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The Modernized Brewery Complex (As demand for beer grew incrementally by the 1850s, spurred on by waves of German immigrants with a taste for fresh lager beer, breweries were obliged to keep pace with the advancing demand for product. In this excerpt from Over the Barrel, Volume One, we see how Cincinnati's breweries incorporated new technology to expand and revolutionize how beer was produced and distributed at a particularly formative point in time.) For early Cincinnati brewers of the 1810s and 1820s, such as Davis Embree and William Floyd, output was small compared with that of later producers. The manufacture of 10,000 barrels per year was a substantial amount for the period, and in most cases ales were made and packaged strictly for local consumption; lag time between brewing, kegging, delivery, and consumption was kept to a minimum, often only a matter of days for top-fermented brews. In Cincinnati most beer was sold on draft and in the immediate vicinity, at local saloons and restaurants, bottled beer remaining a novelty to most consumers before the 1870s-a product for the export trade and at least twice as expensive as draft beer manufactured locally. But the limited scale on which malt liquor had been produced and sold before the lager revolution rapidly became a hindrance, when increased demand spurred brewers to expand existing facilities and incorporate new technology designed to produce more beer and make the brewing process more cost efficient in a competitive marketplace.
The phenomenal change and growth experienced by Cincinnati breweries became readily apparent by the late nineteenth century, particularly when contrasted with the appearance of a typical early- to mid-nineteenth century brewing facility. At the time most brewery operations were contained within a single building. The brewhouse, the center of activity, on occasion was a two-story structure, in which brewing operations proceeded through each step, from the top of the building to the bottom; gravity and centrifugal force were utilized to maintain a downward flow of product, to take full advantage of circumstances inherent in nature. As late as the early 1860s such small, primarily family-oriented operations remained typical-particularly in smaller cities and towns-as demonstrated by an 1862 account of a rural small brewery, provided by a German brewer traveling through America: Somewhat aside, in the woods, located near a clear and bubbling spring, there is a small house, with a single living-room, and a shed made of boards, containing the diminutive brewing copper and the correspondingly small mashing tub. The malt-kiln is of about the size of a baking oven, the hall of the house serves as a malting floor, and the cellar, equipped [with] a few small vessels serving as fermenting tubs, may measure three and a half to four square meters. All the labor is performed by the brewer, generally assisted only by his wife. In close proximity the horse finds rich pasture in the woods. Inside the brewhouse, tanks, kettles, and vats often were open, allowing brewers to monitor directly virtually every step of the process and providing them with easy access to their handiwork. This proved to be a blessing for most brewers, since the brewing process was far from an exact science. Fermentation remained a mystery, and the character of the brews often varied from one batch to the next due to inexact measurements of ingredients and an inability to control-or understand-external variables such as airborne yeasts and quality of brewing water. The American brewing industry up to the middle of the nineteenth century was characterized by a process conducted almost entirely by hand, with a minimum of mechanical or scientific assistance. Without question the most important early technological advancement in the brewery facility was the consistent use of steam power. Steam engines, utilized much earlier in England, first were used on a large scale in America in the 1850s, and while the new technology inevitably improved the brewing process, it also took observers by surprise: The engine is sixteen horse power. It can, at the same time, grind the malt, sift it, throw it into the mash tub, let in boiling water that it has made to boil, stir up the malt and water, draw it off, pump it up stairs and throw it into the kettle, heat the kettle of liquid until it boils, throw it out into the coolers, cool it, force and carry it off into vats, ferment it, chafe it, and draw it off beer. With a little practice the engine could be taught to drink the beer.
