agingcellar

Aging Cellars

[ABOVE] Working on wooden 800 barrel capacity aging tanks - 1935

[BELOW] 1938 - Ale casks

Oval tanks in the Ballantine cellar- photo by Berenice Abbott for Fortune Magazine

See also her famous shot of the Ballantine delivery truck yard.

[BELOW LEFT] Detail from schematic drawing of Ballantine brewing process, showing both open and closed fermenters. Open typically used for top fermenting ale, allowing for the skimming, collection and reuse of yeast, and closed, for lager beers and for the collection of carbon dioxide used to carbonate finished beer before packaging. Illustration suggests that the brewery continued to use standard round/oval lagering tanks for their lager beer and the concrete "Rostock cellar" tanks for their top fermented ale.

BALLANTINE'S ROSTOCK CELLAR

"…a special wax-like coating which impreg-

nates the interior and produces a smooth,

black, glossy, uniform surface. This coating

is of a neutral nature, having no chemical

effect on the beer in the tanks."

Brooklyn's F & M Schaefer Brewing Co. claimed to be

the first US brewery to install the Rostock-lined tanks

in the US. Turner-Rostock was a joint venture of

Turner Construction Co. and Bearlocher & Rostock

of Europe ("Vienna, Berlin and Paris"). Turner

constructed numerous buildings and renovations

for Ballantine, including the Hamden CT branch in 1936.

[competitor's ad ]

...which had previously been adopted by

European breweries.

[ABOVE] Like many other large breweries, Ballantine

added concrete "storage" tanks. Ballantine's tanks,

installed by the Turner-Rostock Co. were "Rostock-

lined", described as: