The original beer cellars, of course, were caves, where brewers could count on the temperatures staying low enough. I got an e-mail the other day from Dagmar Suarez (not his real name) who writes Detritus of Empire about his series of blog posts on abandoned brewery caves. As a former medical doctor in Wisconsin, most of the more than two dozen posts on old beer caves are located in the Great Lakes area, but it’s a fascinating look back to a time when brewers had to be resourceful to meet their cooling needs.

A brewery cave in Stillwater, Minnesota from the 1870s.