Cincinnati brewers proved no less receptive to the steam engine, as evidenced by a February 1856 report in the Covington Journal: "This engine is simple, compact and cheap. It works as its name indicates, with regularity and without jar or noise. One of twelve-horse power, consuming a quarter of a cord of wood, or four bushels of coal in twelve hours, does all the pumping, hoisting, fanning, &c., at Geisbauer's extensive brewery." The wonder that accompanied the introduction of the steam engine was seen with great frequency beginning in the 1870s, when the modern brewery began to come of age. Many technological improvements and innovations, readily available for the first time during the decade, helped brewers to modernize and become more efficient during the latter part of the nineteenth century and substantially refined the brewing process. Cincinnati brewers were quick to pick up on new developments, in an effort to gain an advantage at a time of heavy competition within the industry; several such innovations had a revolutionary impact upon the ability of a given brewery to expand and maximize profit potential. Elevators helped transport people and materials with greater efficiency and in greater quantities. Hoists helped lift and lower heavy objects, such as machinery and large volumes of brewing ingredients, and freed up manpower for use elsewhere. Pumps-such as those for brine, air, and deep wells made by Cincinnati entrepreneur John H. McGowan, and installed in local and external markets including the John H. Nusser National Brewery of Pittsburgh-allowed beer and various vital liquids, including cleaning water, to be sent anywhere within the brewery complex, which in turn allowed brewers to break free of the constraints of the gravity system. Keg scrubbers eliminated one of the most tedious manual tasks in the brewery, as did mechanical bottle washers and sterilizers for those in the export trade. During subsequent decades electricity took the place of steam in generating power within the brewery complex, helping new machines to work more efficiently and providing reliable access to new innovations such as improved lighting. In Cincinnati the Bullock Electric Manufacturing Company was recognized by industry leaders as a pioneer in the movement to apply electricity within the brewery complex, when it made its first delivery of a new class of motor to the Wiedemann Brewing Company in 1888 and installed the entire electrical equipment of the Consumers Park Brewing Company of Brooklyn-the first brewery in the nation to adopt electrical power exclusively. But not all technological innovations were geared toward the brewery workplace. Telephones and dictaphones made communication easier within the brewery, but also with others who worked away from the plant and among distributorships and retail outlets serviced by the brewery. To improve delivery service, trucks replaced expensive horses and wagons into the early twentieth century and provided quicker, more reliable service with considerable long-term cost savings, as demonstrated in contemporary advertising materials for a truck manufacturing company: Outside of its advertising value to its owners, [the brewery delivery truck] is taking the place of two team drawn trucks, thereby dispensing with one driver-and its up-keep expense is much lower than for one team of horses. [The] trucks are well built and are reliable-they stand up under the most severe tests-they are more dependable than horses and are more economical.
One major consequence of plant modernizations and expansions was that brewery structures themselves had to be modified greatly. By the 1870s the days of the single-building, two-story brewery were numbered, as new construction and plant modifications required buildings that could house the mammoth machines of the modern brewery complex. Brewers spent large sums of money to build new edifices that not only were functionally superior to the structures that came before them, but also were aesthetically pleasing, typical of the tendency in post-Civil War American industrial architecture. Another important trend in the modernization of breweries during the latter part of the nineteenth century was the increased use of flame-resistant materials, in contrast to early breweries, made largely of wood, which were highly susceptible to fire and flood damage. Upon brewery expansion and modernization it was an easy decision for Cincinnati brewery owners to switch to materials such as brick for edifices, glass for greater window space, sheet metal facings, concrete and tile floors, wrought iron, steel railings, and gratings. As a result brewers believed their operations to be more secure and reliable-a feeling reinforced by lower insurance costs-and further resources were earmarked for expansion. Cincinnati observers noted the improvement of local brewery structures with considerable admiration. The Lackman Brewing Company was profiled in the wake of an extensive modernization with that comment that "In this building, except one small house, there is not an inch of wood. Stone, iron, steel and brass are its components. It is fireproof, and enduring, like the memory of the good man who planned it, whose four sons carried out his designs." The Wiedemann Brewing Company of Newport, Kentucky, was described similarly, as a facility entirely modernized for all to see: Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been expended in the past fifteen years for buildings, machinery, and the most modern equipment that can be had for the brewing of beer. The immense plant is visited by people from all parts of the country ... and their verdict when leaving the plant is that it is the most modern, clean and sanitary they have ever seen.
