The following is a vivid, first-hand account of a brewery tour found in Pen Pictures from the Garden of the World, published by the Pacific Press Publishing Co., Oakland, Cal., 1888.

"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."

Fredericksburg Brewing Co.

In 1890, controlling interest in the Fredericksburg Brewery was purchased by San Francisco Breweries, Ltd. This British syndicate was formed to acquire and amalgamate ten breweries in and around San Francisco. The combine consisted of the Fredericksburg and Pacific breweries of San Jose; the Hofburg Brewery of West Berkeley; the Oakland Brewery, and Brooklyn Brewery, both of Oakland; the John Wieland Brewing Co., the United States Brewery, Chicago Brewery, So. San Francisco Brewery, and Willows Brewery - all of San Francisco.

By 1899, four of the breweries had been liquidated. Of the six remaining, the April 1906, San Francisco fire and earthquake destroyed three. The Syndicate lasted until Prohibition with only the Fredericksburg Brewing Co., John Wieland Brewing Co., and the Brooklyn Brewery.

San Jose Bottling Co. ca.1893

 

crown cap lifter with Prest-O-Lite Key² Pat. 1901

A major fire broke out at the Fredericksburg Brewery in 1902 and the great, six-story turreted tower of the malt house crashed into Cinnabar Street. The brewery was rebuilt by the time of the 1906 earthquake and survived with only minor damage.

The post earthquake rebuilding in San Francisco brought other changes to the cities breweries. They were now updating and installing their own crown cap bottling lines, and the beer bottling unions were demanding the end of embossed bottles and the use of patented stoppers.

It's not clear which happened first, but in May of 1912, the Fredericksburg Brewing Co. announced that their beer was now "bottled by the brewery" - not at the brewery, but by the brewery, which would indicate that they were now the proprietors of the Fredericksburg Bottling Company.

Also in May of 1912, August Lang & Co. released their own "Red Lion Beer" from the Aug. Lang Brewing Assn. at Baker & Geary Sts. Lang may have sold to S. F. Breweries, Ltd. to fund the refit his newly acquired brewery. The bottling works continued operating as the Fredericksburg Bottling Co. until late 1918.

The Fredericksburg Brewery didn't quite make it to Prohibition in 1920. San Jose voted to become "dry" in 1918, in part as a WWI conservation effort, which was actually a thinly veiled prohibition movement. In September, 1918, the Brewery ceased operations. During the years of Prohibition (1920-1933) many breweries continued operating by producing near-beer or soft drinks, but the Fredericksburg plant remained shuttered until Repeal in April of 1933.

 

Pacific Brewing & Malting Co. (1933-1951)

Pacific Brewing & Malting Co. (1933-1952)

In 1916, Huth & Virges of Tacoma's Pacific Brewing & Malting built a brewery in San Francisco, after being shut-down by Washington's state-wide Prohibition. The SF brewery, located at 675 Treat Ave. and operated under the name Tacoma Brewing & Malting, but was also doing business as Pacific Brewing & Malting.
In 1918, the government impossed a war time restriction on breweries, which prompted PB&M to convert the Tacoma plant to soap manufacture, and to sell the San Francisco plant. The SF brewery was sold to a group of investors led by the plant manager and company shareholder, Charles Colpe.
On 1 Dec. 1919, the brewery began doing business as the Tacoma Brewing Co., and continuing with the production of near-beer.

In 1927, after eight years of struggling, and with no hope of an end to Prohibition, Colpe sold the Treat St. brewery to the Rainier Brewing Co. However, five years later the end of Prohibition appeared emanate, prompting an investment group of SF capitalists, headed by Charles H. Colpe, to purchase the shuttered Fredericksburg Brewery.
In July of 1932, Colpe was quoted as saying that the brewery will re-open with the manufacture of malt, but will be used immediately for brewing beer should the Volstead act be modified. Colpe and his group had additional plans for expansion outside of San Jose.

Encouraged by positive talks with the Rainier Brewing Co., Colpe gave the following story to the San Francisco Chronicle on 18 Feb., 1933:

"Believing that the United States will see legalized beer by June 1, the old Tacoma Brewing Company, once one of the largest brewing concerns on the coast, came to life yesterday under a new name.

As the Pacific Brewing and Malting Company of San Francisco, it filed articles of incorporation with the Secratery of State at Sacramento. Its capitalization was placed at $2,000,000. The directors named in the articles were the former owners of the Tacoma Brewing Company, Charles H. Colpe, Henry E. Monroe, H. W. Steineggner, J. M. Early, and W. J. Wilson, all of San Francisco.

According to Colpe the concern will take over the Tacoma Bottling Company plant at Sacramento, the Tacoma Bottling Company in Los Angeles, and the Fredericksburg Brewery and Malt House at San Jose, to be operated as plants by the new concern.

'We are sure that legalized beer will become a reality by June 1,' said Colpe, 'and we are just getting ready that is all. We represent the old Tacoma Brewery crowd and we plan to be back on the market with Tacoma Products.'

The development program includes certain changes, additions, and developments in the three major plants of the company to meet an anticipated rush business when a legal thrist armistice is declared."

The new brewery's president wasn't entirely successful in his negotiations with Rainier. While he had secured use of the Fredericksburg brand with the purchase of the brewery, he failed to regain rights to use the Tacoma brand.

However, in November of 1936 it was announced that PB&M had purchased an historic San Francisco brand, famous for eighty-five years. The plans to reopen the old John Wieland Brewery (est. 1852) had been abandoned which presented the opportunity for the purchase of the iconic brand.

PB&M also produced Old Heidelbrau, Old Joe's Lager and Steam Beer, Cortez Lager, Boilermaker Ale, and Ritz Lager and SteamBeer (for the Garden City Brewing Company - a contract brewer). They also did contract brewing for a number of distributors and a food market chain.

 

Wieland's Brewery

Fredericksburg was Pacific Brewing & Malting's flagship brand when in Nov. 1936 the Wieland's brand was introduced to the line-up.  By Oct. of '41, sales of Wieland's Lager and Wieland's Ale had out paced Frederickesburg and the brand was dropped. Even as early as 1939 they began referring to their plant as the Wieland's Brewery, in favor of the old Fredericksburg Brewery.

Due to the popularity of their Wieland's brand, in March of 1952, Pacific Brewing & Malting began doing business as the Wieland's Brewing Co. Then two months later, in March of '52, the company introduced their "100 Year Beer" - erroneously claiming that the company was established in 1852. Actually, John Wieland established his Philadelphia Brewery in 1855, not that anyone really cared.

Ultimately, the Wieland's Brewing Company was to be a short lived venture. In November of '52, after a mere eight months, it was announced that the brewery had been purchased by the Griesedieck family of St. Louis, making it their western branch of the Falstaff Brewing Corp.

The Falstaff Brewery operated for 20 years, closing in 1973. The plant was demolished in 1980.

FOOTNOTES:  

¹  Similar bottles to the one shown above were used by the Claussen-Sweeney Brewing Co. and the Bay View Brewery, but with green glass. This confirms what has long been suspected by collectors - that these bottles were made by the Siemens-Glaswerks of Dresden, Germany, the largest bottle manufacturer in Europe at the time (ca.1887). The Fredericksburg Bottling Co. quart, in green, is also believed to have been made in this Dresden glass factory, but at a later date.

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