In 1935, a new tap system was announced in the Bay Area, California to dispense the state’s famous steam beer. The press greeted the event as a significant development for steam beer lovers and saloon owners.
To appreciate the full story, first some background.
A Fluid Identity
In May 2020 I penned a multi-part series on steam beer history. Of the many corners and byways explored, not least was an 1869 advertisement by Mason’s Steam Brewery in Oregon City for its “flat” and “steam” (very fizzy) ale.
I offered yet further evidence that while steam beer was ultimately classified as bottom-fermented, originally it might be top- or bottom-fermented – hence, ale or lager – sometimes going by another name, e.g., Kentucky Common Ale.
Indeed, as late as 1936 some brewers at a brewers’ convention insisted steam beer could be ale, to counter a proposed federal law that would classify it as lager only.
Emerald Isle Parallel
My series also cited a newspaper account by author and journalist Damon Runyon that a glass of steam beer was drawn from two casks in ca. 1900 Dawson City, Yukon. One provided the beer, the other the “collar”, or foamy head. In other words, beer from flat and “steam” casks was blended to produce a zesty, creamy result.
I likened this to the two-cask pour of Irish (top-fermented) porter and stout, seen in parts of the Republic and Ulster up to the early 1970s. In that system, fizzy and flat stouts were drawn from separate casks, mixed to a similar result.
For steam beer and stout served this way the customer had to wait a certain time until their glass was ready to drink. In the early days of pubs and saloons this was accepted as normal, but finally such ways to serve beers were viewed as retrograde.
Special Dispense Taps
In a blogpost of July 2023 Martyn Cornell wrote that in July of 1873, Samuel Marks and James Armstrong advertised in California their “Patent Lager Beer Cask Attachment to regulate and Liquefy Steam Beer”. It turned the excess foam from a highly carbonated cask to liquid, removing the need for a laborious, multi-cask pour. He added:
It may be the invention by Marks and Armstrong of a tap to control the high condition of steam beer that ended the need for a “two cask” serve, with barkeeps finally able to pour from a cask in “high” condition a glass of sparkling beer with a decent head of foam, rather than one of all froth.
Cornell mentioned as well the appearance in 1880 of a “permanent beer tap” made by Fetterly and Dutton of Yolo, north and easterly of San Francisco.
While these taps and later versions clearly were used in some saloons, other bars continued to dispense a glass the old way, from multiple casks, up to Prohibition. It is not the case, in other words, that the old-style, multiple-cask dispense ended with the special taps, as I will show below.
Steam Beer, 1930s
My 2020 series discussed attempts by various California breweries to launch or relaunch steam beer following Repeal of Prohibition (1933). Santa Rosa’s Grace Bros Brewery was an apparent instance, on which I will have more to say soon in another forum.
Of the various post-Prohibition contenders, by about 1936 only Anchor Brewery remained. The post-Repeal business worked against steam beer because by California law all draught beer was limited to 4% abv. The “live” nature of steam beer meant the alcohol in some cases might exceed that. Some brewers barreled steam beer anyway, satisfied their precautionary measures were sound.
Bottling steam beer also raised issues, see my discussion here. Still, for a time “Old Joe” bottled steam beer appeared. I discussed a revealing advertisement in a later series. The brewery tried to justify a cloudy and yeasty pour, but F.D.R’s America consumers were not ready for a proto-NEIPA style, not from a bottle certainly.
In the 1930s Anchor Steam Beer was also briefly bottled, as discussed in David Burkhart’s 2022 book, The Anchor Brewing Story
Continuing the pre-Prohibtion sentiment, steam beer drinkers of the 1930s tended to view steam beer as classically a draught. This was reflected in a 1934 advert by North Star Brewery for its steam beer, discussed in the later post.
Saloons therefore were motivated to serve barreled steam as efficiently as possible. And existing methods, despite the special taps, were found wanting, especially by comparison to draught lager.
In Hies Handy
An inventor, L.H. Handy, came up with a “‘pressure’ dispenser”, manufactured in 1935 by Reid Bros under his supervision, in Irvington, California. The Washington Township News Register, 26 September 1935, reported:
STEAM BEER IS SHORN OF FOAM BY NEW DEVICE
Thirsty customers will no longer have to stand by, watering at the mouth, while steam beer is laboriously drawn from the old-style dispenser. The Reid Brothers plant, at Irvington, is engaged in the manufacture of a “pressure” dispenser, in which the brisk [highly carbonated] liquid is run into the glass without the usual “head” or foam. Designed by L. H. Handy, who is supervising manufacture, the device has a glass enclosed cylinder into which the glass is placed. A rubber covered plunger raises the glass until the rim is sealed against another rubber gasket through which the various pipes enter. Compressed air is then forced into the glass, with the beer following. The pressure prevents effervescence. Advantages of the device are many, according to Bill Santos, who has one at his Irvington place. It allows the serving of steam beer instantly, without minutes of waiting for the head to subside, and in addition makes it unnecessary to “flatten down” the keg by releasing some of the pressure. About seventy-five of the machines have been placed, according to Superintendent Walters, of the Reid plant.
