Showing posts with label Zymurgy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zymurgy. Show all posts

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Banholzerian underground zymurgy

Banholzerian underground zymurgy
For those interested in reading more about Banholzer ancestry the family also had a brewery in St. Paul, where they stored beer bottles in a mile and a half long cave they dug beneath the city:
“Frederick Banholzer, who was born in Wurttemberg, Germany, in 1824, had been since 1856 a busy St. Paul stone mason and contractor, working primarily around the Uppertown district. Described "as a man of great humor," Banholzer was less interested in brewing than was his son, and so after only six years in the trade he sold his interest to 30-year-old William.
A rotund man with a handlebar moustache, William Banholzer "was all business." Almost single-handedly, he turned a 1,000 barrel-a-year brewery into a 12,000 barrel-a-year operation. "Banholzer's North Mississippi Beer" became by the 1880s one of the five most popular brews in the city. The company's facilities included nine buildings and a one-half-mile deep, multi-chambered cave.
The cave was accessible from both the bottom of the river bluff (south of the brewery) and from the top of the cliff (right inside the plant's main stone building). Today this cave still runs from the river bank, under Shepard Road, to the vicinity of Butternut street and one can still see the old stone archway at the lower entrance - a lasting reminder of Banholzer's Brewery.
In 1886, William established "Banholzer's Park" in the empty lots north of the brewery. The park was to serve as a recreation area for neighborhood picnickers who drank at Banholzer's outdoor beer garden, and it provided barbeques, outdoor bowling, German band music, balloon rides to Lilydale and, of course, cold kegs of North Mississippi beer.
THE FINANCIAL SUCCESS of the North Mississippi Company can probably best be measured by the prosperity of its owner, William Banholzer. In 1885, he built a magnificent stone house at 689 Stewart Avenue for $10,000, a great expense for 1885. The still-standing mansion is one of the more impressive 19th century houses in St. Paul, a testimonial to the success of the North Mississippi Brewery.”
Evidently, spelunkers still explore the streets beneath St. Paul in search of an elusive Banholzer Beer. I can almost taste the foamy suds from one now…
http://www.citypages.com/content/printVersion/12739
Uh-oh! Just discovered some bad news about why the brewery began floundering: A worker fell into a hot vat of beer and was boiled to death!
Now, I’m not so thirsty as before.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Moved a piano into the River Bend beer brewmeister’s house yesterday morning.

After helping lug it in, I recommended that he install beer holders on each end of the keys to help keep better harmony.

Then he gave us a short tour of his zymurgy facility.

Made us all quite thirsty, seeing the miracle of beer brewing.

I asked him about distribution and he said that it’s only in this valley –From Galena Lodge to South Valley Pizzeria. I’ve drank one at both places, but never in the same day.

He said that he is in the phone book underneath everything related to beer. I replied that he should try “Zymurgy” too ‘cause then he’d be the last name in the phone book, opposed to A-1 Taxi, who is first.

Or perhaps he could go in half-and-half with the cab company for creative phone book ad:

If you’ve reached “zymurgy” perhaps, you need A-1.

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