Åland Brewery Revives 170 Year Old Beer

Last year, I told you about Stallhagen Brewery in Finland recreating a beer from a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea.  It's finally been released under the name Stallhagen Historic Beer 1842.

Using the wild yeast from the beer recovered in the wreck, they produced a fruity beer lacking the hop flavor of modern beer. The brewer compared it to wine.

Packaged in 2000 hand blown bottles, this is a limited release.

My "Malz und Hopfen" Speech

On May 10, I made this speech at the Founders Day celebration. Since I hate to waste anything, here it is:

There were few breweries in Texas before the Revolution, and few afterwards.  Until Texas joined the Union in 1846, the Comanches and other tribes raided the colonies relentlessly.  After joining the Union, Texas brewers had the protection to actually invest in building breweries.  Combine that with German immigration, and you have all the ingredients for Texas’ first brewing boom.
The Germans arrived in Texas to build their towns. Once they'd finished, they looked at each other and asked “Okay, who brought the beer?”  Beer is hard to transport in the days before Pasteurization and bottle caps. Once exposed to air, it spoils. And so every little town has it's own brewery. If a brewer wasn't among the colony, they appointed one.
Captain Charles Nimitz was born in Bremen, Germany on November 9,1826. At age 14 he served in the German Merchant Marine. He arrived in South Carolina in early 1844.  His family operated a hotel near Fort Sumter at Charleston. In 1846, he found himself on a wagon train to Fredericksburg.
In 1852, Nimitz began running a hotel in Fredericksburg, though he didn’t own the property until 1855.  The original hotel was a four-room building with a fireplace in the center hall.  The hotel grew in a few years to over 30 rooms with an attached saloon.  By 1860, Charles was operating a brewery in the cellar below his saloon, and the census lists him as a brewer.  I believe that the brewery existed  a few years before the census, maybe as early at 1855.
The Nimitz Hotel was self-sufficient.  The garden behind the hotel produced most of the food for the table, even the wine they served.  It is even possible that the hotel even grew its own hops.
Meanwhile, across Main Street,  Dr. Assig, owned a house on the bank of Town Creek. In March 1857, he borrowed $850 from Frank van der Stucken to buy equipment for a wheat beer brewery. Van der Stucken was to receive one third of the profits of the brewery.  Assig's wheat beer had a reputation for its quality and purity.  Members of visiting singing societies who often visited Fredericksburg drank the beer as fast as it could it they could tap it.
In the 1860 census, Assig’s occupation is not listed. It lists Frederick Probst as a cooper, making barrels for Assig’s beer. (Probst had arrived in town a couple of months before Assig started his brewery.)
For some reason, the partnership ended shortly after the census. Probst bought property on Austin Street in 1861, and  built three cellars there.  Probst moved the brewery from Wasington Street.
The Union blockade of the Southern States made it difficult to get brewing supplies. Supply shortages after the Civil War began forced Nimitz to close the brewery and convert the cellar into a cistern.  The copper brew kettles remained in place until 1911, when Charles died, but have since disappeared.  Probst continued to make beer during the war but it was not as easy as before the war.
  After the Civil War, business improved, and before long the brewery was making Frederick a good living.  The Probsts built a two-story limestone house next door to the brewery in 1870, at 312 West Austin.
Henry and John Mauer opened a lager beer brewery in Fredericksburg in 1875, after brewing in Marlin, Texas.  In 1877, John Mauer was running the brewery. On the 1880 census only John and his family appear in a home on West Creek Street close to the Kuenemann Home.
Also on the 1880 census is Albert Glock, a 42 year old brewer living with the Pressler family. Albert was a Civil War veteran of Sipley's Brigade which took part in the ill-fated New Mexico campaign. He came to Fredericksburg after his family brewery in Victoria, Glock & Sahn, closed. It is unclear where he worked.
The Mauer brewery closed in 1884, it became an ice factory. It left the Probst brewery as the only brewery in town
Beer from from the breweries in San Antonio started arriving in in the late 1880s. No matter how good Probst’s weissbier was, competition  began to take its toll.
At about this time, there were fourteen saloons in Fredericksburg.  The Knopp saloon, in the Evers building on the Northeast corner of Main Street and Milam Street, fired the opening salvo in a beer war that went down in history.  While Probst beer was selling for ten cents a glass, John Knopp imported beer from San Antonio, and began selling it for a nickel a glass. In the face of the price difference, which was also happening all across the state, Probst couldn't compete. In 1895, Probst closed his brewery.
On January 16, 1919, Prohibition closed the remaining 13 breweries in Texas.  The larger breweries survived prohibition by turning to other products.  Pearl made ice cream, and ran a sign company.  In Galveston, the brewery made soda and near beer.  In Shiner, Spoetzel sold ice.
Prohibition lasted fifteen years in Texas.  Brewing equipment fell into disrepair. Many smaller brewers sold their tanks as scrap metal.  Only the large brewers could afford to upgrade their equipment.  The days of corporate brewing in Texas had arrived. And they would last a long time.

