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The first German
immigrant brewers used corn or rice in their new American
brewed beers.
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The salary for Henry
Fauerbach, family brew master in 1907, was $250 per month.
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Union workers pay
ranged from $42 - 92 per month in the brewery, $35 per month in the
office. A wagon driver earned $42 per month. He had to handle wooden
barrels weighing up to 300 pounds each - for the 31 gallon
barrel.
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Fauerbach bought
Wisconsin 6 row barley from the B.A. Schwenn, Michael Lenerz and
William Roberts farms for .80 - .90 cents per bushel. They malted
their own barley and sold Mensapale, Export and Salvator lagers, all of
which used corn as an adjunct to the barley malt.
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Hess Cooperage was
paid $500 for a large order of white oak beer barrels in March 1907.
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Fauerbach bought
ice from Conklin Ice Company, and bottles from Madison-based Lake City
Bottle Works.
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Fauerbach used
Wisconsin 6-row barley: Kindred (improved Wisconsin #37) from North
Dakota and Montcalm from Montcalm County, Michigan.
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A load of hops
consisted of 75 heavy bales delivered during fall after a mid-August
harvest. These bales were kept in cooled moisture controlled areas for
each season - up to a year. Hop rooms had with 3" cork insulation, and
a liner to maintain moisture levels. Hop resins deteriorated over time
due to storage conditions.
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One of the master
brewers main jobs was to calculate ingredients needed for each batch of
beer, because the "100 lb." barley bags did not all weigh the same, and
the hop alpha acid levels changed during extended storage.
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Fauerbach has 20
cellar tanks each with 240 barrel capacity from which beer could be
blended during bottling or kegging.
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Fauerbach used a 3.5
hour kettle boil, and a more complex mashing process. Today brewers use
a 1.5 hour kettle boil and simple infusion mashing with rests for
protein elimination, starch to sugar conversion, and biological
organism knock-out.
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During
prohibition,1919 - 1933, brewers sold unfermented wort in a 5 gallon
bucket for $1. Buyers could take it home and add yeast. This was period
marked the beginning of home brewing.
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Lagering beer requires
cooling it over a period of time; typically 14-30 days. That is why
many early brewers used hillside locations to locate underground
cooling (rue) cellars. Ice was used for cooling before
prohibition.
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Rationing of brewer
supplies occurred with both world wars. This caused brewers to make
changes in packaging and ingredients. Rationed items included tin,
steel, and barley.
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In the 1960s decade,
18 Wisconsin breweries closed. They could not compete with national
brewers low priced beers like Old Milwaukee (Schlitz), Red White and
Blue (Pabst), and Busch (A-B). Beer taxes were eventually tiered to
help small brewers re-emerge.
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Old style primary
fermentation tanks had open tops (see below). They were made of white
oak and pitched with paraffin.
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Eberhart
Anheuser,founder of Anheuser-Busch, St Louis had a cousin, Peter
Anheuser, who married Anna Marie Fauerbach a sister to brewery
founder Peter Fauerbach. They married in Einselthum, Germany, on June
11, 1856. Home town for both families.