Reid Bros was a long-time manufacturer of hospital and plumbing supplies. Santos was a saloon and hotel-keeper in Centerville and Irvington. The beer that was “flattened down” descended from the “flat” beer advertised in 1869 by Mason Steam Brewery. This tells us that ahead of Prohibition, some saloons still used the old multiple cask pour to fill a glass, while others used “old-style dispensers”. At a minimum, “minutes” were needed to draw a proper glass. Handy and Reid Bros felt they had a better mousetrap.
Inventors had claimed patents since the late 1800s for improved steam beer and lager dispensers, to fill a glass with less fuss or waste. Handy, the patent register confirms, designed numerous such taps between 1900 and 1938. See, for example, the Patent Gazette in 1900, for a lager dispenser.
Another inventor devised the “Champion steam beer regulator”, advertised in the Blue Lake Advocate, 8 November 1902 (“acknowledged to be the best steam beer tap in the world” per California Digital Newspapers). Yet another, Albert Lucas Malone of San Francisco, was granted a patent, #767302A for a “drawing machine” for “steam beer”,”steam ale”, and “steam porter”, as shown by U.S. Patent Office records in 1904.
Handy’s 1935 tap involved compressed air and seemed more sophisticated than earlier attempts, but similarly claimed to fill the glass with beer while retaining the gas. (Presumably enough froth was generated to confer something of a traditional head). Crucially all this occurred “instantly”. Seventy-five units were sold at date of the report. This suggests some market success, but we do not know how successful the units were in the field, or what proportion of bars that carried steam beer used them. Likely some continued with multiple cask pouring.
Kraus Talks Tapping, 1940
As discussed in David Burkhart’s book, long-time Anchor Brewery owner-brewer Joe Kraus (d. 1952) penned an account in 1940 of his steam brewing methods. He wrote that, “in the old Pre-Prohibition days”, “50 schooners” were lined up on the bar “three-quarters full”, awaiting their final “spritz” from a “new keg”. This was done at the “blow” of the “noon whistle”, i.e., for workers to take lunch who would arrive imminently. This tapping was the older form, without benefit of a special tap, or regulator as sometimes called. Kraus was an authoritative source on the Steam Generation, as he brewed for Anchor both before and after Prohibition.
Kraus noted that it took “an extra few seconds of waiting” to pour one’s glass, with a tap that used a “pear valve”. The tap and valve were perhaps akin to bottling under counterpressure, where the beer keeps its carbonation vs. losing it in foam and gas. Kraus said the faucet was a “special” one but stated no proprietary name.
He did not say how many “seconds of waiting” there was, only that steam beer “draws a little slower than for lager”. On the face of it, seconds is not the same as “minutes”, or “instantly”. However long his “seconds” or “a little slower” were, and whatever device he had in mind, it still took longer to draw steam beer than regular lager.
Burkhart in his book pictures a brass spigot he states was ideal to dispense steam beer. It has a classic, not high-tech look. A 1930s saloon photo in the book shows spigots projecting from tiered casks, that look similar. This tap clearly is not the Handy tap, but maybe is the one Joe Kraus described.
Wahl & Henius Weigh in
The continuation up to Prohibition of newer and older dispense methods for steam beer is confirmed by brewing writers Wahl & Henius in their (1901) American Handy Book of the Brewing & Auxiliary Trades, see p. 778. They state saloons leave the bung open, “as a rule, over night”, to let a “small” amount of gas out, to draw the beer without excess foam.
This seems to imply that once this is done, steam beer can be drawn from one cask. Probably though such niceties of cellarmanship were not always possible, or practical, and casks were unbunged for longer to draw a more flattened beer, which then was topped with a “spritz” from a “new” cask, as Joe Kraus recalled.
In the same passage, Wahl & Henius contrast this unbunging with a “beer apparatus”, which they state eliminates the need for “steaming” the casks (synonymous with flattening). The apparatus was clearly the special taps, which drew steam beer from a single cask in correct proportions of beer and foam. Although the taps did away with flattening or steaming* of casks, a mug of beer still was not drawn instantly. Handy’s device in 1935 was said to achieve this, as the accompanying news account makes clear.
Taps for Steam
Both before and after Prohibition, up to World War II, serving up a “steam” expeditiously was hardly routine. It was for standard lager and ale, but not the poor relation, steam beer, as Joe Kraus made clear in 1940 – Handy’s device aside if it worked.
Kraus’s defense of steam beer mounted in 1940 was charming and intriguing, a beau geste, but the beer’s idiosyncratic nature held it back from renewed commercial success, on any scale that mattered in American brewing, anyway.
Ironically, by the time Handy’s device tapped in, steam beer had tapped out, except for tiny, anachronistic Anchor Brewery. Maybe Handy hied in too late, or maybe steam beer’s day was done anyway. Anchor survived as a niche player, endearing itself to an offbeat coterie in the Bay Area.
Only decades later would steam beer come into its own, under the care and personal fortune of the genteel Fritz Maytag, in the result proving a royal road – one of them – to the craft beer movement. Anchor Steam was craft before there was craft, in other words, which Maytag recognised and built on.
It is sad to note at time of writing that under its last ownership, long-lived Anchor Brewery closed its doors in July 2023, largely a victim of its own success. And so, the long chain it represented to the 1890s heyday of steam, except for the Prohibition era, is broken. The story may not be over though: such a storied brand may rise again. How is impossible to know, at this time.
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*Perhaps origin of the term steam beer.
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