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Schalk Bros. Lager Beer Brewery
"According to chemical analysis and other high authority, the quality of beer brewed by the Schalks is equal, if not superior, to the best manufactured even in Germany."
---THE HISTORY OF NEWARK - John Atkinson - 1878
(Above)
In the early 1840’s, Johann Nepomuk Schalk and his sons, Herman, Adolph and Oscar emigrated to the US and set up a brewery on the corner of Hamburg Place (now Wilson Street) and Napoleon Street, to brew the first lager beer in Newark.
In 1854, recent German immigrant (and future Newark brewer) Joseph Hensler would work at the Schalk brewery.
Later in the decade, Johann Schalk returned to Germany where he still had a brewery in Konstanz. The sons sold their Newark brewery to Christopher Wiedenmayer (father of future Newark brewer, George W. Wiedenmayer) .
In 1856-7, the brothers built a new brewery on Freeman Street (then, according to a report in the New York Times “far out of the thickly portions of the city”). Located in what was known as the "Down Neck" section of Newark and, later, as the "Ironbound" - was The Schalk Brothers Lager Bier Brewery.
"Schalk Brothers" are listed as sutlers for beer during the Civil War.
CAMDEN DAILY POST ad - October, 1878
[ABOVE] 1865 Hartford Connecticut
In 1871, a fire would nearly destroy the brewery, which had 80 employees at the time.
The New York Daily Herald in 1870 put Schalk's barrelage at 40,000 - more than twice the size of the next largest Newark lager brewer - Hill & Krueger (18k).
In 1872-73, Schalk Brothers, by some accounts, was among the top 20 lager beer brewers in the country, brewing 39,320 barrels.
A New York Times article on the Newark breweries of both Ballantine and Schalk put the latter's yearly barrelage at 60-70,000 in 1873.
A New York Herald Letter to Editor from Herman Schalk listed these products:
Schalk's Extra Beer
5.51% abv
Schalk Lager Beer
4.75% abv
Pilsner Export Beer
5.59% abv
Local ads from Raleigh, NC & York, PA, 1870s
[ABOVE] German language ads in Scranton, PA's Wochenblatt newspaper in the 1870's.
Figures in contemporary newspaper articles list Schalk Brothers as the largest selling Newark lager beer with a total of 33,000 barrels in 1875.
In 1876, Adolph Schalk left the company and sold his share to his brother, Herman A. Schalk.
In 1877 the Schalk Bros. Brewery was tied for 5th (with Krueger) in sales among the top eleven Newark brewers, with sales of 24,812 barrels.
In 1878, according to Internal Revenue figures, Shalk Bros. brewed 20,393 barrels.
The company was hit hard during the national financial panic of 1873 and owed a large bill to the P. Ballantine & Sons firm for malt (Ballantine was one of the very few maltsters in NJ)
Above - Site of the original Schalk brewery - home of Newark's first lager beer (As shown on map from 1870's, after Wiedenmeyer's purchase)
Below - The Schalk Brothers Lager Bier Brewery on Freeman Street that would become the Ballantine & Co. Lager Beer Brewery in 1879.
In 1879, the Ballantine family bought the Schalk brewery for $110,000.
Initially, it was run as a separate firm, Ballantine & Co., for the production of draught lager beer.
Schalk brewery map of 1870's - compare with map of the Feigenspan and Ballantine breweries 1912 and with theArtist's rendering of the Schalk built brewery, in the decade after the Ballantine purchase.
[BELOW] 1876 Wilmington, NC
The Schalk name lives on in Newark, as the name of a street three blocks to the west of the site of the Freeman Street brewery (click on link above for map in 1912).
And, in Plainsboro, NJ, outside of Princeton, [BELOW] where Major Herman Schalk had a farm in the 1870's with its own railway stop ( "Schalk Station" on what was then part of the Pennsylvania Railroad), the name lives on at "Schalks Crossing Road"- previously known as "Schalks Station Road" (the farmhouse and train stop now gone).
Schalk Station on the Trenton Branch of the Camden & Amboy Railroad ( 1895 ).
The grandson of Johann Schalk, having served as the brewmaster at New York City's Jacob Ruppert Brewing Co. - among the largest in the country at the time - would buy the "Phoenix Brewery" on Lewis Street that had been run by Franz Kastner and his son Theodore for 50 years, in October, 1912.
The brewery was a block away from the Union Brewing Co., and 4 blocks from Gottfried Kruger's brewery on Belmont Avenue.
In 1895, the New York Times marriage announcement of Herman A. Schalk to Jacob Ruppert daughter, Anna Gillig Ruppert (sister of Jacob Ruppert, Jr. eventual owner of that brewery), Stated he was from Indianapolis.
[BELOW] 1914 Newark City Directory Ad
Hermann A. Schalk, Jr.
Brothers Adolph and Hermann Schalk would be recognized as Honorary Members of the United States Brewers' Association.In the 1890's Herman A. Schalk would be listed as a "Hop Dealer" in Newark, and Oscar Schalk and his son would be listed as sellers of "Malt and Hops" and "Brewers Supplies".
The Kastner brewery in 1892, in the decades before Schalk's purchase. [RIGHT]
1914 price of Schalk's Beer - At the time other locally-brewed lager beers like Rheingold, Schaefer and Feigenspan P.O.N. were priced at $1 - $1.20 cs.
The second Schalk Brewing Co. would close before Prohibition in 1918, due to government grain restrictions of World War I. The New York Tribune would confuse the two family breweries in their announcement of the closing. Soon after, a fire would damage the building.
The Schalk family would also be involved in breweries in Manhattan and in Brooklyn and would eventually intermarry with the famous New York brewing family of Jacob Ruppert, when Herman A. Schalk, Jr. married Col. Ruppert's sister, Anna.
Hermann was noted as the Master Brewer at Ruppert's in 1903's 100 YEARS OF BREWING, and would be again in the post-Repeal Era. Other Schalks would be officers of the Ruppert brewery into the 1960's, including Herman and Anna's son, J. Ruppert Schalk, listed as secretary of the brewing company in Ruppert's obit in 1939 and later that year elected Vice President.
* Herman A. Schalk Sr. portrait and other Schalk - Ruppert - Erhet family information courtesy of Jacob Ruppert, Sr.'s great-great grandson
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