Historic Beer Birthday: Johan Kjeldahl

August 16, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Johan Gustav Christoffer Thorsager Kjeldahl (August 16, 1849-July 18, 1900) He was a Danish chemist who developed a method for determining the amount of nitrogen in certain organic compounds using a laboratory technique which was named the Kjeldahl method after him.

Kjeldahl worked in Copenhagen at the Carlsberg Laboratory, associated with Carlsberg Brewery, where he was head of the Chemistry department from 1876 to 1900.

He was given the job to determine the amount of protein in the grain used in the malt industry. Less protein meant more beer. Kjeldahl found the answer was in developing a technique to determine nitrogen with accuracy but existing methods in analytical chemistry related to proteins and biochemistry at the time were far from accurate.

Haslund_Johan_Kjeld — A painting by Otto Haslund of Johan Kjeldahl.

His discovery became known as the Kjeldahl Method

The method consists of heating a substance with sulphuric acid, which decomposes the organic substance by oxidation to liberate the reduced nitrogen as ammonium sulphate. In this step potassium sulphate is added to increase the boiling point of the medium (from 337 °C to 373 °C) . Chemical decomposition of the sample is complete when the initially very dark-coloured medium has become clear and colourless.
The solution is then distilled with a small quantity of sodium hydroxide, which converts the ammonium salt to ammonia. The amount of ammonia present, and thus the amount of nitrogen present in the sample, is determined by back titration. The end of the condenser is dipped into a solution of boric acid. The ammonia reacts with the acid and the remainder of the acid is then titrated with a sodium carbonate solution by way of a methyl orange pH indicator.

In practice, this analysis is largely automated; specific catalysts accelerate the decomposition. Originally, the catalyst of choice was mercuric oxide. However, while it was very effective, health concerns resulted in it being replaced by cupric sulfate. Cupric sulfate was not as efficient as mercuric oxide, and yielded lower protein results. It was soon supplemented with titanium dioxide, which is currently the approved catalyst in all of the methods of analysis for protein in the Official Methods and Recommended Practices of AOAC International.

And Velp Scientifica also has an explanation of his method, which is still in use today.

Beer In Ads #5054: Alpine Bock Beer Festival

August 15, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Last year I decided to concentrate on Bock ads. Bock, of course, may have originated in Germany, in the town of Einbeck. Because many 19th century American breweries were founded by German immigrants, they offered a bock at certain times of the year, be it Spring, Easter, Lent, Christmas, or what have you. In a sense they were some of the first seasonal beers. “The style was later adopted in Bavaria by Munich brewers in the 17th century. Due to their Bavarian accent, citizens of Munich pronounced ‘Einbeck’ as ‘ein Bock’ (a billy goat), and thus the beer became known as ‘Bock.’ A goat often appears on bottle labels.” And presumably because they were special releases, many breweries went all out promoting them with beautiful artwork on posters and other advertising.

Friday’s ad is not for a specific Bock Beer, but for an upcoming Bock Beer Festival at the Alpine Village Beer Garden, and was published on August 15, 1969. This one is for the Alpine Village in Torrance, California, which was originally founded in 1968. They had Bavarian Dances every weekend, but the Bock Beer Festival took place on august 17. Unfortunately, it closed during Covid, but has recently been designated as culturally significant and saved from demolition. This ad for the event ran in The Daily Breeze, of Hermosa Beach, California.

Historic Beer Birthday: Charles D. Goepper

August 15, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Charles D. Goepper (August 15, 1860-June 7, 1909). In 18990, he was elected Secretary of the Phoenix Brewery of Louisville, Kentucky. The brewery was founded in 1859 as the Philip Zang Brewery, but became known as the Phoenix Brewery just two years later, in 1861, but closed in 1916 due to prohibition.