Still other observers were less interested in the niceties of the modern brewery than in its bottom line: monetary value. One Cincinnati writer advanced such a fiscal viewpoint in 1886: In the laudable spirit of an unbiased investigator, I visited one of the largest whisky distilleries, and also one of the largest beer factories, and took copious notes about high wines, government gaugers, the maltsters at work sweeping the hot iron floors, the ice cellars colder than Siberia ever dared to be, the inventions for rolling beer kegs up-stairs in a jiffy; but trying to decipher these hieroglyphics, I find I stand in some danger of mixing liquors-always a dangerous practice. I know quite well, of course, that Bourbon is not beer, and that "moonshiners" never attempt the costly and intricate process of making lager. Yet nothing that I saw either at the beer house or at the great distillery struck me as so wonderful as what I was told, namely, the yearly money value of these two oceans, whisky and beer. The diversity of the modern brewery complex perhaps was best illustrated by the Wiedemann facility. In 1914 one source noted the modern status of its delivery service with the following characteristics: "A visit to the Wiedemann stables will not soon be forgotten. It is the home of over 100 horses and is equipped with every modern appliance for their care. The company has its own hospital erected for the care of the horses. It also has its own garage and operates eight trucks." Brewers also used scientific advancements to improve their business and gain favor with the public. It was Louis Pasteur who came up with not one, but two discoveries that revolutionized brewing operations worldwide. As late as the 1830s scientists as well as brewers remained uncertain of what yeast was and how it worked. Through extensive research into fermentation problems in the manufacture of beer, Pasteur proved that the "diseases" of fermented liquids were caused by bacteria, and that a yeast free of bacteria would produce a fermentation free of disease. From this first important contribution, Pasteur worked his way to a second, even more practical conclusion for brewers: by heating the finished product at temperatures high enough to kill harmful microorganisms or bacteria-above 160 degrees Fahrenheit-a germ-free beer could be produced, one which did not require constant refrigeration and could endure lengthy shipment without spoilage. In time the process Pasteur discovered was named "pasteurization" in his honor, and came to be used in many other products-most notably milk-as well. Brewers soon began to pasteurize bottled beer, for more security in export markets, although given the quick, often local nature of its consumption, draft beer continued not to be pasteurized.
The most important technological breakthrough for Cincinnati brewers of the 1870s had its origins in the work of the previous decade. On October 2, 1860 the Carré ice machine was patented; it used liquid ammonia under compression to produce cold air and ice, and first was exhibited at the London Exposition of 1862. In the wake of several improvements and enlargements of the machine, it made its first appearance in an American brewery in Brooklyn in 1870. In Cincinnati the Moerlein Brewing Company bought a version modified by Franz Windhausen in 1875; in the wake of an industrial exhibition in Cincinnati the next year, Moerlein reputedly added a Carré machine improved by Vaas & Littmann-one of the first made available in the world-and likely used it for four or five years. The economic benefits of the new equipment soon became evident: the Arctic Ice Machine Manufacturing Company, established in 1878 and with its sales office in Cincinnati-equipment was manufactured in Cleveland-marketed machines which produced from ten to fifty tons of ice per day, at a cost of approximately $1.50 per ton, as opposed to a standard rate of $5.00 to $7.00 per ton when delivered. In 1874, a year in which ice consumption had reached record levels, brewers were forced to purchase lake and river ice for as much as $12.00 per ton, a factor cited by the Chamber of Commerce as a direct cause of unsatisfactory business during the fiscal year. During the late 1870s the Herancourt Brewing Company became the first Cincinnati brewer to purchase an Arctic machine, but not without some misgivings. According to supervising engineer John Enright, George Herancourt and other members of brewery management expressed considerable skepticism about the viability of the project, noting that he "had to build a big icemaking tank right over the arches of his cellars, besides putting much piping below and everywhere he designated. They all laughed at me when I would tell them I could cool them with a