A look at the treatise Louis Lemp wrote when he was a young brewing student

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Photograph by Chris Naffziger

Historic Lemp Brewery

I love conducting research at the Missouri History Museum Archives on Skinker Boulevard. Besides being a beautiful space, there is such a wealth of fascinating documents and photographs to be discovered there. For those interested in the story of the Lemp family, the archives provide fascinating glimpses into their family business.

St. Louis is lucky to have two exemplary historians, Stephan Walker and David Mullgardt, who have shed new light on these German brewers in recent years. But when it comes to the history of the Lemp family, there are still plenty of new revelations to be discovered.

I recently had the opportunity to spend several hours looking through Louis Lemp’s brewing treatise in the Archives. The son of William Lemp Sr. and his wife Julia Feickert, Louis entered the family business along with his other brothers. As Walker has documented, at least one of Louis’ brothers, William Jr., was not thrilled to go into the brewing business. But judging from Louis’ early life, he seemed perfectly happy to do so. He traveled to Germany to learn from the brewing experts, and his treatise reveals that he was a diligent student.

The document is relatively small, and it's in a good state of preservation, with lined, paginated paper; a large number of pages are blank. While there is no official date on the treatise, I would estimate that at least some of the writings are from around 1890, based off of two pages with that date. Louis would have been around twenty years old—right at the age when his education commenced in the brewing industry. Perhaps what is most fascinating about the document is its emphasis on modern chemistry. While beer has existed for thousands of years, ancient and even medieval brewers had little knowledge of how carbon, oxygen, or hydrogen affected the brew process. Germany led the Industrial Revolution in advances in chemistry, so it's not surprising that German brewers would become obsessed with the elemental nature of brewing. The Scientific Revolution affected every aspect of traditional industries, and the Lemps kept up on the latest trends for their modern business.

The contents of Louis' treatise seem to be influenced by The Theory and Practice of the Preparation of Malt and the Fabrication of Beer, the famous beer manual I covered last year. His notes incorporate content from the manual, which Louis probably read in German and English. For example, the treatise includes a lengthy discussion of the metric system, which is included in the appendix of The Theory and Practice. Likewise, Louis’ notes on the modern understanding of elements, complete with their atomic numbers, reflect a German interest in modern chemistry. Surely a medieval monk would have been shocked at how his descendants in the brewing industry were now examining his industry on the microscopic, atomic level. I found it fascinating that even in the 19th century Louis’ notes demonstrate an understanding of elements like carbon or hydrogen in the same way I did when I taught chemistry in the 1990s. A similar discussion of liquid thermodynamics and different types of sugars, such as dextrose and other polysaccharides, are also present in both sources.

As a traveler familiar with the Bay of Naples, I was particularly interested in Louis’ discussion of the dangers of carbon dioxide building up in the Lemp Brewery’s massive and deep lagering cellars. Scientists and brewers realized that the molecular weight of carbon dioxide caused the toxic gas to collect in the lowest reaches of their cellars and caves while oxygen rose out of the lower levels. Louis retells the infamous story of the Cave of the Dog, a stopover that Mark Twain mentions in his book Innocents Abroad. Long before animal welfare was ever a public concern, visitors would bring dogs into a volcanic cave on the shores of Lake Avernus, west of Naples, and then set the animals down inside. In a few minutes, the dog would succumb to “noxious vapors” that did not affect humans. (Twain did not participate in the ritual.) Louis explains that since carbon dioxide is heavier than oxygen, a lower layer of that poisonous gas killed the dog, while humans could safely breathe the lighter oxygen above. It is an appalling example of animal cruelty, but it's still interesting that modern science had solved the mystery of why deep caves could prove deadly. Due to geological and volcanic shifts in the region, the cave is no longer toxic to dogs.

In his treatise, Louis then discusses the proper preparation of malt. In this portion of the document, as well as Theory and Practice, the steps needed to properly germinate the barley, unlocking the sugars inside, are explained. In fact, the portion on the actual brewing process is nearly identical in both sources. I suspect that Louis’ writings from pages 48–131 are direct notes from Theory and Practice. At this point, a medieval brewer would perhaps feel more at home; the procedures have changed little over the centuries except in the scale of brewing operations. The importance of sanitizing brewing vessels is emphasized, in particular for eliminating molds and bacteria that sour the taste of beer. Proper heating methods are also explained. The Lemps believed that a fire warmed up a mash tun the most efficiently, eschewing steam heat, following the advice of a “Dr. Schwarz.” Finally, the proper methods of lagering are discussed, bringing the beer to completion after the finishing and clarifying process.

There is something truly special and humbling about reading a historical figure’s own words, explaining the process of how he and his family became linked to the history of St. Louis and its brewing industry. The Lemps were intelligent, thoughtful, well-educated, and firmly indoctrinated into the importance of quality in everything they produced. They closely followed the latest scientific advances, integrating new discoveries in chemistry into their business model. Sadly, all of Louis and his family’s hard work eventually came crashing down. Just thirty years after his brewing treatise was written, Prohibition caused the Lemp Brewery to close forever.

Special thanks to Stephan Walker for his contribution to my understanding of the life of Louis Lemp.