"Embarking on one of the handsome cars of the Electric Road we are whirled rapidly along the famous Alameda Avenue, with its leafy shade, past the homes of wealthy men, sheltered with giant trees and embowered in flowers, to a point where stirring life and bustling activity proclaim the presence of some great enterprise. It is the Fredericksburg Brewery, the widest known and the most extensive establishment of its kind west of the Rocky Mountains.
 
Immediately opposite is the Agricultural Park, where the annual county fairs are held, and on every side are splendid private residences, the home of culture
and affluence. The great pile of massive brick buildings that make up this mammoth brewing establishment are very sightly in their appearance. Fronting
on the grand thoroughfare of the Alameda is the reception hall, as yet a modest structure, to be replaced in the near future by a seemly building to correspond
with the great brick buildings beyond. It is flanked by a pretty garden and a commodious hotel and refreshment saloon, each feature being liberally patronized by those who enjoy the bounties afforded and the beauties surrounding. Not far beyond, and fronting on Cinnabar Street, which here meets the Alameda, are the large and substantially handsome buildings devoted to the various departments of the brewing business, three fine two-story brick edifices,
from whose junction is now rising a lofty, commanding center, to be, when finished, of three stories, constructed in the strongest manner, and, as is shown by the plans (drawing above), an elegant structure. It is the new brewhouse. In it will be placed a new copper beer kettle, of a capacity of two hundred and twenty-five barrels, also an iron mash tub with copper bottom, an immense hop-jack, hot-water tanks, etc., all of the best construction and manufactured by the George F. Ott Copper and Iron Manufacturing Company, Philadelphia. In the malt-house the curious visitor will see the enormous vats wherein is soaked the barley, the vast stone cellars where it is placed to sprout, the chambers for drying, and the mills for grinding, some slight conception of the magnitude of all these operations being obtained when it is remembered that seven tons per day of barley are transformed into malt.

The engine-rooms next attract attention, where there is a row of four huge boilers, and furnaces, supplying steam for the engines needed to propel the
machinery of the establishment, its lifting, and pulling and pumping, its mills, its elevators, and its enginery. There are in all ten pumps, all necessarily of great power, employed in the establishment, forcing the beer in the different stages of its manufacture to the various parts of the building. Pure artesian water is supplied from two artesian wells. One of the most interesting departments is the refrigerator room, where two engines of forty-horse power each are kept busy in the manufacture of ice, the capacity being over fifty tons per day, and in forcing salt water, cooled beneath the freezing point of fresh water, through the storing rooms. The pipes containing this water are enveloped in a constant coating of ice, presenting a strange appearance as one comes upon them after the genial atmosphere of out-of-doors, or the torrid heat of the engine-rooms. The storage cellars present a sight that will not be easily forgotten, range after range of giant tanks and vats and casks, containing each from thirty-five to two hundred and fifty barrels of beer. The fermenting room, with its long line of frothing vats, when the beer is preparing for the storage cellars, the filters, the great ocean of cooling ship — but why attempt to describe the indescribable? It must be seen to be appreciated, and in despair we abandon the attempt to picture in detail.

After inspecting the main departments the visitor will not easily tire of going through the bottling, and washing, and the packing-rooms, the cooperage shops,
watching the curiously capped bottles that are under-going the process of Pasteurization, the exquisite finish of the clear and beautiful Pilsener and Culmbacher lager beers prepared for export; and after it is all over he will quaff with a new appreciation the nectar of the crystal clear and wholesome beer presented at the hand of the genial F. A. Baumgartner, the foreman who has done the honors of the establishment by accompanying him through.

These latter departments occupy commodious wooden buildings distinct from the main brewery, and are admirably fitted. To help the imagination, it must be known that from eight thousand to ten thousand bottles per day are required, these bottles being made some in Illinois and some in Germany¹ (right), and the annual production has risen from the very small beginning made in 1869, to a grand total of fifty-three thousand barrels from May to May last year, and a probable sixty thousand during this present year, ending 1889. In all some one hundred and twenty men, women, and children find employment, the wages paid and the hours of work having always been eminently satisfactory. In San Jose fifteen horses are needed for the wagons, and a like number are used in connection with the San Francisco business. The brewery is connected directly by an independent switch with the Narrow Gauge Railway, a material advantage when it is considered that shipments upon an immense scale are required to fill the growing demands from Central and South America, Old and New Mexico, Japan, Australia, the Sandwich Islands, and the most distant portions of the Pacific Coast States and Territories, in addition to the large and firmly established local trade.

This great business was inaugurated on a very small scale in 1869, and has steadily prospered, until now, under the efficient management of its proprietors, Messrs. Ernst Schnabel and Ernst A. Denicke, the business is unsurpassed, Mr. Schnabel is the manager of the brewery at San Jose, and his watchful oversight the direct cause of the purity and excellence of the beer, while Mr. Denicke resides in San Francisco and manages the outside business. They possess ample capital, and, backed as they are by long and successful experience, and untiring energy, the Fredericksburg Brewing Company constitutes one of the most important commercial institutions of the State."

FOOTNOTES:  

¹  Similar bottles to the one shown above were used by the Claussen-Sweeney Brg. Co. and the Bay View Brewery, but with green glass, and have long been suspected by collectors, to have been made in Germany. The Fredericksburg Bottling Co. quart, in green, is also believed to be from Germany.

    ²  The Prest-O-Lite key is the square hole in the at the end of the cap lifter which was used as a wrench to open the valve on carbide tanks mounted on the running boards of early autos. Headlights were illuminated by carbide gas from about 1900 to 1915.

12" stock tray by H. D. Beech & Co.

13" beer tray by Kaufmann & Strauss Co.

stock tray by American Art Works "Heine"

etched beer glass