The brewery that made Falstaff famous: the well-known Falstaff shield trademark has a long history that started in St. Louis - Historic Brewery

Modern Brewery Age, Jan 26, 2004

Falstaff was once one of the great names in American brewing, and still clings to vestigial life, as the "Falstaff Brg. Co." on cans of Miller-brewed Ballantine. Despite its long fall from prominence, beer aficionados in St. Louis, MO know that the Falstaff brand was the inspiration of a half-forgotten brewmaster from St. Louis named Adam Lemp.

Adam Lemp conveyed a beer recipe with him to America from Germany in 1836, passed on to him by his father. That brewing formula, that would revolutionize American beer making, was the effervescent lager beer. Adam Letup may not have been the first to use the lager beer recipe in America, but he was the first in St. Louis.

When kemp arrived on the American shore, the types of beer being produced were mainly the English-style ales and porters. Lemp's lager beer differed from the English ones in several ways, one being that its storage at a cool temperature during the fermentation process contributed to its unique features. The name lager is derived from the German verb, lagern, which means to store or rest. German monks had discovered the value of storing beer in mountain caves during the summer months to keep it cool. But the early German pioneer brewers discovered other benefits of keeping the beer at lower temperatures. Since the yeast that is used in lagering is a bottom fermenting variety, cooling allows the yeast to settle to the bottom over time, without spoiling. During the latter part of this aging process, describes Stephen Walker in his book, Lemp, The Haunting History, "lager receives an addition of young beer (in the ratio of about one part of new to four parts of old), in order to provide fresh carbonation."

During this additional aging, called Kraeusening, the unique lager qualities and flavors develop. The resulting beer--light-bodied, dry and sparkling--would soon take the U.S. and world brewing scene by storm.

Lemp beer started out as a homebrew sold by Lemp's first venture, a grocery store. The beer did so well he turned to its manufacture solely, under the name of Western Brewery. And he could not have been in a better place in the world to do so. St. Louis is situated atop a system of caves, the only city in the world so positioned. In 1840, Lemp happened upon a small opening to one of the largest cave labyrinths under the city. He purchased a lot over the subterranean hollow and began to accommodate it to his purpose. He first built a cellar over the cave, enlarged its opening, leveled floors and installed rows of large oak casks to store his maturing brew. He only had to quarry about 20% of the cave to suit his needs. One other adjustment for lagering the beer was to cut great chunks of ice from the frozen Mississippi River in the wintertime and bring it to the cave to maintain the temperature at 35-40 degrees rather than the typical 55 degree cave temperature. By 1850 Lemp's Western Brewery operation was producing 4,000 barrels of beer.

When Adam Lemp died in 1862 his son William, who had been under his father's tutelage, took the helm of the family business. Especially with the great influx of German immigrants into St. Louis, Lemp's lager bier was enjoying great popularity, as were the Lemp beer gardens. In anticipation of the expansion that would be inevitably needed to meet demand, William instigated several changes. One logical change was to build a new brewery directly over the cave.

Prior to the move, the Lemps had been hauling kegs of beer by wagon from the brewery at 2nd Street to the lagering cave, at what is now Cherokee and Demenil, eleven blocks away. William purchased land adjacent to his father's above the cave and built a model three-story brewery, malt house, offices and ice house, covering one square block. He processed his beer with all the latest machinery.

Above ground in the brewery was the packaging plant, boiling kettles, hop room, worker's dining hall and lounge, cooling room, and elevators to move the beer in its various stages, between floors. The malt house itself measured 106 feet by 142 feet where 1000 bushels of grains could be processed per hour, the largest capacity of any of the brewery malt houses in the city. Nearby also were the horse stables and barrelmakers. In 1877, with the development of Pasteurization, came the ability for breweries to extend shelf life for shipping. Soon another building went up at the brewery, Lemp's bottling plant.

Underground, three cellars extended into the cave 50 feet down to the bottom floor. Here were stored as many as 50,000 barrels of beer at a time. Separate from these massive storage compartments was a cellar constructed just for the boilers. By 1878, writes Walker, "sales of over 100,000 barrels of beer netted the company more than $1.5 million."

Another invention that modified the Lemp enterprise that same year was mechanized refrigeration. The brewery would no longer have to rely on the massive lagering cave for storage.

The expanding railroad networks were especially useful for St. Louis brewers. Lemp is claimed to have been the first to really exploit the St. Louis railhead, although Anheuser-Busch was certainly not far behind. William Lemp even set up his own Western Cable Railway Company to avoid conflicts with railroad managers about overstocking the cars with ice and to more easily transport beer directly from his own loading dock to its final destination. By the turn of the century, Lemp's beer was being shipped by rail and ship to South America and Europe, as well as far-flung ports like Shanghai, Havana and Manila.