Old breweries? In St Paul MN, under the bluff in the caves there used to be a lot of breweries keeping their beer in there at the natural cave temperature.

When I was a kid, it was pretty much down to Hamm's and Schmidt. Hamm's was out on 7th, and the Schmidt plant was down kinda by High Bridge. Never got a tour there, Hamm's was boring.

Hamm's got bought out, and I don't know what happened to Schmidt. But last I heard, the old Schmidt brewery was in use again brewing custom brews for other brands.

I dunno if the local breweries in Germany still have good German beer, or if the EC has forced them out of business. That would be too bad, those 10 minuit pours are some good stuff.

Here in St Louis, there must be 3 or 4 local breweries. There of course is also a very large plant producing "discolored water" that get packaged as beer. That plant goes back so far that there could have been almost any kind of power system in there over the years. I wonder if any of the old stuff is left. They are funny about keeping things, might be an old corliss hiding in there somewhere, its a huge complex, with some very old buildings.

There are other places with the possibility of old engines also.

The Lemp Brewery South of A-B might have something hidden away in it. Most of it is just standing unused, I don't think much has been done to it. Ditto for the nearby shoe factory, although they are starting to be cleared to use the building for other purposes.

There was until recently an old probable corliss at the power plant of the seminary near Clayton. I never saw it, but a friend of mine did.

You and JimK have, through your writings, charmed me into a warm regard for the Big Cities of the east as seen through your eyes. I really appreciate the time and heart you've put into your essays, sharing your recollections of different times and different places.

Our relative times are not all that different; I'm only a couple of years younger than you. My 1960's San Francisco was clearly separated from your 1960's New York by more than the 2500 mile distance.

But as great as those differences were, your stories often trigger some of my own dust-laden memories of SF's industrial waterfront and the frequently-European-immigrant old-timers who took an interest in the hands-on education of a young kid.

Thinking about it now, it strikes me as funny that although SF had maybe a half-dozen breweries in those days, I hardly ever saw anyone drinking beer at work. What I do remember are cups of hot coffee, cups of hot tea, glasses of hot tea, glasses of cold tea, and glasses of water-thinned fruit juice at the machines and jugs of red wine (often homemade) at lunch.

By the time I graduated from college in 1975, San Francisco was down to only a couple of large breweries -- that were closed down within a few more years -- and the tiny, on-the-edge-of-bankruptcy Anchor brewery that still survives today.

Anchor evolved to become the prototypical "micro" brewery, and it is the marketplace success of the micro-breweries that have saved US brewing from being reduced to a few massive producers of "Colorado Kool Aid" lagers.

Although I was born on the west coast, my own first taste of beer was of either Iron City or Duquesne -- I don't have a clue which -- at a bar in Pittsburgh when I was in the first grade. I've preferred local beers ever since then, but I'm still proposing this toast to you with a virtual glass of Schaefer: Cheers!

John

Yeah, I think I remember a little place by the Balclutha, but the Muni Bait Shop just down Polk from Galileo HS, a coffee shop on Townsend (?) by the SP Depot, a diner on Market not too far from the New Mint, and Beep's Drive In by City College got most of my dining-out cash back then. Of course, a big date with my girl (who's been my wife for the last 29 years) was worth splurging on a Fat Ed's dinner.

Although Anchor is -- without a doubt -- better beer, I'll return your salute by raising a tall glass of . . . well, either Burgermeister (family connection; one of my brothers-in-law was a Burgie brewer in the last days of their independence through the Schlitz years and into the Meister Brau days), Hamms (some of us who knew where the back door to the end-of-brewery-tour tasting room was drank a whole lot more Hamm's than we ever bought), or Lucky Lager (a college buddy who worked at Lucky was allowed to buy culled-at-the-end-of-the-packaging-line mixed-brand sixpacks for a quarter).

And I'll throw in an additional tip-of-the-hat to you for tickling a few more of those dust-encrusted memories!

Cheers!

The Rheingold jingle I recall starts off: "My beer is Rheingold, the Dry Beer;
Ask for Rheingold wherever you buy
beer.
It's refreshing, not sweet...
and I don't remember any much else of the jingle. I worked in the brewery and drank the beer; remembering/singing jingles wasn't in my repertoire. I do recall the "Miss Rehingold" contests, though.