Henry and John Mauer - Pioneer Brewers

The problem with a lot of historic Texas breweries is that they were transient, and it is often difficult to get any information about the owners, much less the physical brewery. Combine that with the elaborate handwriting and inconsistent spelling on census forms and you have all sorts of problems.

For years, I have heard about Henry Warner opening a brewery in Fredericksburg in 1875, then selling it to John Mauer in 1877. I found Mauer on the 1880 census in Fredericksburg, but could never find Henry Warner. Now I know why. His last name wasn't Warner: it was Mauer.

John Mauer was born in 1838 in Hesse Darmstadt. His brother Henry was born in 1842.

Shortly after the Civil War, they were living in Louisiana, where they married and had their first children. John married Louisiana native Charlotte. Henry married Emilia, from Iowa. John junior and Edward Mauer were both born around 1867. Both men's second children, Gertrude and Emilia, were both born in Texas around 1869.

In 1870, the two families were living in Marlin, and were listed on the census of that year as brewers.

There was no Marlin brewery on the Federal tax rolls. Business must not have been good. The Mauer brothers moved to Fredericksburg where they opened a lager brewery in 1875. In 1877, Henry left, leaving John in control of the brewery.

John's brewery closed in 1884. Local legend has it that John was in some way connected to the Lone Star Brewery, which opened the same year. Unfortunately, John and his family disappear after this time. His widow, Charlotte reappears in 1917 and 1919 in El Paso, but is not listed on any census between 1880 and 1919.

Henry, on the other hand, appears in 1855 working as a brewer in Seattle. With him is his wife Emilia and their son Edward.

 Handwriting of the time was florid, and often difficult to read. If someone can confuse “Lando” with “Laredo”, or “Walters” with “Wolters”, it is entirely possible that someone misread “Mauer” as “Warner”. This would also account for Henry Warner's absence from any census.

Tomb of Ancient Egypt's Brewer to the Gods is Found

Peter Shadbolt needs some education in beer marketing. He writes, "Imagine a warm brew of lager so heady you had to plunge a straw through the thick surface scum to get to the fermented liquor below."

Actually, he's describing beer brewed in ancient Egypt.

Jiro Kondo of Waseda University and his team discovered the tomb of ancient beer-maker Khonso Em Heb (also the the royal storehouses during the pharaonic Ramesside period 1500-1700 years ago).

Professor Poo Mun Chou, a leading Egyptologist at Hong Kong's Chinese University said, "Alcohol in ancient Egypt was very important -- not just in terms of daily consumption but also as an offering to deities. Beer, in particular was very important. Beer during the New Kingdom period was probably one-fifth or even one-tenth the price of wine making it a very popular drink for people of all social strata."

Professor Poo (stop giggling) went on to add that we might not recognize it as beer, with it's frothy head of grain and yeast, but it would be bubbly.

Where Vikings Brewed Beer

At the Experimental Archaeology Conference, archaeologists Merryn and Graham Dineley argued that what have been labelled as Viking bath houses may have actually been Breweries. Here's a link to their presentation.

Pre-Roman Germans Drank Like Frat Boys

It turns out Europe 2,600 years ago was pretty much exactly like one big college frat, with social elites vying for power and influence by throwing the most kickass parties - complete with lots of free beer.

Archaeologist Bettina Arnold is excavating Iron Age German hill forts, and is learning a lot about their society by the size of the beer mugs people are buried with. And the bigger the mug, the more powerful the person was. While they had wine from the Mediterranean and made mead, they also made an ale that didn't use hops. Remember, hops were originally added to beer as a preservative, not to make a beer taste like a grapefruit. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Since there were no hops, the beer had to be consumed quickly. Hence the large mugs, I guess.

