Oddbean

GM 🍎 Crazy food history story of the week: Johnny Appleseed - John Chapman was in actuality a businessman who moved with the frontier and planted apple trees for homesteaders who were required by law to plant fruit trees. But since he was a very religious and legalistic man, he refused to graft trees and would only grow them from seed - as god intended, which produced nearly inedible apple fruits across the entire US because apples mutate every generation as a defense mechanism. Within 30 years, all of John Chapman’s apple orchards were converted to cider breweries and the US had one of the largest cider industries in the world until the 1870s when WOMEN organized to burn down almost all the cider orchards. Then we imported beer from Germany and that is how America became a beer drinking country. 🤣 if you didn’t know, now you know. Cheers 🍻 #foodhistory #beer #appletrees #johnnyappleseed

You prematurely ended that sentence. It should be "Then we imported beer from Germany and that is how America became a beer drinking country, as god intended". I do like ciders though, and this is a good example of humans and nature working in symbiosis for the common good.

There was a large influx of German immigrants pre-ww1 who started their own breweries and helped spread the beer culture. I find it interesting that planting apples or pears was a requirement for land claiming!