OK: Cooking a Brewery workers' lunch:

You will need a cast iron dutch oven of about 6 quarts or more. I can;t give quantities, only approximations. Here is how we did it:
Cut up a few onions and some bacon, preferably slab bacon. Put a fire under the kettle with the bacon in it. We used a rosebud or a plumber's torch. When you have some bacon drippings, brown the onions and brown the wursts- wursts used can be "Bauernwurst" (farmer sausage), Kielbasa (Polish sausage), and Weisswurst ( a light sausage made with pork/veal) or Brats (bratwurst- frying sausage, also madde with pork/veal). The brats might be too delicate for prolonged cooking. You can also brown a couple of ham hocks. That being done, drain off some of the drippings. Drain some sauerkraut, and put it in the kettle along with enough lager beer to keep the whole works awash. You might wind up using 3 good sized cans of sauerkraut and several pounds of assorted wursts. Take a ball pein hammer and a board and smash down a few pinches of caraway seeds and black peppercorns. Add to the kettle and stir in. Put the cover on and bring the kettle to a simmer. If you have a steam engine with a flat steam chest, running on at least 200 psig saturated steam ( 383 degrees F saturation temperature), put the kettle on the steam chest and leave it there for 2-3 hours. The vibration of the engine will keep things working. If not, simmer on a low fire for 2-3 hours, turning stuff in the kettle over with a wooden spoon. Add some coarse salt (kosher salt works great). Add more beer and/or sauerkraut juice as things cook down. About 1 hour or so before you plan on serving/eating, you can slice up some spuds and cut some apple rings and put them into the kettle with the sauerkraut, wursts and onions. That will keep the apples and spuds from cooking to a pulp. The apples tend to knock the edge off the sauerkraut. The caraway seeds and peppercorns give it quite a flavor. Serve it on plates and have some good black bread or rye bread and butter with it. Never mind the "wine pairings"- that is for the yuppies. Good honest and cold lager beer is the stuff !

There never was a formal recipe. It was cooking akin to what hoboes did to make "Mulligan". Some guy would say he'd bring in wurst or hocks or even spare-ribs from a relative's butcher shop, Another guy would say: "OK- you bring the meat, I'll bring the sauerkraut and the spuds". Supplies like carraway seeds, peppercorns and salt were simply kept somewhere handy in the brewery shops. You never knew what was going to wind up in the pot until you had the stuff on hand to cook. Or, some guy might say he'd bring in cold cuts from his people's delicatessen. So, instead of sauerkraut and wurst, you'd be eating a sandwich of head cheese or blood sausage or liverwurst with raw onions and cold beer. A standard snack was "Landjaeger"- these are a smoked "country hunter sausage" which you buy at the butcher's and hang up to dry. They keep for a long time and are the forerunner of today's "slim Jim". We ate good in the brewery. Every gang had its "feeds" as an almost daily occurance. In addition to the food, on some Fridays, some guys might bring a "squeeze box" (concertina) or a fiddle and play music from the old country, and we would sometimes have a bottle of whisky. I'd sometimes bring my old Hohner harmonica and play along with one or two of the oldtimers. On my last day at the brewery, we were in the midst of a memorable feed. Whisky was on the table along with wurst, coldcuts and beer. One guy was fiddling. In walked the chief engineer, himself. We figured the jig was up and he would chew us all out. Instead, he shook my hand and said "Mach's Gut, und viele Gluck, Hippy". This meant "do good, much luck, Hippie". The chief engineer had taken to calling me "hippie" because I grew a moustache while working there. He pulled up to the table and had a hunk of Landjager, somebody got hima plate of sauerkraut and wurst and he had a shot and a beer with us. I got a nice sendoff from my job at the brewery. There must be something to it: I have a fifteen year old son whose idea of the perfect sandwich is liverwurst on good rye with raw onion, sharp mustard and a cold beer. As far as the moustache, I haven't shaved it since and it is 34 years- a nice handlebar like the old time machinists and engineers all wore.

For your son and other liverwurst affecionados:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds/edmonds170.html