Brewing History of New Orleans

As you must know by now, I am a big history buff, and especially brewing history. To celebrate 175 years of New Orleans history, the New Orleans Times-Picayune has an article full of old photos and stories. Go check it out.

Pre-Prohibition Beer Culture

Reader Zack Pilgrim emailed me and asked about Ice Houses, and wondered what beer his Great-greatgrandfather would have been drinking when he lived in the Texas Hill Country. He wondered what the beer culture was like. After some thought, here's what I wrote:


In the days before Prohibition, there were three basic types of venues that sold beer: saloons, ice houses, and Biergartens.

Saloons only sold beer, and were male only establishments. In most Texas towns, like Fredericksburg, San Angelo, had several saloons on the main street. San Angelo had 12 on Concho Street, Fredericksburg had ten. Basically, one on every block. In San Angelo, the owner of the Star Saloon was Hubert Wolters, who sold beer from his brewery in the saloon until the railroad came to town, and he started selling Pabst. In Fredericksburg, when Lone Star and Pearl came to town, because of the economy of scale, they sold for a nickel a glass, while the much smaller Probst brewery was being sold at a dime a glass. That "beer war" is probably what caused the brewery to close.

I think the reason there were so many saloons, was that everyone walked everywhere. In Fredericksburg, there were four butcher shops along Main Street, several grocery stores, and hardware stores. They all catered to the folks who lived a few blocks away.

So after a hard day at work--hard manual labor, remember--they would stop in at the saloon on their way home. They would have a couple of beers with their neighbor before heading home to the wife. I heard a story from a gentleman in his late 60s who told me his grandfather had a bucket in the chicken coop from one of the saloons. His grandfather would be sent to the saloon for a refill for his father. When the saloon closed, they made it a feed bucket.

Ice houses were the 19th century equivalent of a convenience store and were primarily in South Texas. Before electricity, they sold ice and food for the neighborhood. You needed ice for the old ice boxes. My dad says the one his mom had kept ice a week. In the evening, instead of sitting in a hot house, folks would sit out under the trees and gossip and drink beer. In the late 1800s, Ice houses were likely tied houses, and only sold one brand of beer. So Great-Greatgranpa Kurz probably drank Lone Star (owned by Augustus Busch but NOT a Budweiser brewery) or Pearl. If there was a railroad in town, maybe Pabst, Budweiser, Miller, Schlitz or Lemp.

The West Alabama Ice House in Houston was on "How The States Got Their Shapes."Today, they only sell beer. And they still sit out under the oak trees and visit with their neighbors. There are a lot of places that call themselves, but I think the only places that can be called ice houses are places that once sold blocks of ice.

In Fredericksburg, where I live, there were four ice houses in town in the 60-70s: Lakeway Ice House, 87 Ice House, 290 Ice House, and Tower Ice house. They were more bar like, though they all had big freezer doors on the sidewalk. By the time I turned 18 (the legal drinking age) in 1980, The Tower Ice House had closed. I went to Lakeway, because it was near my house. It was more of a bar by then. Today only 87 Ice House is open, and they advertise themselves as more of a sports bar. I haven't been there in years.

I have seen a book about Texas Ice Houses. Here's the link for the Amazon page. It lists some of the still existing ice houses, including the ones that I don't consider ice houses.

Another type of business catered to big city beer drinkers: Biergartens. There were large biergartens in all the major cities. Frank Lloyd Wright designed Midway Gardens in Chicago, for example. The biergartens were family affairs. A way to spend a day outside of your hot home. In Austin, there was Pressler's Biergarten on the Colorado River, on the east side of town. There were several pavillions, one for families, one with alligator wrestling, one with a brass band, and more! Before TV and radio, that's how Austinites entertained themselves. The only remnant of Pressler Biergarten is Pressler Street in the city park along Lady Bird Lake. Scholtz's Garten still exists in Austin, a few blocks north of the capital. Now it's more a restaurant.

Update: Glock & Zahn Brewing - Victoria 1860-1875

An update from Historic Texas Breweries.

Glock and Zahn c. 1860-1875
Brewing at Glock and Zahn was a family business.

In 1853, Herman Zahn married Alvine Glock, daughter of A. Glock. In 1860, A. Glock was living with his daughter and son-in-law and both men were listed as brewers. Alvine's brother, Albert, is not listed on the 1860 census.