machine alone." But such doubts quickly disappeared in the face of hard evidence of success. A decade after the implementation of artificial refrigeration in his brewery, Christian Moerlein noted eight specific advantages derived from the ice machines and summarized the thinking of all area breweries that had made the transformation in cooling methods. The machines cut labor expenses by as much as $8,000-$10,000 per year. They also were significant space-savers, making available important property for other vital brewing operations. They cost about $16,000-$18,000 per year to own and operate, as opposed to $60,000 per year previously expended in ice costs. Machines provided more reliable temperature control than unwieldy ice blocks. Cleaning was made easier and more efficient. Year-round lager brewing became possible for the first time. Rotting timber due to dampness could be avoided, and replacement costs minimized. Fermentation time was shorter, at twelve to thirteen days, as opposed to sixteen to eighteen days before the arrival of ice machines. By the time of Moerlein's comment his brewery had five of the Arctic machines; the John Hauck Brewing Company owned three; the Windisch-Muhlhauser Lion Brewery and the Gerke Brewing Company maintained two; and the Herancourt facility continued to use one. Not to be outdone, the George Weber Brewing Company had two Pictet ice machines in 1886, and the Weyand Brewing Company possessed a sixty-ton Linde machine. The new equipment helped Cincinnati brewing companies to surge past those of Milwaukee-which due to their location relied largely on lake ice-and other northern competitors, albeit only for a brief period. Much as had been the case with the railroads, the development of artificial refrigeration also served to the detriment of several Cincinnati breweries, when valuable southern markets dissipated after brewers there also bought ice machines. But given the importance of lager beer production, the city also became a center for the development of artificial refrigeration technology. Beyond the importance of the Arctic Company, on April 24, 1877 Covington resident Daniel L. Holden received a patent on a compression ice machine, introduced later the same year in the Bergner & Engel Brewery of Philadelphia. In 1894 a Cincinnati refrigerating engineer, F.W. Niebling, added another innovation with the receipt of a patent for a horizontal double-acting ammonia compressor; manufactured in his own factory under the name of the Triumph Ice Machine, the unit maintained favor among breweries into the twentieth century. Another key development in the technological growth of Cincinnati breweries was the large-scale introduction of bottled beer, primarily for the export market. Bottled beer by no means was new by the late nineteenth century: much of the ale transported from England to the American colonies arrived in bottles, and it is likely that limited amounts of bottled malt beverages were introduced in America as early as the seventeenth century. What was different by the 1870s was the practicality of widespread bottled beer sales, in the wake of pasteurization and the efficient modernized brewing facility, particularly in southern and western areas not serviced by their own breweries. The stability of the previously highly perishable product was assured by pasteurization, as well as by greater cleanliness within the brewery and improvements in production methods. The other important consideration in bottling beer for export-sales volume-depended on two intertwined factors, an increasing external market for beer and an imaginative drive on the part of competing brewers. By 1873-1874 the use of bottles among Cincinnati breweries had grown sufficiently to catch the eye of the Chamber of Commerce, which noted that "a new feature of the business is the bottling of this [lager] beer, which before the present year was substantially confined to kegs and barrels." In fact the employment of bottlers was hardly new to the city during the early 1870s; small-scale individual proprietors such as D.D. Kavanagh, Patrick J. Coleman and John Onk, and Schneider & Grebner, provided bottling services for local brewers by the mid-1850s and specialized in ale and porter packaging even into the late 1860s, well after the lager beer revolution. But early bottling facilities were virtually nonexistent at Cincinnati breweries; with the expansion of export trade local breweries initially were obliged to turn to private bottlers to meet an increased demand for product. Early bottling businesses in Cincinnati did their work by contract, and usually for more than one brewer, but seldom remained in business for more than a brief period. According to the Williams City Directory for 1874 the