Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II) Part 52: “Anheuser-Busch, Gone Home,” our classic 1997 victory lap.
I’m devoting a great many words to 1993 and 1994. There is a reason for the focus, because quite a lot was happening during these years.
Had Rich O’s been a rock and roll band, our very first chart-topping hit was about to come. On July 29, 1995, Susan Reigler’s highly favorable restaurant review (“A Beer Lover’s Dream”) hit the Louisville’s Courier-Journal newspaper’s Saturday Scene supplement.
The review opened a market across the river that we’d never counted on reaching in the first place. Business promptly doubled, remaining at this volume for a long while before settling into a sales range far higher than we’d ever known. The review boosted us to that elusive “next” level, which is a testament to the newspaper’s influence prior to print media’s decapitation at the hands of the internet.
Mirroring the usual reaction when a previously little-known entity becomes a “thing,” some people asked me about the Rich O’s “overnight” success story. There wasn’t one, and in fact, “overnight” is almost always a myth.
The rock band had been rehearsing, recording demos, playing juke joints and bar mitzvahs, and surviving on doses of instant ramen noodles, for many years before breaking through. Similarly, the O’Connell family members and certain long-term staffers had recorded eight years of pizzeria service when the 1995 review dropped; my beer-related contributions may have tipped the balance insofar as the review’s timing was concerned, but they’re the ones who did the heavy lifting.
Clearly 1993 and 1994 were years of frenetic activity preceding the breakthrough, setting the tone for an expansion of the beer selection, remodeling projects and various other innovations to follow.
As always, travel was the single greatest incubator of new ideas. Accordingly, our summer trip to Europe in ’94 would be an impetus for the forthcoming quantum leap in terms of the pub’s ambitions. It also was a very different type of European itinerary for me, involving planes and automobiles; trains for this journey were found mainly in Spain.
Having stumbled across a listing for Kutrubes Travel in Boston, a family-owned Balkan specialist dating to the early 1900s (and still in existence in 2024), my overarching preference was to visit the obscure nation of Albania. Swiss Air was the only reliable carrier servicing Tirana, and because Zürich was the point of embarkation, it meant we could tour Brauerei Hürlimann, creator of the legendary Samichlaus strong lager.
After Albania, there was an air connection in Zürich for Madrid, then the rails to Pamplona for a bucket list bonus of a few days at the city’s annual Fiesta de San Fermin. Ernest Hemingway introduced the running of the bulls to Americans in his novel The Sun Also Rises, and the invitation to attend in 1994 came from my cousin Don, who was about to become a genuine Pamplona aficionado, returning almost on a yearly basis to the present day.
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Ah, yes; Samichlaus.
Speaking from the vantage point of 2024, exuberant excess in beer has become a perimeter redefined so often that I wouldn’t know where to begin a survey of the territory, but for those interested in the state of the traditional barroom argument about the world’s strongest beer (in terms of alcoholic strength), examples come to us nowadays with ABVs pushing 70%, bearing utterly charming names like Snake Venom, Armageddon and Tactical Nuclear Penguin.
I suppose we’re to pair the Penguin with dainty snickerdoodles. Sorry, dear reader, but a 67.5% beer isn’t exactly my idea of sanity, this hottest of takes coming to you from the inventor of Gravity Head (in 1999). To each their own, and please pass me an Ordinary Bitter at around 4%. I’ll drink two or three of them, and complete my rapidly multiplying nocturnal bathroom visits without tumbling down the stairs.
It’s difficult to imagine a time not so long ago when the consensus choice for world’s strongest beer, Samichlaus (“Santa Claus,” at 14% ABV), was brewed at the old-school Brauerei Hürlimann in conservative Switzerland. Looking back, I can see our visit to the Zürich brewery as a case of fortunate timing, because the end of an era was close at hand.
In 1996 Hürlimann was absorbed by fellow Swiss brewer Feldschlösschen, and Samichlaus was axed. In 2000, the resulting Feldschlösschen-Hürlimann-Gruppe was purchased by Carlsberg, which sold the Samichlaus recipe and special yeast strain to the Austrian brewer Schloss Eggenberg (not to be confused with Czech Eggenberg).
Samichlaus lived once again, and to me it tastes very much as before. Unequivocally, that’s a win.
However, just as with Anheuser Busch’s designs on Czech Budvar, the larger story here is the way that communism’s fall “united” Europe by opening markets both East and West for the emerging new norms of global “modernity.” Switzerland wasn’t ever communist, but the death of Hürlimann came about for similar reasons. It became just another pawn, and while not exactly new, the 1990s brought an acceleration of “rationalization.”
“Business for the sake of business” fetishists had many field days as traditional breweries disappeared: first there’d be a merger or acquisition, then the ritualistic cutting of employees, followed by the culling of those legacy brands without sufficient sales volume to appease the bean counters, and the final step, closing those historical breweries sitting atop valuable urban properties; their better-selling brands could always be brewed elsewhere, because the land was too valuable to brew on it.
Accordingly, the former Hürlimann property in Zürich has become a mixed-use development with a hotel. In the cellars where we once sipped the youthful Samichlaus, there are thermal baths and a spa, perhaps an improvement over a garish casino, though only marginally.
Whenever breweries like Hürlimann went away, so did complex, interrelated economic and social systems, inside the brewhouse and outside of it in the surrounding community. Once these systems go away, they’re gone for good.
