Embedded Files
Dr. Rudolph Gull[ABOVE] Gussie Busch toasts AB head brewmaster Dr. Rudolph Gull at his retirement in 1939. Frank Schwaiger [on stairs] who would come to replace him, is among the many observers. Gull, hired in 1894 by Adolphus Busch, came from an "eminent Swiss brewery" and rose to become AB's "technical boss" soon after (Making Friends is Our Business).
In early 20th century, Gull was listed as A-B "supervising chemist" "technical director" and "brewmaster" in industry publications. Gull was likely involved in the creation of Michelob in 1896.
Gull would die in his home in Switzerland in 1940, only 18 months after leaving Anheuser-Busch.
"Be it known that I, RUDOLF GULL, a citizen of Switzerland, residing in the city of St. Louis and State of Missouri, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Machines for Bottling Beer, of which the following is a full, clear, and exact description, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, forming part of this specification.Getting the beer to flow from the tank into the bottles and permitting also the passage of air from the tank, above the beer, to the bottles, so as to have the same air pressure in both tank and bottles at or before the time the valves are opened, thus permitting the beer to flow by gravity from the tank into the bottles the height of the beer column above the end of the filling spout, the width of the filling spout and the size of the air vent through which the air escapes from the bottles when the beer enters regulating the flow of the beer into the bottles.."
Adolph Schmedtje
US-born and college-educated, trained in Europe, worked two years at an unnamed Chicago brewery, Adolph Schmedtje was, along with Gull, one of two listed brewmasters [ABOVE RIGHT] at Anheuser-Busch before Prohibition, although a 1922 article in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat described him as the chief assistant brewmaster and his obituary in the American Brewer magazine in 1937 called him the company's "chief chemist".
His mother, St. Louis-born Johanna Busch Schmedtje, was a niece of Adolphus Busch and his father, a naturalized citizen born in Germany, was head of Anheuser-Busch's bottling department and glass manufacturing plant, retiring in 1920 after 45 years with the company.
Schmidtje's signature on his 1902 passport application, when he went to Berlin, as he noted in the application, for the purpose of "perfecting myself in the brewer's profession".
During Prohibition while working in Baltimore installing a bottling line, in 1922 Adolph was hired by the Mexican start-up Grupo Modelo at a salary of $10,000 (2020 equivalent of $150k) as well as the gift of a "large modern house in the Mexican capital", where he developed some of their first recipes according to Modelo's 2000 Annual Report, presumably for Corona and Modelo Especial.
[ABOVE] - one of the few citations of the brewery in NYC BELOW - the building at the above address. Given the left-side elevator shaft, certainly looks like it might have served as a small brewery.
The Schmedtje brewery, of which little is known or survives, was re-organized as the York Brewery, Inc. in 1936, with Schmedtje the secretary-treasurer and brewmaster. It soon after closed in 1937. Like its forerunner, little is known about York Brewery - neither appeared to have been a member of the local (NYC and metro NY) brewers organization, The Brewers' Board of Trade, Inc.
Even after the closing of the NYC brewery, Schmdedtje was still looking for a brewmaster position and/or a brewery to invest in.
Schmedtje would die the same year, in mid-December, of heart disease "...after an illness of six months".
Frank H. Schwaiger
from AB's own publication upon its anniversary, 1953's
Making Friends is Our Business
100 Years of Anheuser-Busch.
[LEFT] Schwaiger circa 1940, MBAA ST. LOUIS CONVENTION
[RIGHT] Schwaiger [far left], at the time AB VP - Brewing, is one of the AB executive touring the newly opened Anheuser-Busch brewery in Los Angeles, February, 1954. On the right is the brewery's first brew master, K. B. Goetsch.
"But with all the new techniques, everything still depends on the brewmaster. Each afternoon at 4 p.m., Anheuser-Busch's Brewmaster Frank H. Schwaiger, 46, a big, granite-faced Bavarian, walks to a special room at the brewery where a table is lined with unmarked glasses. Some hold the day's Budweiser, some Michelob, some specially air-expressed samples from Budweiser breweries in Newark and Los Angeles, some competitors' beer.
Schwaiger sniffs each glass, holds it to the light to check the color, drinks deeply in great, man-sized gulps, never sipping or swirling the beer in his mouth the way whisky or wine tasters do. "Ah," he will say quietly, "this is it," or, "No, no, the malt, the malt." Then he will order any one of a thousand slight changes to keep the various Anheuser-Busch brews uniform.
After two hours of tasting Brewmaster Schwaiger heads for home in a rosy glow of beer and good cigars. Says he: "And I think then that perhaps I have the very best job in all the world."
"Busch's Budweiser" - TIME, May 1955
Schwaiger was also one of the four St. Louis brewers who wrote The Practical Brewer manual published by The Master Brewers Association of the Americas in 1946.
Ironically, given Schwaiger's development of the rice-adjunct version of the former all-malt Michelob, Anheuser-Busch's entry in the then-popular malt liquor segment, a higher alcohol beer usually noted for it higher usage of sugar adjunct, bucked the norm by being all-malt.
[ABOVE LEFT] Novelty pinback button honoring the A-B Master Brewer (and V.P.) said to have been created to celebrate his perfecting of the recipe using rice as an adjunct for the bottled version of Michelob released in the early 1960's.
[ABOVE RIGHT] In a rare public mention of Schwaiger, Gussie Busch is quoted in promotional material during the release of Budweiser Malt Liquor.
AB would discontinue BUDWEISER MALT LIQUOR only two years later, ostensibly because of a lack of capacity due increased demand for Michelob and the then-regional brand, Busch Bavarian as well as the growing sales of Bud At the time AB noted that the Malt Liquor was an "insignificant part" of AB's 29 million barrelage.
According to Peter Hernon & Terry Ganey's Under The Influence: The Unauthorized Story of the Anheuser-Busch Dynasty, Frank H. Schwaiger, hired the week before Prohibition ended:
“…came to be regarded as … a god at creating beer, the only man Gussie Busch dared to not fire.”
A former AB executive claimed Schwaiger:
“…was one of the few who I saw tell the old man off and the old man took it.
[Busch] stuck with Schwaiger when the stockholders, his whole goddamned family and everybody else wanted him to make beer like everybody else. He knew quality. He knew that in the long run, and he took a lot of heat – Pabst, Schlitz, Rupert – were making beer the shortcut way. He was getting heat from stockholders, bankers and his family.”
According to the authors:
"Gussie put “an iron curtain” around Schwaiger to protect him. No one was allowed to interfere with the brewing process. Schwaiger designed the new breweries the company built so that they could make beer only one way. the point was significant. While other breweries used engineers to design their new plants, Anhesuer-Busch turned the job over to its chief alchemist, the brewmaster."
They also note:
"Schwaiger, who started out as a $150-a-month brewmaster, died a millionaire."
Frank Schwaiger would retire from AB in 1973 but would remain on the board of directors until 1978. He died in 1981.
The interesting story of Schwaiger's decision to use the Oregon-grown Willamette hops for Budweiser in the late 1960s, and essentially killing the Columbia hop, can be found at: http://inhoppursuit.blogspot.com/2010/03/hoptalk-with-hopmeister-al-haunold-part.html
(excerpt) Enter Frank Schwaiger, AB’s German-born master brewer. “Frank was amazing,” recalled Al (Haunold). “Before instruments were readily available for measuring alpha acid and oil components, Frank had developed an incredibly keen sense of aroma and flavor.” Dr. Al credits Frank with catapulting AB from the back of the pack to its current leadership position."
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse