a container used to take draught beer out of a bar or restaurant for consumption off of the premises. In the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s most beer was consumed on draught. Families would routinely send someone, usually a woman or a child, to the local saloon to bring home beer for the evening meal. The container used was often literally a galvanized steel pail, sometimes with a lid to prevent the beer from spilling out on the journey. The container, which sometimes apparently rumbled with escaping carbonation, was dubbed a “growler,” and the person carrying it was said to be “rushing the growler.” Pre-Prohibition saloon-keepers catered to the growler trade, often with a small service window to the saloon referred to euphemistically as the “family entrance.” There, it was possible for women and children to rush the growler without walking through the saloon to the bar.

The popularity of the growler was a point of considerable contention in American society. Children lined up outside of factories to pick up pails from working men, rushing them back from the saloon in time for lunch. Antialcohol crusaders, hoping to keep men away from saloons, decried the fact that beer was so easily brought home. It was not unknown for children to sample the beer before it arrived at its intended destination.

The tradition of rushing the growler largely disappeared after Prohibition, but the growler is today reborn as a glass jug used to bring craft-brewed beer home from bars, shops, and brewpubs. The usual size is the US half gallon (1.9 l). These days the jug, filled directly from the taps, does not growl—it has a lid, often a screw cap. Many craft breweries and brewpubs produce some beers that are available only on draught, and beer enthusiasts are understandably very happy to be able to take these special beers home. Growlers have become big business for many small breweries, and some beer shops do a brisk trade in them.

Growlers remain contentious, but for different reasons than those of days past. Brewery owners and beer enthusiasts may be happy about growlers, but the brewers themselves tend to be conflicted. Although some establishments attach a tube to the tap spigot to fill the jug without much foaming, the brewer knows that the beer is losing carbonation and picking up damaging oxygen. The growler is rarely flushed with CO2 or filled under counterpressure. And although the growler is hopefully clean (customers are often encouraged to recycle them), it is usually not sterile. The establishment filling the growler may tell the customer to drink the beer within a few days, but customers often pay little heed. The growler is also so large that people will often drink part of the bottle and then recap it to be consumed later. Although some wines will stand up to such treatment, beer rarely can. The brewer designs a beer to be served on draught or from a meticulously filled bottle, but the average growler setup can undo the brewer’s hard work within seconds. If consumed quickly, the beer may be almost as good as it was at the bar. At worst, it will be the beer equivalent of a fine restaurant meal scraped into a bag, refrigerated for days, and then heated up in a microwave: in short, the brewer’s worst nightmare. Some companies are starting to sell “growler filling stations” that are essentially miniature bottling lines; these flush out air, replace it with CO2, and then fill the growler under pressure. These stations can work quite well, but such systems are expensive. It seems that the growler is back and here to stay, but it remains to be seen whether brewers will insist upon proper quality or look the other way as the cash is counted across the bar.

See also oxidation.