the American brewing marketplace. Other brewers responded, in particular Anheuser-Busch with its heavily advertised Bud Light in 1982, which eventually overtook Lite in sales by 1994. Anheuser-Busch played on the branding style of "Lite" by highlighting the fact that their beer was called "Bud Light," as "everything else is just a light." In 1992 light beers became the biggest domestic beer in America, and in 1998, Miller relabeled its "Lite" brand as "Miller Lite."