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50@50 – POTTSVILLE, PA

As a descendant of the Schorr brewers of Lonnerstadt Bavaria, over 300 years of beer making runs through my veins.  Family legend purports of a Richard Strauss connection …but I digress.  As a Schorr, I feel it is my duty to expand the palette of my St. Louis origins and understand beer making wherever my work or travels take me.  What!? A serious composer who drinks beer?!?  A serious connoisseur of culture must appreciate beer; all cultures have made beer.  Even Sumerian tablets reference beer 4000 years ago.  Back to the point.

Working in Philadelphia, I visited local breweries, all good. They all told me I must visit the granddaddy of American Breweries – Yuengling in Pottsville, Pennsylvania[*].  After the discovery of anthracite coal in 1790, a furnace was established on the Schuylkill River a few years later. By 1828, Pottsville was well established.  David G. Yuengling traveled from Wurttenberg Germany to settle in the sleepy, but growing, coal mining town[†], and founded the brewery in 1829.  The latest generation of Yuenglings, all daughters, work in the business and will someday buy the brewery from their dad.  I arrived 10 minutes early on a Saturday and had to wait 1½ hours to get on a tour. I have been on many brewery tours and this one was great.

The Schuylkill River Trail is not yet completed to Pottsville, but  sections are only a few miles away.  I traveled south, almost to Hwy 22, to the Kernsville Trailhead. Due to recent torrential rains, I slopped about ¼ mile before it became too muddy to continue. Traveling back a few miles to Port Clinton, I caught a section of the Appalachian Trail which heads away from the water.  When completed the Schuylkill River Trail will wind 130 miles from Pottsville down to Philadelphia, and be the backbone of the Schuylkill River National and State Heritage Area highlighting sites of cultural significance.

What we eat and drink, and how and where it’s produced is an aspect of culture we tend to exclude as “culture”.   Even beer has regional and cultural variations.[‡] The soil, the water, the caves that traditional brewers use to store beer, the origination of the malt and hops all come from the land, and contribute to a beer’s flavor and aroma. Our very taste regarding beer (or wine) is shaped by our values and traditions. Today, there are 1753 breweries in America, more than there have been since the 19^th century. 1716 of them are craft breweries.[§] So many left to taste…