COLD SPRING, Minn. — He couldn’t bear to see the feds dump his prized beer into the creek.
When Prohibition came knocking on the door of Cold Spring Brewing Co. in 1919, it broke the heart of brewmaster Eugene Hermanutz, who left the scene with a tear in his eye as federal agent Peter Kolling ordered the disposal of his beers.
Nearly 100 years later, brewhouse manager Karl Schmitz and his team of brewers are reviving Hermanutz’s pre-Prohibition recipe.
It’s all part of a historical series of beers by Cold Spring Brewing Co. and Third Street Brewhouse, which Schmitz hopes will focus attention on the brewery’s deep roots in the area.
“We’re just trying to recapture some of this history that we have, promote it and take ownership of that,” Schmitz said. “With the new brewery and the new brand, Third Street Brewhouse, it fell to the wayside for a while. But we’re still here, and we’re still brewing.”
The first beer in the series is Hermanutz’s lager, which Schmitz said was an incredibly popular beer at the time of its inception.
“It all started with this beer,” Schmitz said of the historical series. “We found (Hermanutz’s) recipe in an old file cabinet, folded up in the bottom of a file. (The recipe) is a chicken-scratch process; it’s barely legible. I recognized it as a recipe, but I didn’t know what it was, or when it was (from), or what it looked like.”
The beer, which Schmitz and his team have dubbed “Brewer’s Tears” in honor of Hermanutz’s feelings towards Prohibition, is a 4.7 percent ABV lager, which Schmitz describes as “stylistically correct for the era” and “fairly hop forward, using some import hops.”
“That would make sense for (Hermanutz) — it’s the kind of beer that a German brewmaster would want to make.”
Schmitz said that for a 100-year-old recipe, Brewer’s Tears is surprisingly accessible to today’s beer drinkers.
“This is a beer that I don’t think would be unheard of to make today at all,” he said. “Pre-Prohibition lagers are different from your typical domestic beer now — (Brewer’s Tears) is certainly more hop-forward — and that kind of went away. It was a shift in the American palate. But it all kind of comes around.”
“I could see a lot of breweries today making something like this. I know a lot of them are. But this? This is the real deal.”
Hermanutz’s grandson, Donald Hermanutz, 75, never tasted his grandfather’s recipe — Eugene Hermanutz died in 1923, 20 years before Donald was born — but he recalls his father’s and uncles’ stories about the brewmaster.
“My grandfather had six sons, and all of them grew up to have a relationship with beer in some way,” said Donald Hermanutz of Waite Park. “I recall my uncle telling us, ‘That was a horrible day, when Grandpa had to watch the barrels of beer be smashed and poured into the creek.’ That’s what he always called it, a horrible day.”
Hermanutz said that at the time his grandfather was made brewmaster and partner in Cold Spring Brewing Co., he was highly respected for his brewing knowledge.
“There was a shortage of brewmasters, and so he was a real asset to their business,” Hermanutz said.
Eugene Hermanutz’s skills as a brewer are well documented; his grandson’s family has two brewing school diplomas from the era that track his continued education in the trade even after he became brewmaster at Cold Spring Brewing Co.
Tragically, Eugene Hermanutz would never again see his lager brewed post-Prohibition, due to his death 10 years before the act was repealed.
“That’s one of the sad things about it: He never got to see Prohibition end,” Donald Hermanutz said. “And in 1933, there really was an incredible demand for this beer, which they called a ‘very excellent beer’ at the time.”
Hermanutz said he believes his grandfather would be proud to see the 100-year-old recipe come alive again in Cold Spring.
“We definitely have a sort of family pride about it,” he said. “We wanted to see what his product tasted like! My uncle and our family is very proud of the fact that our family is one of the originators of the Cold Spring Brewing Co., and this lager was a very significant beer at that time.”
“The most remarkable feature of this history is that it is still with us. My grandfather would certainly be very pleased about it. I know we are.”
As for Brewer’s Tears, which is now available to consumers in 12-ounce cans, does Schmitz believe he’s done brewmaster Hermanutz proud?
“There’s no way for any of us to have had this beer. It’s a hundred years ago. It’s pretty unlikely that anyone alive today could tell us what it tasted like. After Prohibition, they probably didn’t ever brew this exact beer again,” Schmitz said.
“It’s a beer that I like to think I would have tried to make myself. It’s a really great beer.”