Here is Goepper’s obituary from the American Brewers’ Review:

And this obituary is from the Louisville Courier Journal:

And this obituary is from the same day in Louisville Courier Journal, but is slightly different, possibly from different editions, like the morning and evening papers?:

Historic Beer Birthday: Adam Eulberg

August 15, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Adam Eulberg (August 15, 1835-May 20, 1901). He was born in Nassau, Germany but moved to Portage, Wisconsin with his family when he was 19, in 1854. In 1884 he and his brother Peter bought the City Brewery, which had been founded in 1852 by Carl Haertel. His brother Peter passed away suddenly shortly thereafter and Adam carried on the business alone, at least until his two sons were old enough to join him. Adam and Peter renamed the brewery Eulberg Bros. Brewery, but Adam’s family changed it to the Eulberg Brewing Co. in 1907. They survived prohibition making soda, and resumed beer production after repeal, but the Eulbergs sold the business in 1944. It closed for good in 1958.

This is Eulberg’s obituary from the American Brewers’ Review:

Eulberg-brewery-1880 — The Eulberg Brewery before he bought it, in 1880.

This short history of the brewery is from the Wisconsin Historical Society:

Milwaukee dominated Wisconsin’s early brewing industry, but successful breweries were found in communities throughout the state. In 1852, German immigrant Carl Haertel began producing beer in Portage, Wisconsin. In 1884, brothers Adam and Peter Eulberg, also originally from Germany, acquired the Haertel Brewery. The Eulberg Brewing Company remained in the family until 1944 and shut its doors permanently in 1958.

And here’s another history of the brewery building itself, which is still standing in downtown Portage, Wisconsin.

As far as I can tell, he’s not related to Caspar Eulberg, who was born in roughly the same area of Germany, and started a brewery in Galena, Illinois called C. Eulberg & Sons.

Historic Beer Birthday: Christian Benjamin Feigenspan

August 15, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Christian Benjamin Feigenspan (August 15, 1844-April 10, 1899). He was born in Thuringia, Germany but moved his family to New Jersey and founded the C. Feigenspan Brewing Company of Newark in 1875, though at least one source says 1868. When he died in 1899, his son Christian William Feigenspan took over management of the brewery, which remained in business through prohibition, but was bought by Ballantine in 1943.

There’s surprisingly little biographical information about Christian Benjamin Feigenspan, but here’s some history of his brewery:

In 1875 the Christian Feigenspan Brewing Company was founded at 49 Charlton St., at the former Laible brewery where he had previously been a superintendent. He would also marry Rachel Laible.
In 1878, he reportedly built a brewery on Belmont Street, and as late as 1886 a facility at 54 Belmont would be listed as the “Feigenspan Bottling Establishment”.
In 1880, Christian Feiganspan took over the Charles Kolb lager beer brewery (founded 1866) on Freeman Street. (Altho’, an 1873 map of Newark shows the property owned by a “Lenz Geyer Company”. There was a “Geyer” who was another Newark brewer who owned an “Enterprise Brewery” on Orange St.)
An 1884 fire would, reportedly, burn the brewery to the ground for a loss of $300,000.
By 1909, the firm would be advertising that “…Feigenspan Breweries are the largest producers of Ale in the United States!” (click on barrel above for text of ad) in an apparent dig at their much larger next door neighbor, P. Ballantine & Sons. Ballantine’s Lager Beer sales having by then accounted for 3/4 of their total production.
Possibly because of WWI era restrictions on the allowable alcohol level of beer (set at a mere 2.75%), Feigenspan entered into Prohibition with 4,000 barrels of aging ale in its cellar. In 1927, the ale would make the news as they tried to sell it. One story in July had it going to Heinz in Pittsburgh to be made into malt vinegar, but follow up articles say that in early November the ale was simply dumped into the sewer “…and thence into the Passaic River”.
Sadly, it would not be the first beer dumped by Feigenspan, which had one of the first four licenses to brew “medicinal beer” at the start of Prohibition. “Medicinal beer” was soon outlawed by the “Anti-Beer” law, and the brewery had to dump 600 cases of “real beer” (4.5% alcohol) in March of 1922.

Christian-Feigenspan-Breweries-Tip-Trays-3-6-inches-Christian-Feigenspan-Inc--Pre-Prohibition

Beer In Ads #5053: Stiegl Golden Bock Beer

August 14, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Thursday’s ad is for Stiegl Golden Bock Beer, which was published on August 14, 1982. This one is for the Stiegl Brauerei of Salzburg, Austria, which was originally founded in 1492. This ad for the imported beer ran in The Chicago Tribune, of Chicago, Illinois.