In 1861, Albert joined the 4th Texas Cavalry and was mustered into the Confederate army in Sipley's Brigade, and took part in the ill-fated New Mexico Campaign. Albert appears on the 1870 Census, living with Apaline Glock and Frdinca Glock (Age 70. possibly his grandmother?), and he is listed as a brewer.

In 1880, after Glock and Zahn closed, Albert is found living in Gillespie County as a brewer. He is boarding with the Pressler family, and is listed as married although his wife is not listed. In 1920, he was listed as an inmate in Austin, Texas. Presumably a nursing home, or hospital. He died there in 1923.

Herman Zahn and his wife are only listed in the 1860 census and on the Marriage rolls when they married in 1853 in Victoria.

There are two other brewers listed on the 1860 Census for Victoria County: G. Bridermann, from France, and G. J. Kraph from Germany. They must have been employed at Glock and Zahn Brewery.

I assume that Glock and Zahn was sold to L. F. Mack. Anyone in Victoria have any more information?

Update: Micheal Cellmer Brewery - Yorktown 1878-1891

Another update to Historic Texas Breweries.


Michael Cellmer 1878-1891
A lager beer brewery. Micheal Cellmer was born in Prussia, in what is now known as Poland, in 1851. He emigrated to Texas before 1878. He was married to Mary, and their first son, Nicholas, was born in Texas. His brother-in-law, Frank Notzon also worked at the brewery. After the brewery closed, Micheal turned to farming. He died in 1935.

Lager Beer Yeast Traced Back to South America

Scientists have determined that modern lager yeast, Saccharomyces pastorianus, is a hybrid derived from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and a yeast from Argentina, Saccharomyces eubayanus. S. eubayanus was lives on beech galls in cold Patagonian forests and is "unlike any other known species of wild yeast, but 99.5 per cent similar to the unidentified half of the lager hybrid." It could have been carried to Europe on some wood of a traders boat or in the stomach a fruit fly 500 years ago. When Bavarians moved their beer barrels into caverns, the cold loving yeast mingled with the warmer loving S. cerevisiae.

As interesting as that is, or isn't, Diego Libkind, the primary researcher on the study, is also planning to brew with the ancient yeastin combination with other strains.

The study was published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Humanity Owes is Existence to Beer

According to Bread, Beer and the Seeds of Change, from the rise of ancient Sumerian civilization to the rise of the British Empire, most people on this planet got their nutrition from bread and beer, since both were made from the same grains. This diet generated 5000 calories a day, necessary for the backbreaking work the people did, and also yielded a high rate of "vitamin deficiencies, cognitive impairment, high infant mortality and fetal alcohol syndrome".  Gradually, over the millennia, machines began to replace people and the work we did, lowering our caloric needs, until today when we consume far too much food for the work we do.  Now excuse me, I have to walk around the block. . .

How to Make Celtic Beer

Archeologists excavating the 2550-year-old Celtic settlement of Eberdingen-Hochdorf in southwestern Germany have discovered a brewery. The ancient Celts would dig a ditch, put in water and barley, and let it start to sprout. They would light fires at both ends of the ditch to dry out the now malted barley, giving it a smoky taste, and causing the production of lactic acid, souring the malt. The grains were boiled by adding hot stones. (The articles I have found on this are unclear. Apparently, the fires dried the grains, but didn't evaporate the water. More likely, they added more water to the dried grains. I will keep investigating.) Since there were no hops, herbs like yarrow, carrot seeds, mugwort, and henbane were added to flavor the beer, technically called gruit.  The beer was fermented with wild yeast, probably from the skin of fruit, and was served at room temperature, obviously, and unfiltered.  Celtic beer was described, according to one source, by the Roman Emperor Julian as tasting like a billy goat.

Sources:
http://www.popfi.com/2011/01/19/iron-age-beer-from-ancient-distilleries/
http://io9.com/5734276/the-recipe-for-2500+year+old-celtic-beer

Beer-Brewing Women, Soused Workers Built Pyramids

Bare-breasted women engaged in sudsy brewing work adorn tomb paintings and clay models from the dynastic period. To slake his thirst, each laborer on the pyramids got a daily beer allotment of 1 1/3 gallons. Everyone partied at the annual celebration of the Drunkenness of Hathor, goddess of fertility, motherhood and the Milky Way.

From this annoyingly brief web article about Iain Gately's book, Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol.

Shiner Brewery Centennial

Shiner is fourteen miles west of Hallettsville in western Lavaca County. Shiner was incorporated in 1890. Czech and German immigrants soon became the dominant ethnic groups.

