When "Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer" by Amy Mittelman (Algora Publishing, $22.95) was published this year, the U.S. merger of Coors-Molson and SAB Miller into MillerCoors was still a big beer story. But the recent deal Belgian-based multinational brewing giant InBev struck to buy Anheuser-Busch has become even bigger news, potentially changing the face of what Joe Six-Pack considers an American icon — namely, Budweiser.

Mittelman, who holds a doctorate in history from Columbia University, with a special focus on the politics of alcohol production, has been putting the InBev/Anheuser-Busch deal into perspective on her blog (www.amymittelman.com). And her book offers a solid overview of the American brewing business and its leading figures, from Colonial days to the present, including the stories of the pioneering German immigrant brewers, the Busch family, and the contemporary entrepreneurs of craft brewing.

Algora Publishing (ENLARGE)

'Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer,' by Amy Mittelman.

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I talked to Mittelman about "Brewing Battles" and the current American beer scene. Here's some of what she had to say.

Q: Why the title "Brewing Battles"? Has American brewing always been a battleground?

A: If you look at the history of beer and the brewing industry in America, going back even to the Colonial period, it has been a battle. The early settlers came from European countries, where there was beer, and it was a battle to re-create the kind of beer they were used to drinking. When the Germans came, their struggle was to make lager beer as popular a drink in America as it was in Germany. The German brewers also had to struggle with the federal government taxing and regulating their industry. Then, of course, there was the temperance movement and Prohibition. Since then, it's been the battles between the brewers, and the neotemperance movement.

Q: In doing research for the book, what were some things that most surprised or interested you?

A: What ultimately interested me was that over this whole span of time a lot the themes stayed very similar — and that had to do with taxation and the federal presence in the industry. You can look at the late 20th century and see the brewers fighting against a tax increase, and the arguments are pretty much the same as the German brewers were using in the 1860s. But my approach to that history was not to look at Busch or Miller and read it back. I was trying to tell a more organic story about how the brewing industry developed in America.

Q: What have been the most dynamic periods for American beer?

A: From the Civil War until around 1900 was when beer was really booming. Beer became much more the standard drink in America, and there was a huge increase in the number of people drinking beer. But there was also intense competition, and the aggregate number of brewers did decline in that period. More recently, the '60s into the '70s, the number of brewers declined again, but the number of people drinking beer increased.

Q: What's your take on the smaller, craft brewing segment of the beer market?

A: In a lot of ways, the craft brewers are the descendants of those original German brewers. They developed because there was a segment of the beer drinking population that wasn't being served. Some of that was met by imports, and the early craft brewers essentially positioned themselves like an import to tap into that market. Now they try to base their appeal on being local and authentic. Authenticity is a big thing in our society now with all kinds of products. People want to buy things that they know where and how it was produced.

Q: Taking off your historian hat for a minute, what's your personal reaction to the InBev/Anheuser-Busch deal?

A: I was a little surprised by the deal. Anheuser-Busch has certainly been effective representing itself as a monolith that couldn't change. But as a historian and an observer of American society, the whole nature of our economy is change. I don't really feel like it's a tragedy for America or anything. People say that it's iconic and that it defines America, but that's not really what I want to define America. When Anheuser-Busch got 50 percent [of the parent company] of Corona, should Mexicans have been upset?

Q: After the InBev deal goes through, who will be able to lay claim to the title of the biggest American brewery?

A: MillerCoors will have a hard time doing that, since they're owned by a South African company. Anheuser-Busch is still going to try — they're about to come out with Budweiser American Ale. Pabst only has 3 percent of the beer market, and they're really a marketing company, since Pabst is brewed by MillerCoors. Boston Beer Co. and its label Sam Adams has had some of the same perception problems. I think that the bigger craft brewers — like Sierra Nevada — will have the best claim. But we'll have to wait and see.