Cincinnati Lager Beer Bottling Company was the only independent bottling company in operation, but with the increased demand for export beer service, the same directory a year later listed two more bottlers, Jos. Niehaus & Company-Niehaus already with bottling experience in the city dating back to the late 1850s-and the Star Lager Beer Bottling Company, both of which entered into contracts with individual breweries who sent their beer in kegs and paid to have it packaged. In 1875 Star, at 120 and 122 West Second Street, had a forty-foot frontage, a depth of 100 feet, and a height of five stories inclusive of the basement. Forty to fifty workers filled beer into quart and pint size clear glass bottles and shipped them to all parts of the country, and ultimately as far away as the West Indies and South America. By the 1880s individual brewers had begun to set up companies to bottle their own beer, as well as that of competitors willing to pay to have it done. Windisch-Muhlhauser beers, most notably Lion Lager, were bottled by the Lion Bottling Company, under the Haskill & Thornton name. The National Lager Beer Bottling Company was located at 676-678 Elm Street, within easy reach of the Christian Moerlein Brewing Company; the firm was organized as a concession of the brewery, to bottle its own National Lager Beer, but unlike other firms it bottled only Moerlein beers. Not to be outdone, other significant Cincinnati export brewers followed the example of the Moerlein concern in short order. Incorporated in 1882, the John Hauck Lager Beer Bottling Company was set up to put into glass the various Hauck beers. During the 1880s such operations were sufficiently new that, with bottled beer shipments, the company felt obliged to include instructions on the proper care of its bottles and cases: Herewith we hand you bill and B. Of Lading for Superfine Export Lager, ordered [date] and trust it will reach you in due time, and give the usual satisfaction. We charge $1.20 for each case, 60 cents for doz. quart, and 50 cents for doz. pint bottles. When these are empty, and returned to us in good condition, we allow same as charged. Inasmuch as the cases and bottles cost more than the Lager, it will scarcely be of necessity to ask you to take good care of them. The cases are locked by a patent spring, and can readily be opened by cutting seal, and pressing back the spring with lead pencil. The Lager speaks for itself. Among northern Kentucky brewers, Brenner & Seiler proved a leader in the movement to develop brewery-operated bottling concerns, as demonstrated in a large newspaper advertisement from 1882 that promoted its own such operation, the Covington Lager Beer Bottling Company. (see previous page) Other local breweries soon developed their own bottling facilities as well, with the inevitable result that independent bottlers lost business and soon disappeared from the market: in 1895 sixteen beer bottlers were listed in the Cincinnati Illustrated Business Directory, only four of which were not part of an existing brewing operation. The biggest difficulty for brewery bottle shops in the 1880s lay in the tax-based governmental regulation that bottling works had to remain separate from all other brewery buildings, with no physical connection between the brewery proper and the bottling department. As a result brewers were obliged to keg their beers, send the bulky barrels to the bottling plants, draw the beer from the kegs, fill the bottles, seal them, clean the barrels, and send them back to the draft section of the brewery. Fortunately for brewers the law was amended by Congress in June 1890, when it was stipulated that pipelines could connect the facilities-making it easier to transport and bottle the beer and leading more brewers to install bottling facilities. Ironically it was a national brewer that played a major role in the revision of government regulations, aiding small and regional brewers to enter the export trade in the process: after his pleas fell upon deaf ears at the Internal Revenue Service, Frederick Pabst exercised significant influence upon his Milwaukee congressman, who through legislation soon effected the desired change in bottling policy. The rise of large-scale bottling operations also proved instrumental to the development of individual beer brands and helped revolutionize the concept of beer marketing. Beer brand names, rather than beers simply named after their brewers, developed after the Civil War, when export-minded brewers needed to differentiate their various styles of beer. It no longer was enough to identify a given beer simply with the brewery name, since production increasingly included such diverse styles as bock, märzen, and other specialties; the use of names to distinguish