During the second half of the nineteenth century European breweries were experiencing a transitional phase from which the modern brewing industry emerged. It is true that large-scale brewing had existed in England since the eighteenth century, but even there decisive changes occurred during the course of the 1880s, especially in market conditions, which encouraged latent tendencies to concentration among the breweries and ushered in a new phase of their development.

On the European continent traditional markets were breaking up rapidly. The doctrines of economic liberalism and free trade were attracting support from more and more countries during the 1860s and 1870s. Whereas previously brewers had been hindered by the narrowness of the local market, resulting in part from the limited keeping qualities of the product, and had thus been unable to find outlets for their energies save within limited non-brewing fields of enterprise, the brewery itself now became the arena for their ingenuity and for the free play offerees. Although the national market was indubitably the mainstay of practically all the leading breweries of the day, the idea of beer as an article of export was a motivating factor in the establishment of many new firms.

Outside Europe, the American brewing industry entered upon a period of phenomenal growth after the Civil War, the most successful breweries being transformed by the 1880s from regional enterprises to firms spanning the entire continent, producing and bringing to the market standardized products under their own control, and also creating extensive purchasing organizations to ensure a continuous flow of raw materials into their new mass-producing facilities.