Franconian Beer Message Board

Cellars & Caves & St. Paul MN's 19th Century German Immigrant Brewers
Posted by Nick B. on 2015-10-08 03:10:18
Discussions on this elsewhere on the internets make me realise it must be my unique up-bringing in Minnesota with its old "beer caves" cut into the cliffs along the Mississippi that leads me to think of them as "caves" rather than "cellars". A cellar, to me, must be part of a house or building, not a hillside.

There is also the specific term "Felsenkeller" which I suppose can mean "cliffside-cellar" or "rock/stone-cellar". But I don't know why it's specifically used for some Bierkeller(s) but not others.

Googling "beer caves" reveals Beer Quarry Caves in England, which unfortunately seem to have nothing to do with lagering beer, rather, "Beer" is a specific type of stone that was quarried there. Ah well.

Googling "beer caves st. paul" leads to quite a bit of info to make me nostalgic for my youth. Ah, yes, climbing the "Stairway to Heaven" was something I was never brave (or foolish) enough to do. Most importantly to this discussion (one-sided though it may be!) though, is http://substreet.org/yeorg-brewery-caves/ .

Cellars, a term equivalent with ‘caves’ in the brewing world, like these were often utilized by brewers for their perfect year-round 47-degree climate, and Saint Paul sandstone was perfect for digging. It has so many such caves that I suppose only its St. Louis, Missouri competition rivals their scope and number; Hamm’s, Schmidt’s, and Yoerg’s versus Lemp’s and Falstaff’s and (of course) Anheuser-Busch.

Indeed, the Yoerg brewery marketed its beer as "cave-aged strong beer" (who among us wouldn't like to have tried that?), and then there was even the Cave Brewery:

Christopher Stahlman, who opened his Cave Brewery
on July 5, 1855, excavated one of the most elaborate storage systems on the river. Locating his brewery on Fort
Road, at the far west end of the city at that time, he excavated three levels of caves a mile deep into the sandstone
bluffs. Having come to St. Paul with only a few dollars, he
created what would become, from at least 1876 to 1879,
the largest brewery in the state. By the mid-1880s he was
producing 40,000 barrels per year but had fallen behind
Hamm and others.

That last bit is from a large .pdf file on the Mississippi River, which does have a fair bit of info on German immigrant brewers in St. Paul, for those so inclined. Further info on the history of brewing in St. Paul is available here.

It's only fitting that the "Lilydale/Schmidt" caves have been permanently sealed off, they were always dangerous, and the sad news of the deaths of four teens who built a campfire in them....there but for better luck go I.