brewery products was extended to encompass beer styles and place names which denoted the historical background of the product. Cincinnati brewers introduced numerous beers from the 1870s onward that followed the trend, especially those such as Münchener, Wiener, Culmbacher, and Dortmunder-lager beers based on the Munich, Vienna, Kulmbach, and Dortmund styles respectively-reflecting the origin of the brews; and even with names that described the beer container, such as Moerlein's Old Jug Lager "Krug-Bier," introduced on June 1, 1891 and packaged in heavy crock bottles. Early advertisements for Cincinnati bottled beer went little beyond a basic announcement of the product, particularly among smaller firms. As late as the mid-1880s notices placed by the southeast Indiana-based Aurora Brewing Company simply made Cincinnati beer consumers aware of their offering, such as one ad which hailed "Aurora Bottled Beer. The Finest in the City-Ask for It." Yet by the 1890s several of the largest Cincinnati brewers placed extensive advertisements which detailed their beer selection in bottles as well as on draft. During the mid-1880s the Christian Moerlein Brewing Company advertised that it consistently produced Regular Lager Beer, Klein Schwechat Vienna Beer, Doppel Beer, and National Export Beer, the latter specifically for distribution in bottles. At the same time the George Weber Brewing Company noted in its own advertisements that it brewed and bottled five types of beer: Pilsener, Rhinegold, Doppel-Bier, Select, and Export Beer. Bottled beer also generated several unique promotional efforts in Cincinnati, geared toward product characteristics as well as names. Notable-and occasionally dubious-promotions held that bottled beer was a healthful, wholesome beverage, recommended by medical men and other experts. In several cases advertisements implied that the beer was a remedy for illness, especially good for sick and invalid people. The John Kauffman Brewing Company marketed its Pale Lager, Columbia, and Standard beers without fanfare, but described its Gilt Edge Bohemian Beer as "a Liquid Food for the Invalid and a Wholesome Beverage for the Healthy." The Windisch-Muhlhauser Brewing Company struck a similar posture when it claimed that Lion Export Bottled Beer "Restores, invigorates and is beneficial to the weak and the strong." The Christian Moerlein Brewing Company, seldom one to be outdone by other Cincinnati brewers in promotional efforts, on several occasions described its bottled National Export and Old Jug Lager beers as products "recommended by physicians and connoisseurs." Northern Kentucky brewers also proved adept at marketing beer for individuals with medical ailments, as evidenced by a December 1879 advertisement from the Newport-based Deppe & Company Brewery. But the most notable such promotion came from the John Hauck Brewing Company, which took the issue to a new level when it bottled a special "Invalid Beer" during the 1890s. In an 1893 advertisement the brew was proclaimed as "the purest hop and malt extract ... and is the only remedy for convalescents to gain strength and vitality." Another publicity piece, addressed directly to the medical profession, described the brew as nothing less than an elixir: Knowing the enormous demand for a pure quality of Beer for the sick, and the embarrassment the profession meets with in prescribing Beer for a large variety of ills, owing to conscientious scruples of patients who would be benefitted by it, we are determined to remove every obstacle in our power by furnishing a first-class Beer, bottled especially for invalids. In such a manner the Hauck concern provided sickly beer drinkers with the ultimate excuse to consume its beverage, the option to drink one-or more-"for health's sake." For many brewers, bottled beer remained almost exclusively an export product during the pre-Prohibition era. Beer consumed locally was bought with great frequency at area saloons, where it was considerably cheaper-at five cents per growler, or small pail, as opposed to ten to fifteen cents per bottle-and was considered fresher by the general public. Yet in subsequent years, as bottling departments exhibited greater efficiency, the price of bottled beer began to fall, making it more affordable to the everyday consumer. By the 1910s bottled beer sales reached their highest level to date, due in no small part to the growth of local option legislation which eliminated the saloon trade in some areas. But improvements in bottling technology and efficiency in the pre-Prohibition era doubtless paved the way for greater success in the post-Prohibition era, when home consumption elevated bottled beer to a new level of importance. |
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