50 Years Of Beer At Schuster Brewing Company Of Rochester, Minnesota

By 1910, the Schuster Brewing Company—a sprawling five-story brew house surrounded by numerous outbuildings at the corner of First Avenue and Fourth Street Southwest—was producing 10 million bottles of beer and tonic per year and shipping it to two dozen states. The brewery, one of the city’s largest businesses, employed 50 people—roughly the same number as the Mayo Clinic. “The Mayos and this malt tonic,” read one Rochester postcard from the era, “are the only attractions—both famous.” Just over a decade later, after 50 years in operation, the brewery would be closed, displaced by Prohibition and home brewers.

In 1847, at the age of 12, Henry Schuster emigrated with his family from Germany to Wisconsin. In 1862, Henry and his wife Josephine, both in their mid-20s, moved to Rochester. A blacksmith by trade, Schuster made enough money to buy a share in the city’s Joest Brewery, founded in the mid-to-late 1850s. By 1866, he was working in the brewery, which produced nearly 500 barrels of lager that year—an amount that cemented its place as the largest of three Rochester breweries that year. In 1870, he bought out his partner’s share in the brewery, and renames it the Union Brewery (which will eventually be renamed the Schuster Brewing Company)… read more >