American beer is such an appealing and enduring notion — the wholesome drink of the country’s founders, baseball, summer barbecues — that it’s easy to forget it had to be invented.

In the 1940s and ’50s, for instance, a trade association labored mightily to reposition beer as a “friendly” all-American beverage, taking it out of the saloon and into the backyard. The group’s “Home Life in America” ad campaign depicted Cleaveresque families hoisting tall glasses in a comically comprehensive array of domestic settings: picnicking at the beach, playing horseshoes, clustering around a taxidermied ram’s head while greeting the “uncle from the West.” The campaign’s slogan was “Beer Belongs.” To whom? To us.

Today, of course, American beer still belongs to America — sort of. American breweries have opened satellite locations in Berlin and Bangalore, India. The grand finale of last month’s Paris Beer Week featured more than 40 French craft breweries, virtually all of which have dabbled in hoppy American-influenced India pale ales. Even in an era of “America First,” our beer isn’t enjoyed just in our backyards. It is a tireless and affable diplomat, beloved abroad no matter the conditions back home.

This globalization is particularly palpable among the sometimes ridiculous, always enthusiastic fanatics known as beer geeks.