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The first German immigrant
brewers used corn or rice in their new American brewed
beers?
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A 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 a
31 gallon barrel (see below).
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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. (See 3 Fauerbach malt tower workers below.)
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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
bales, delivered in early fall after a mid-August harvest.
These bales were kept in cooled rooms for up to a year. Hop
rooms had with 3" cork insulation, and a liner to
maintain moisture levels. Hops resin 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
while in storage.
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Fauerbach has 20 cellar tanks
each with 240 bbls 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 90 minute 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 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's (founder of
Anheuser-Busch, St Louis) cousin Peter married Anna Marie
Fauerbach (sister to brewery founder Peter Fauerbach) in
Einselthum, Germany June 11, 1856.
