Stahlmann’s Cave Brewery

Article by Michael Rainville, Jr.

The brewing tradition in Minnesota is older than the state itself. The first European to arrive in and explore this area, Father Louis Hennepin, was himself a brewer, and in 1848, the year before Minnesota was granted territory status, the area’s first commercial brewery was opened by German immigrant Anthony Yoerg. Before then, military personal at Fort Snelling and immigrants coming from the East Coast were brewing beer in their homes. Decades later, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul were full of breweries.

Diagram of ale vs. lager brewing processes.

One of the first successful breweries in the area was established by Christopher Stahlmann, a native of Nuremberg, Germany. Like many German immigrants in the mid-1800s, Stahlmann brought with him a different style of beer, the lager. From the time of the Thirteen Colonies until the 1850s, English ale was the beer of choice in North America. Ale and lager have very similar brewing processes, with the main difference being how each ferments. The yeast in ale sits on top of room temperature wort, a sugary liquid consisting of water and malt, and the yeast in lager sits on the bottom of the tank in cooler temperatures. In order to find the perfect temperatures to ferment lager, many German immigrants settled in cities along waterways with sandstone bluffs along the shores, such as Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago. Sandstone is a mix of soft yet durable material that makes carving out a cave system very achievable, and this is exactly what Christopher Stahlmann had in mind when he arrived in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1855.

Entrance to Fountain Cave in 1875. This would have looked similar to the entrance to Stahlmann's Cave, and was located nearby along the banks of the Mississippi.

Stahlmann first arrived in the United States in 1846 at the age of seventeen, and after bouncing around the East Coast and the old Northwest for a few years, he finally settled in Saint Paul in 1855. That year, many riverboats were making the trek up the Mississippi River to bring settlers to Saint Paul and the surrounding area, so when choosing a location for his new brewery, Stahlmann took into account the potential growth of the new city. He found plenty of space away from the city center along Fort Road, now known as West Seventh Street, and took advantage of the geology of the Mississippi River bluffs. Artificial refrigeration had not yet been invented and brought to the United States, so this section of the Mississippi River that is spotted with natural caves was the perfect location to create caverns for the lagering process. Stahlmann quickly found success and became the largest beer producer in Minnesota after the Civil War, making 10,000 barrels of beer a year.

Stahlmann dug out his cave system in St. Peter Sandstone, the layer of geology right below Platteville Limestone which created a flat ceiling for the caves. The passages of the caves measured sixteen feet wide by ten feet tall with two grids of passages coming together at an angle. In total, there were roughly 1,400 feet of tunnels. Later subterranean additions brought the total length to half a mile. While the subterranean parts of his brewery were his most important “structures” for the company, he did begin constructing buildings in 1858.

Brewery employees, 1870 (note, child labor laws did not yet exist).

The first structure was a three-story brewhouse, and a decade-and-a-half later, he built a fermentation house and bottling plant. Once the American patent for the Lind ice machine was secured by Frederick Wolff in 1880, Stahlmann became one of the first in the nation to build ice houses with that technology, which resulted in the majority of the lagering process moving aboveground. During the 1880-1881 construction boom for the brewery, Stahlmann also erected a stone stable house, a boarding house, and an entirely new brewing complex. He hired Chicago architect Wangen to design this campus, which included a barley roasting kiln, a row of connected malt houses, and a four-story brewhouse. In total, this project cost $65,000, or over $1,700,000 after inflation.

1883 portrait of Stahlmann with other state representatives.

Throughout his time in Saint Paul, Stahlmann also worked as a community leader. He became a Ramsey County Commissioner in 1871, and later that year, he was elected to the State House of Representatives. He would hold other offices, including another stint in the House of Representatives starting in 1883, all while continuing to grow his brewery from its humble beginnings in a cave to producing over 40,000 barrels of beer a year at its peak in 1884. In the early 1880s, the vibrations of the aboveground brewery campus caused the ceiling to cave-in in many sections of the cave system, so they abandoned it altogether.

Stahlmann's Saloon on West Seventh taken in 1959.

In December of 1884, Christopher Stahlmann passed away at the age of sixty-five. Over the course of the next ten years Stahlmann’s three sons passed away from tuberculosis, and two years after that, George Mitsch, a father-in-law to one of the sons and head of the brewing company, passed away. The brewery campus would be used by others, but none found the success Stahlmann once achieved. However, brewing was not done in the area quite yet. In 1899, Stahlmann’s old brewery was purchased by none other than Jacob Schmidt.

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About Michael Rainville, Jr.

A 6th generation Minneapolitan, Michael Rainville, Jr. received his B.A. in History, Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies, and M.A. in Art History from the University of St. Thomas.

Michael is also a lead guide at Mobile Entertainment, LLC, giving Segway, biking, and walking tours of the riverfront for 9+ years.

He can be reached at mrainvillejr@comcast.net.