Jacob Ruppert

The Jacob Ruppert brewery, New York City.

The brewhouse. A sieve attached to the malt mill removes the malt husks from the flour. The former are mashed in in the mash tun, while the flour together with the adjuncts are dissolved in the adjunct cooker under pressure. After completing this the adjunct-malt flour mash serves to bring the temperature of the malt husk mash to mash out temperature. Lautering is done as usual, whereby however no stirring takes place, only sparging.

Of three available brew kettles of 200 barrels capacity each two of the kettles are twice filled, and one of the kettles once filled, with in total 1000 barrels per brew. First kettle I is filled, then kettle II and then kettle III. Until kettle III is filled, kettle I is already cooked and drawn off and is filled once more, then kettle II is filled for the second time. The worts of the different kettles show in a sequence of about 21, 19, 12, 7, 4% balling. In the fermentation cellar these worts are combined into one brew. Cooling and fermentation. From the hop strainer the wort goes from an enclosed cooler directly into the fermentation vats. These are enclosed laying Pfaudler-steel tanks of 1000 barrels capacity. (while I remained in New York a number of new huge tanks were put into place, whose capacity is considerably larger and which represent the largest fermentation vessels in the world).

The fermentation is carried out according to the "yeasting forward system of fermentation", whereby the work process in short goes thusly:" the contents of a fermentation vessel which is in kräusen is transferred through a vent placed at about a quarter of the height of the tanks by its own weight whereby about half of the tank's contents are transferred. The new brew is then pumped into both of these half-filled vessels. As soon as the wort is in kräusen again the contents of tank 2 are transferred to tank 3, tank 2 and three are now filled with a new brew while tank 1 remains to ferment. When tank 2 and 3 are in kräusen then the contents of tank 3 runs to tank 4, while tank 2 remains to ferment. The brewery has carried out this "circulation", this, if one may say so, "continous fermentation", through 90 generations already, without degenerating the yeast.

The carbonation is collected and compressed, or when there is no need for it, let out into the air. During this entire time the fermenting mass stays under a weak pressure. On the sixth day a observational glass which is placed above the liquid is opened and from the opposite end of the tank air is blown over the surface of the wort. Simultaneously the cooling is started, in order to be able to put the beer into barrels on the seventh day.

Lager cellar. The lagering treatment is not considerably different from the usual method of other american breweries. For bottling beer the young beer is cooled to 0 degrees when transferred from the fermentation cellar, it is carbonated somewhat and then spunded. Later the same beer runs through a cooler, a carbonator and a filter to the bottling department. The cask beer comes from the fermentation cellar to the ruh cellar, out of which a part is directly carbonated and brought to the trade. The rest comes from the ruh keller into spunding vats and is kräusened. The kräusened beer is always blended with carbonated beer during filtration and only sold blended.

As noted at the end of paragraph 2, during the time of Von Cluss' visit to the NYC breweries, the company installed new kettles:

"The four largest brewing kettles ever built in a brewery... constructed by August Roos from the finest grade of copper of the famous Calumet-Hecla Mines at Lake Michigan, requiring 200,000 pounds of copper, and having a capacity of 25,000 gallons each. "

In another 1912 advertisement, Ruppert claimed:

"When the present plans and buildings now under construction are completed, which will be this year, the Jacob Ruppert Brewery will be one of the three largest breweries in the world and the largest East of the Mississippi."