Shiner Brewing Association 1909-1914
Home Brewing Company 1914-1915
Petzold & Spoetzl 1915-1918
Spoetzel Brewery and Ice Factory 1933-1934
Spoetzel Brewery 1934-Present
A group of Shiner businessmen established the original Shiner Brewing Association in 1909, with Herman Weiss as the first brewmaster. Weiss had closed his brewery in Galveston (Weiss and Sons) to move to Shiner. He was the first of several brewmasters, and his sons, Herman Jr. and Charles, also worked in the brewery. Weiss--who, coincidentally, is my cousin by marriage--later returned to San Antonio, to work for the San Antonio Brewing Association.

The founders offered the plant for lease again in 1914. Kosmos Spoetzl, a German immigrant brewmaster, learned of the Shiner operation and coleased the facility with Oswald Petzold with an option to buy in 1915. Spoetzl had attended brewmaster's school and apprenticed for three years in Germany and worked for eight years at the Pyramid Brewery in Cairo, Egypt, before moving to San Antonio in search of a better climate for his health. He came with the recipe for a Bavarian beer made by his family from pure malt and hops.

Kosmos Spoetzl had a simple marketing philosophy: A good beer will sell itself. So he set out to brew the very best beer he could. That done, he had to make sure that people drank it. So he bought a Model T, and with a couple of kegs iced down in the back, Spoetzl drove the country roads that surrounded surrounded Shiner, plying the the thirsty farmers with ice-cold beer. Spoetzl produced "Old World Bavarian Draft," which was a heavy, dark, all-malt German-style lager.

The Spoetzl Brewery trucks started rolling again the very minute Prohibition ended in Texas (one minute past midnight on September 15, 1933) to towns like Praha, Dime Box, Mickle Community and the Sandies. Spoetzl never went more than 70 miles out of his way in any direction for business. Spoetzl also changed the name (but not the recipe) to "Texas Special Export," and began bottling it for the first time, in the familiar longneck bottle. Kosmos died in 1950 and his daughter Cecilie-"Miss Celie"-inherited the brewery and was for a time, the only female brewery owner in the country.

Brewery records indicate that Bock was brewed here as early as 1917, but its popularity is a relatively recent phenomenon that owes to the old Austin hippie scene. Shiner premium became a popular beer for members of the Austin counterculture in the early 1970s for a variety of reasons (including low price). But when a seasonal shipment of Shiner Bock rode into town about 1975, it was "love at first quaff." By 1978, Spoetzl was brewing Bock year round to supply the Austin market.

Brewery tours are given Monday through Friday at 11 am and 1:30 p.m. The hospitality taproom is open Monday through Friday after the tour. The gift shop is open Monday through Saturday. Visit the Shiner web site at www.shiner.com. Every October until 2007, Shiner threw a "Bocktoberfest," a thank you party for its loyal supporters. But escalating costs forced the brewery to suspend the festival.

In 1999, the Spoetzel brewery purchased the defunct Frio brewery in San Antonio to test recipes and ingredients for its beers. These beers were not be sold to the public.

The Spoetzel Brewery today.

In October of 2005, the Shiner Brewery began counting down to their centennial celebration with the release of Shiner 96, an Oktoberfest-style beer; Shiner 97, a Bohemian black lager (which was so popular it was added to the regular lineup); Shiner 98, an Amber Lager; Shiner 99, a Munich Helles; and soon, 100, called Commemorator, a dopplebock.

Happy Birthday, Shiner!

"Rep" Beer - Made in Texas?

Jim Sigmund of the Cypress Historical Society dropped me an email wondering about a pre-Prohibition brand of beer. He has a picture of a saloon advertisement taken in 1907 at Juergens Saloon in Cypress. Here's a photo of the ad:

He also has an unusual item we both believe would have been in a bar. I haven't seen then item, but theorized it was a can opener. Jim said it looked more like a cork remover or cap remover.

Currently, the sign hangs on the wall of 1907 saloon in Cypress, Texas (northwest of Houston). Cypress was a major stop on the Houston and Central Texas Railway, which had major branches west to Austin, and north to Denison. In fact, one of their major liquor suppliers was L. Eppstein & Sons in Denison, Texas, since Cypress and Denison were daily stops on the railroad. It is owned by Harris County Precinct 3, and on display at their newly opened Cypress Top Historic Park. "Your brewery friends would love this place . . . it is a time capsule of old bar stuff and brands from 1897 to 2002," Jim added."

