Photo by Chris Naffziger
Just about everyone in St. Louis knows about the famous 1892 brewhouse on the campus of the Anheuser-Busch brewery, but over the last couple of years, I’ve found myself continually drawn back to a small building that stands just out of sight when you’re on one of the regular brewery tours. I’m referring to what remains of the 1879 brewhouse, designed by famed brewery architect Edmund Jungenfeld. It’s the oldest building in St. Louis that was constructed for brewing beer and is still used for its original purpose. In an earlier article, I touched on this Romanesque Revival, Rundbogenstil brewhouse which sits on the location of George Schneider’s original building, taken over by Eberhard Anheuser. It’s a historic piece of real estate: From my examination of real estate records from the City of St. Louis Common Field sales, it looks like there was at the most only one previous owner before construction of the brewery. Since then, only Anheuser-Busch has owned this piece of land.
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The brewhouse yard circa 1880
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The A-B power plant and brewhouse
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The general offices at the heart of the complex
But while Jungenfeld’s 1879 brewhouse is incredibly historic, it does not sit gathering dust. I met up with the next generation of brewers, young artisans who are creating new beers in what’s now called the Research Pilot Brewery, built inside the old structure. The four-story building designed by Jungenfeld still had three stories in the 1960s, and it gained an additional six stories during a renovation in 1981. This nine-story structure it sits comfortably just to the south of the more famous, later brewhouse and just to the north of later 19th-century stock houses.
Much of my own work investigates the ways modern business adapts historic buildings to current needs, and I’ve long been interested in seeing how Anheuser-Busch did this with the historic brewhouse. While the brewing occurs there, the offices are next door in the 1892 brewhouse, where I sat down with Tracy Lauer, the brewery archivist, and two of the Pilot Brewery members,
Photo by Chris Naffziger
Brewmaster Drew Nelson
Drew Nelson, brewmaster and Zach Scribner, head brewer. The occasion was a first tasting of a batch that resurrected a recipe from the past: Bevo, introduced by Anheuser-Busch in 1916.
I will cheerfully admit to jumping at the opportunity to taste the most famous drink launched by an American brewer in the years before Prohibition. No, they did not find a case of Bevo sitting around in a closet somewhere. The Pilot Brewery gives brewers such as Nelson and Scribner the opportunity to collaborate with Lauer to “resurrect” old Anheuser-Busch recipes. (The Faust beer several years ago was one of my favorites.) This fall, they they pulled the original recipe from the archives and brewed a small batch of Bevo that I could sample.
Photo by Chris Naffziger
Brewmaster Zach Scribner
It’s hard to describe the taste of a drink first brewed a century ago, but honestly, it was really good, hearty, almost savory. As we tasted several other beers that were being tested in the Pilot Brewery, I found myself drawn back to the long-discontinued brew, sipping it again and again. I understand why Bevo sold 5 million cases in 1918, and the stuff’s savor helps to explain the brewery’s confidence in undertaking a massive capital expenditure for the Bevo Bottling Facility. Yet by 1929, bootleg liquor had taken over, and Bevo the beverage was discontinued.
We also had a conversation that afternoon about what it was like to be a brewer with Anheuser-Busch. Both Nelson and Scribner enjoy the challenge of trying out new types of beers, and the products of their experiments routinely end up in the beer garden in the visitors’ center. (The Soulard Strawberry Wheat mentioned in the Bevo Bottling Facility is one example.) I’ll vouch for the great taste of Rauchbier, where the ingredients are smoked in the traditional German way, even if some of Scribner’s colleagues don’t agree with us.
Interestingly, all the brewers in the Pilot Brewery are also required to brew Budweiser and Bud Light, which are then taste-tested by Anheuser-Busch executives, to prove their ability to produce the highest-selling beers. I joked with Nelson and Scribner that the general public might have an image of Anheuser-Busch brewmasters as elderly men who only know how to brew Budweiser. The reality is completely opposite: The brewers are young and interested in many different types of beer. After I tasted Bevo, they also let me sample some new beers they’d just brewed, including a Ginger Lime Lager and a Blood Orange IPA.
We then took a tour of the Pilot Brewery, which looks just like any other brewhouse except that it has a relatively small footprint—more or less equal to the original 1879 Jungenfeld building—and all brewing operations occur in its nine stories. At the top, bags of malt and other grains are stored. (As with the rest of Anheuser-Busch, the malt houses have been moved off-site.) Moving downstairs, there are the normal components of a brewhouse: a mash tun, a brew kettle, etc. While the capacity is small, there’s still a fair amount of technology involved, just as there is next door in the large 1892 brewhouse. Like the original brewhouse, each step is located on the floor below the preceding step, so the fermentation cellar (remember, cellars do not necessarily have to be below ground) comes next to store the beer before packaging. Finally, with light streaming in from the original windows in the front façade of the Jungenfeld brewhouse, the beer is bottled, just as it is over at the massive Bevo Bottling Facility.
I was fascinated by how Anheuser-Busch managed to fit so much into such a small site. Obviously, the additional floors required sinking deeper foundations, but I am impressed by the way they were able to incorporate the 1879 brewhouse into a modern facility without compromising the appearance of the historic façade. When a historic building is demolished in St. Louis, I often hear the term “obsolete” thrown around, but Anheuser-Busch has shown that even the smallest, oldest corner of its brewery can have new life breathed into it.