Historic Beer Birthday: Eugene L. Husting

August 14, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Eugene Louis Husting (August 14, 1848-November 27, 1916). He was born in Luxembourg, Germany, but came to the U.S. when he was only five, and settled with his family in Wisconsin. In 1877, he founded the Eugene L. Husting Brewery. In 1900, they changed its name to the E. L. Husting Co. Brewery, but it was closed due to prohibition in 1918. They appear to have concentrated on Weiss beer, and may have also been known as the E.L. Husting Weiss Beer Brewery. After repeal, the brewery never returned to brewing beer, instead concentrating on soda. The soda company closed in 1970.

Eugene-Husting-Brewery — The Eugene Husting Brewery in 1893.

This obituary of Husting is from the American Brewers’ Review:

This account of the brewery’s history is from the Blog, The Distant Mirror:

One other historic Milwaukee brewery that focused primarily on brewing wheat-based beer was Eugene Louis Husting. Like many brewers before and after him, Eugene began as a brewer at the Northwestern Brewery, which was owned by Phillip Altpeter. After marrying Phillip’s daughter Bertha in 1872, E.L. Husting opened his own weiss beer brewery and soda factory on the east side of 5th St. between Cherry St. and Vliet St. in 1877. By 1884 Husting was brewing weiss beer in an 8 barrel brew kettle and selling the product in stoneware bottles. In 1897 the Husting Brewery expanded inventory to include ginger ale, soda water, cream and orange soda, raspberry wine, and cider. As a result of prohibition (1920-1933), brewing beer discontinued and instead soda was exclusively produced. Following prohibition the company evolved into a beer and soda distributor until 1970 when the plant shut down. Today, the main building is still intact and is now considered the oldest standing complete brewery in Milwaukee.

And this account of the brewery is by Kevin M Cullen in an article in Brewery History entitled “Rediscovering Milwaukee’s historic breweries: Part I: Milwaukee’s downtown breweries.”

Soon it was on to the oldest complete standing brewery structure in Milwaukee, the EL. Husting Brewery, whose name is still embossed along an upper cornice of the cream city brick building, which inci- dentally is now home to Great Lakes Archaeological Research Center, a former employer of mine. This brewery and soda factory was established by Eugene Louis Husting in 1877 on the eastside of 5th Street between Cheery Street and Vliet Street In 1884 EL Husting was brewing weiss beer in an eight-barrel brew kettle and bottling in stoneware bottles. He continued to brew sodas and beer here until he died in 1916, after which sodas became the primary bever- age of production during prohibition. Following Prohibition in 1933 the facility became a distribution plant for beer and liquor until it shut down in 1970.

Beer Birthday: Brandon Hernández

August 14, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Today is the 49th (maybe) birthday of Brandon Hernández, who is a Brewing Industry Contributor at The San Diego Union-Tribune and also stays busy with the San Diego Beer News, as a Craft Beer Correspondent at FOX 5 San Diego, Co-Host at The Indie Beer Show, Beer To The Rescue, and Food & Beverage Editor / San Diego On-Tap Host at Ranch & Coast Magazine. He also used to bethe Chief Marketing Officer for Societe Brewing, and before that AleSmith and Stone Brewing. And he’s published the Complete Guide to San Diego Breweries in 2015. Until recently, I used to run into Brandon fairly regularly at beer functions and he’s become one of my favorite people to hang out with. Join me in wishing Brandon a very happy birthday.

Brandon and me at the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival earlier this year.

Brandon and me at Bell’s a few years back.

brandon-hernandez-1 — Nice towering press photo of Brandon.

With fellow writers at the opening event for the CBC in Washington, DC in 2013. From left, Stephen Beaumont, me, Steve Shapiro, Gail Williams, Brandon and Chuck Cook.

brandon-hernandez-2 — At Churchill’s in San Diego with Tomme Arthur in 2012.

beer-camp-brandon — With a bevy of Celebrator writers in Chico for Beer Camp #93 in late 2012, to make a beer celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Celebrator Beer News. That’s Brandon sporting blond hair fourth from the left.

