Following the path of my Grandma Johnson involves lots of borders and boat rides. I wish that she were around today that I could talk to her about it. First, her family moved from Germany to the Russia (well Ukraine) before she was born, then when things got a might unstable there, my great-grandfather George Brutke took the brood of 8 to Bremen to sail to New York. But they didn’t stop there. They moved onto to Galveston and then into the interior of Texas. But they were not done. They then took the train to Portland but did not stop there either. Instead moving further west to Amity, Oregon. Close to where I went to college in McMinnville.
The geo-politics and the sociology of immigration is current now and was current then as well. I went in search of beer (on the internet, not going to Ukraine right now, being an American and all) that came from the Rivno (now Rivni Oblast (basically a state).
There is a bit, not much in what we call craft Rіvnenskiy Pivovarniy Zavod Riven produces a few beers with the Bergschloss name which harkens back to the 1900 Bergschloss Steam Beer Joint-Stock Plant and a wave of Czech immigrants who brought their beer love to a new country. (Sound familiar?) Nationalization of commerce under the Soviet government probably dulled the growth though.
Throughout the year, I am going to post about the places that my grandma landed and stayed and try to find some beers to taste from that trail that led to me.