But, he wondered, who made "Rep" Beer?

So I checked the most authoritative site I know: TexasBreweries.com. And according to the author, me, there were only two breweries open in Houston around 1907: The American Brewing Association, owned by Adolphus Busch, made American Perfect Beer; and Houston Ice and Brewing Company, whose Magnolia brand was so popular the brewery was also known as Magnolia Brewery. But I don't know what other brands they made.

Since their supplier was in Denison, northeast of Dallas, perhaps "Rep" Beer came from there. Dallas Brewery, Inc. (also known as Home Brewery) operated form 1880 to 1918, but I don't have a brand list. Texas Brewing Company in Fort Worth operated from 1890 to 1918, and, again, I don't have a brand list.

I don't believe the beer came from San Antonio, Pearl and Lone Star were selling their eponymous brands. And the Degen brewery was at best a regional brewery. The Aschbacher Brewery, the Beck's Muenchner Weiss Beer Company, Peter Brothers Brewery, Schober Ice and Brewing Company, and Jospeh Wesp were also active at the time, but I doubt they were distributed much beyond San Antonio. Only the big companies could afford that.

So now I call on you. Does anyone have any idea who made "Rep" Beer? Contact me at jeff@texasbreweries.com.

National Brewery Museum opens

For several years, the American Breweriana Association has been working on opening a National Brewery Museum in Potosi, Wisconsin, in the former home of the Potosi Brewing Company (1852-1972). The museum features a collection of beer bottles and cans, glasses, trays, coasters, advertising materials, other breweriana collectibles, and its own brewpub!

The National Brewery Museum is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. The restaurant is open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Pueblo Indians Made Beer from Corn

FOXNews.com recently reported on a new study that suggests Pueblo Indians brewed their own type of corn beer 800 years ago. FOXNew's lead paragraph concludes "contradicting claims that the group remained dry until their first meeting with the Europeans."

"A thousand years ago," the story continues, "traditional Native American farming villages were already scattered across parts of New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico, divided among several tribes including the Apache, Pueblo, Navajo and the Tarahumara. Many of the tribes living in Mexico and some in Arizona are known to have produced a weak beer called tiswin, made by fermenting kernels of corn, but no evidence has ever been found that the same thing happened in New Mexico." Until now. A pot shard was found and scanned. Scientists found small amounts of fermented residue common in beer production.

I don't know why everyone assumed the Pueblos were dry. The Maya made a ceremonial wine called balche from honey and the bark of a tree. Other native wines were made with fruits like pineapple, guava, cactus fruit, and mesquite pods. In central Mexico they made a mescal wine, the predecessor to todays tequila and mescal. Pulque was made from the sap of the mescal plants.

Corn was used to make beer from Peru to Northern Mexico, diverting as much as 30% of their corn crop to beer production. This corn beer was usually a ceremonial beer, not something consumed everyday. (The preceeding from " 'Native' Brewing in America" by William Lintzinger, published in Zymurgy Fall 1980 (Vol. 3 No. 3)

Most of the alcoholic drinks were produced by people living in well established communities, once again proving Micheal Jackson's assertion that grain production for alcohol production is the drink that civilized humanity.

Houston's Old Magnolia Taproom Becomes Protected Landmark

Back in the days before Prohibition, Houston Ice and Brewing Company, aka Magnolia Brewery produced Magnolia Beer and Southern Select. In 1912, at the height of their sales, the brewery opened a taproom at 715 Franklin Street, one of ten buildings on the brewery's 20 acre site.

The brewery closed in 1918 when Prohibition struck. Later Howard Hughes would own a brewery that resurrected those famous brands.

Houston's recently enacted historic preservation ordinance has taken the Magnolia Taproom (Now called Magnolia Ballroom) under its protective wing. Now the building can be altered moved of destroyed only with the city's permission.

Cheers to the City of Houston!

American Brew - April 7 on A&E

As part of its "Here's To Beer" industry development campaign, Anheuser-Busch commissioned "American Brew," a film celebrating the rich history of American beer scheduled to air Saturday, April 7, at 10 p.m. EDT on A&E. ASpril 7 is the date Prohibition was repealed. We will see beer brewed in the colonial manner in a fireplace in Colonial Williamsburg; see it being home-brewed in the Bronx; and a craft brewer creating a Jasmine IPA in Seattle. Set your TiVos!