[Note: photos 3 and 5 were purloined from Facebook.]

Beer In Ads #5052: New South Brewery Bock Beer

August 13, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Wednesday’s ad is for New South Bock Beer, which was published on August 13, 1914. This one is for the New South Brewery & Ice Co. of Middlesboro, Kentucky, which was originally founded in 1891. They also had a second brewery located in Atlanta, Georgia, which is undoubtedly why this ad ran in The Atlanta Journal, also of Atlanta, Georgia.

Historic Beer Birthday: Anders Jöns Ångström

August 13, 2025 By Jay Brooks

dark-side-of-moon
Today is the birthday of Anders Jöns Ångström (August 13, 1814–June 21, 1874). He “was a Swedish physicist and one of the founders of the science of spectroscopy.” The Ångström unit (1 Å = 10−10 m) in which the wavelengths of light and interatomic spacings in condensed matter are sometimes measured are named after him. Various types of spectroscopy are employed in the brewing industry.

Anders-Angstrom

Here’s a partial biography of Ångström from Wikipedia:

Anders Jonas Ångström was born in Medelpad to Johan Ångström, and schooled in Härnösand. He moved to Uppsala in 1833 and was educated at Uppsala University, where in 1839 he became docent in physics. In 1842 he went to the Stockholm Observatory to gain experience in practical astronomical work, and the following year he was appointed keeper of the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory.
Intrigued by terrestrial magnetism he recorded observations of fluctuations in magnetic intensity in various parts of Sweden, and was charged by the Stockholm Academy of Sciences with the task, not completed until shortly before his death, of working out the magnetic data obtained by HSwMS Eugenie on her voyage around the world in 1851 to 1853.
In 1858, he succeeded Adolph Ferdinand Svanberg in the chair of physics at Uppsala. His most important work was concerned with heat conduction and spectroscopy. In his optical researches, Optiska Undersökningar, presented to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1853, he not only pointed out that the electric spark yields two superposed spectra, one from the metal of the electrode and the other from the gas in which it passes, but deduced from Leonhard Euler’s theory of resonance that an incandescent gas emits luminous rays of the same refrangibility as those it can absorb. This statement, as Sir Edward Sabine remarked when awarding him the Rumford medal of the Royal Society in 1872, contains a fundamental principle of spectrum analysis, and though overlooked for a number of years it entitles him to rank as one of the founders of spectroscopy.

This is the general definition of spectroscopy from Wikipedia:

Spectroscopy is the study of the interaction between matter and electromagnetic radiation. Historically, spectroscopy originated through the study of visible light dispersed according to its wavelength, by a prism. Later the concept was expanded greatly to include any interaction with radiative energy as a function of its wavelength or frequency. Spectroscopic data are often represented by an emission spectrum, a plot of the response of interest as a function of wavelength or frequency.

This abstract from the 2006 paper “Applications of Vibrational Spectroscopy in Brewing” gives an overview of their use by brewers.

The purpose of this chapter is to compile the literature concerning the applications of near‐infrared (NIR), mid‐infrared and Raman spectroscopy in the brewing industry. All these three techniques share the advantages that they are rapid, can be noninvasive and allow direct observation of specific molecular species. As for barley, many researchers have used the NIR reflectance on whole grains in malt evaluation. The NIR determination of α/β‐acids and hop storage index in baled hop samples is reported. NIR spectrophotometric methods have been developed for the determination of yeast concentration and activity in beer making. In addition to the applications in the laboratory of quality control, the overview concerns also the applications of infrared and Raman spectroscopy in monitoring of operation and process control at the essential steps of mashing and wort fermentation in brewery. The results obtained with a short wave NIR spectrophotometer are presented in comparison with long wave NIR spectrophotometers.

Brewers use spectrometers to measure a number of QC items throughout the brewing process.

Cover_Table1

To get a sense of how much spectrometers are used, this article promoting StellarNet, a company selling them, entitled Spectroscopy Prospects Brewing, is pretty thorough.

NIR-spectrometer-Beer

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