is the society developed out of the Analysis Committee of the United States Brewers Association (USBA) that was pursuing standardized methods for the US brewing industry prior to prohibition. See prohibition. Following Repeal in the fall of 1934, meetings between the Master Brewers Association of the Americas (MBAA) and USBA led to an agreement that there should be an initial focus on malt analysis. This was followed by consideration of methods beyond malt and on October 11, 1935, the name “American Society of Brewing Chemists” was adopted, with headquarters at the Wahl-Henius Institute in Chicago and 24 member companies. Membership was then opened to individual members with a call to submit research papers to annual meetings. At the meeting in Cleveland on June 17, 1938, the by-laws were adopted establishing the structure of ASBC as it essentially is today. A Technical Committee was formed to continue the work on methods of analysis and annual meetings were set up at which papers were read. The Proceedings of the American Society of Brewing Chemists were first published in 1940, becoming the Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists in 1976.
In 1977 a joint planning committee of the ASBC and MBAA worked toward a scientific meeting encompassing both organizations, leading to the first World Brewing Congress in St. Louis, Missouri, in September 1984.
A network of local groupings within the ASBC developed from initial gatherings in Cincinnati and Philadelphia in 1952. Local sections were formally recognized in 1966, with New York holding the first such assembly. The ASBC is now headquartered as part of Scientific Societies in St. Paul, Minnesota. “ASBC methods” for the laboratory analysis of various parameters of beer quality are considered standard throughout the US brewing industry.
