Giants of brewing history: Frederick and Maximilian Schaefer

Lager Beer | For this installment of “Beer Giants”, we return to the USA but open our story in Wetzlar on the River Lahn in Hesse, Germany. This is where the lives of two brothers commence. In contrast to the big names in American brewing, such as Anheuser, Busch, Coors or Miller, today their names are only known to brewing industry insiders. And yet these two men from Wetzlar are universally recognized as having made invaluable contributions to the US brewing industry.

150 years of Steinecker in Freising

Success story | What began as an iron foundry and a manufacturing plant founded by a young mechanical engineer celebrates its 150-year history in 2025. Anton Steinecker followed his instincts in determining what he should manufacture first when he decided to focus his efforts on the fabrication of equipment for the malting and brewing industries. Steinecker GmbH celebrated this event in mid-September 2025 in Freising, Germany. BRAUWELT has been fortunate enough to speak to Managing Director Dr. Marcus Michel in advance of the celebration about the history of Steinecker as well as current developments and the future plans of the company, which has been built on tradition and still continues to serve the brewing and beverage industry with high quality equipment.

What were the most decisive developments in brewing history?

Breakthroughs | A popular thought experiment among historians is to make long-term observations regarding important historical events and about their consequences or lack thereof. History, by its very nature, cannot be reflected upon from a perspective that is too narrow. By not losing sight of the big picture, one sees that events can be even more exciting and unpredictable than one might’ve expected. But what would such an analogy look like in brewing history? The following essay by Günther Thömmes touches upon this topic.

Giants of brewing history: Peter Schoenhofen and Louis Lehle

Forgotten titans | This series recounts the extraordinary deeds of those involved one way or another in the brewing industry. Though their works and labors may have been memorable, for whatever reason, some of these innovators and pioneers have faded from our collective memory. Among them, a few have been almost completely forgotten or are only known to those specializing in brewing or brewing history. Two men, who fall into this category emigrated from Germany to the United States and became wealthy and renowned in their time but are largely unknown today.

Giants of brewing history: Carl von Linde

Godfather of modern brewing | The 18th and 19th centuries were an era of great innovation that fueled the industrial revolution. The “Spinning Jenny” (around 1765) and the steam engine (patented in 1769) were but two of the inventions that hurtled humanity towards the modern world we live in today. But rarely has a single person shaped the progress of an entire industry to the extent that Carl von Linde did with refrigeration. And he did so technically and scientifically (by creating the first artificial cooling, indispensable for brewers); legally (by ending the prohibition on brewing during summer); and aesthetically with regard to the prevailing beer style.

S. pastorianus: From local obscurity to world domination

Microbial imperialism | The hybrid yeast S. pastorianus likely evolved spontaneously in the late Renaissance in the beer vats of Bavaria. Since then, it has replaced the once omnipresent S. cerevisiae in breweries throughout the world. This article traces this surprising development from its origins to the present and presents some tantalizing insights unearthed by the most recent genetic research.

Giants of brewing history: Rosa Merckx

The Grande Dame of Belgian Beer | For this installment of our article series, we travel to Belgium, a country with a passion for beer and where a number of distinctive styles have originated. Over several centuries, an extraordinary beer culture has developed in this small northwestern European country – both in its legendary monasteries and in the wealthy trading municipalities of its two main regions: Flanders and Wallonia. In this milieu, a figure arose whose influence on modern Belgian brewing history was substantial and who sadly passed away not long ago: the inimitable Rosa Merckx.

The consequences of a “Little Ice Age” and a summer brewing prohibition

The offspring wins | This is the third of a four-part article series about the historical evolution of our understanding of the nature and function of yeast in fermentation. It investigates the improbable conditions that made the unlikely hybridization of S. cerevisiae and S. eubayanus in late-Renaissance in Bavaria, as well as its subsequent survival, possible.

A mysterious eucaryotic rendezvous in Bavaria

When Eubayanus met cerevisiae | This is the second part of a series about our understanding throughout history of the nature and function of yeast in fermentation. The first part (BRAUWELT International 5, 2024) dealt with the puzzling discovery of two side-by-side fermentations, “cold” and “warm”, in the small town of Nabburg, in Bavaria’s Upper Palatinate region, in 1483. It also dealt with the 2011 discovery of the wild S. eubayanus yeast in the high Andes in Argentina. A subsequent genome sequencing proved that this wild yeast was the missing second parent of S. cerevisiae. The current installment examines a few theories, some speculative, about how this South American yeast or its spores might have reached Bavaria – a question that is still not resolved, and subject of vigorous investigations.

Giants of brewing history: Amund and Ellef Ringnes, Axel Heiberg

Everlasting renown | Who was actually responsible for naming all of the islands, mountains and glaciers of the world? And whom have they chosen to revere by doing so? – This installment of “Giants of Brewing History” exemplifies why three men have been honored in this way, men who not only founded a successful brewery but also ensured that their names were immortalized in the arctic: the brothers Amund and Ellef Ringnes and their companion Axel Heiberg.

From a cold “gyr” in Bavaria to a cold yeast in the Andes

Microbial discovery | The year was 2011 and the location was a patch of frigid forest, high up in the Andes, in Patagonia, along the border between Argentina and Chile, at the intersection of latitude 41 °S and longitude 71 °W. There, five researchers under the leadership of Diego Libkind, an Argentinian microbiologist, were on an unusual mission: to find new wild yeast species in hopes that one of them would turn out to be the as-yet-unknown ancestor of S. pastorianus, our lager yeast.