Ogle says the Bud brand was started by one of Busch's friends, Carl Conrad. Louis, Mo., he didn't just run into Eberhard Anheuser - he married his daughter and took over the small brewery that Anheuser, a prosperous soap-maker, had acquired.Īlso, neither Anheuser nor Busch was the source of the original Budweiser. Historian Maureen Ogle, author of Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer, says that when Busch arrived in St. Despite the beer giant's protestations that the ad is not political, it has hit a nerve among conservatives for taking a seemingly pro-immigrant stance at a time of widespread protests against President Trump's ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations.īut lost in all the brouhaha is the true story of the 19th-century German immigrants behind the rise of American brewing.įirst, let's start with a little historical nitpicking with that ad. Louis and meeting Eberhard Anheuser - i.e., the Anheuser in Anheuser-Busch. The ad depicts the company's founder trudging through swamps and mud, surviving a steamboat fire and being greeted with outright hostility before getting to St. So begins Budweiser's new Super Bowl ad, released earlier this week into an ongoing political maelstrom over immigration. 'You don't look like you're from around here,' a young Adolphus Busch is told as he arrives in America from Germany to pursue his dream of making beer.

Ambitious Brew by Maureen Ogle