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Historic detail

While reading a book full of pretty interesting bits of Argentine History (pity it isn't them what schools teach, we would have learned our history a lot better if so) I came across some rather curious beer trivia.

The economy in the Rio de la Plata region got started with a lot of hard work and smuggling (yeah, that's right, even from the very beginnings in Argentina, abiding to the law is the exception) and one of the most "popular" products at that time, after slaves, was beer. The book's author also quotes the writings of an Englishman, who lived in that neck of the woods during the first quarter of the 19th century, saying that public officers were bribed with bottles of beer.

The book, unfortunately, doesn't give any details about the beers. I wonder where they were from (England, I would bet), and what sort of beers they were, Porter, Pale Ale? The mentioning of bottles really caught my attention because I find it hard to believe that the beers where crossing the Atlantic in glass containers, when barrels are a lot more practical and less fragile. If I'm right, that implies that back then there were already some bottling facilities. Did they brew as well?

The official history says that the first brewery that opened in Argentina was Bieckert (nowadays reduced to a label), which was established in 1880 by an Alsatian immigrant of the same name. But was it really the first? I don't think so.

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