Yes, international craft beer subsequently exploded, and another beer and brewing Weltanshauung rose up from the ruins to take the place of the old, hence a Scottish beer of 67.5% alcohol, hop bitterness levels well above the ability of human palates to discern differences, and five breweries, previously six, in a city the size of New Albany (circa 37,000).
That’s all fine by me, and yet as I reread this essay from 1994, an elegiac melancholy takes hold of me … again. I’m glad I had the chance to witness Hürlimann’s traditional milieu 30 years ago, and to this very day, in my own quiet and melancholy way, I mourn the brewery’s passing. We may well have lost far more in history than we’ve gained with hard seltzer.
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An Afternoon with Santa Claus: Zurich’s Hürlimann Brewery, 1994
(This article originally was published in the Dec. ‘94/Jan. ‘95 (Vol. 2, No. 2) issue of the long defunct Southern Draft Brew News.)
Zürich is an attractive, efficient city in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The Limmat River runs through it, past shops, hotels and cafes — like the Odeon, which was frequented by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin during his wartime period of exile from tsarist Russia — leading from a beautiful lake surrounded by trim suburban villas, which on clear days has the Swiss Alps as a dramatic backdrop.
We flew to Zürich in late June for the express purpose of catching a Swiss Air flight to Albania, allowing three days to rest before heading south. Since one of the most crucial elements of tourism as both art and science involves the consumption of beer, and beer is available in abundance in Zürich, we had no reason to hurry through a long weekend.
Four breweries dominate the Swiss market, and Zürich is the home of Hürlimann (1), which was founded by the family of the same name in 1836. The brewery is located on Brandschenke Strasse, a short uphill walk from the lakefront or a 15-minute tram ride from the central station. The spring water used to brew Hürlimann’s beers is available to the thirsty public from a fountain in front of the brewery.
The guide Roland Gyger met us at the main office and led us through a comprehensive tour of the brewery. The facility is a combination of new and old elements. The brewhouse is entirely computer-operated and filled with stainless steel kettles, not copper.
Only lagers are brewed at Hürlimann. Although Switzerland does not have a beer purity law like Germany’s, Hürlimann refrains from the use of corn and other adjuncts. Barley and hops come from Switzerland and abroad, and the company famously specializes in yeast, developing strains for its own use as well as supplying more than 200 breweries elsewhere.
The Hürlimann Portfolio.
Hürlimann’s most renowned beer is Samichlaus, an immensely potent dark brew of 14-plus percent alcohol by volume. Samichlaus (which means Santa Claus in the local dialect) is brewed only once a year, on December 6. An initial period of fermentation is followed by ten months’ lagering, during which the beer gradually gains strength as its special yeast works slow and cold.
During our descent into Hürlimann’s frigid lagering cellars, where the company’s conventional beers are lagered from six to ten weeks, Roland asked the cellar master for a sample of the still youthful, unfiltered Samichlaus.
In spite of it having attained less than nine percent alcohol in a half-year’s aging, all the components of the mature Samichlaus were in evidence: Big, firm body, nuttiness and a smooth, warming alcohol jolt.
Hürlimann’s line of beers includes styles far more suited to everyday quaffing than Samichlaus, which will never be mistaken for beer to wash down nachos or cap off an hour of midsummer’s yardwork.
These include Hürlimann Lager Bier (medium-bodied, clean Helles), Stern Bräu Spezial Bier (fuller-bodied and hoppier, perhaps similar to a Dortmunder), Gold Premium Hell Blonde (a light beer in everything but name) and the Lowenbräu-Zürich Lager, which used to be the flagship brand of another Zürich brewery but now is controlled and brewed by Hürlimann.
The Swiss palate prefers lighter-bodied, milder beers such as the brands mentioned above. In the past, Hürlimann produced other, more specialized styles in addition to the mighty Samichlaus. One was Five Star, which is said to have been comparable to a Pilsner. Another was Dreikonigs (Three Kings), which was registered as a “strong” beer by Swiss legal definition (16 Plato, 6.7% alcohol by volume).
Unfortunately, both have been discontinued. Hürlimann now brews Denmark’s Tuborg Gold under license and imports Carlsberg and Elephant, and these have made the Five Star and Dreikonigs redundant, an unhealthy trend for any beer lover who appreciates the unique qualities of local specialties. It goes to show that even in the European brewing heartland it cannot be taken for granted that such traditional brews will withstand the onslaught of international brands.
Dark Lager by Moonlight.
Hürlimann’s most interesting beer after the singular Samichlaus is its Hexenbräu Dunkel (13.3 Plato, 5.4% alcohol by volume). Hexenbräu is lighter-bodied and slightly sweeter than its Bavarian and Czech cousins, and the vaguely toffeeish flavor is an ideal accompaniment to German-style cuisine — particularly the signature mustard-style potato salad served warm at Zurich’s Zeughauskeller restaurant, where we dined and drank draft Hexenbräu following the brewery visit.
A Hexenbräu fact sheet from Phoenix Imports Ltd. (2), the Baltimore-based importer, begins by quoting Michael “Beer Hunter” Jackson’s favorable impression of Hexenbräu from his New World Guide to Beer, then shifts into a less “prosaic” description:
Hexenbräu (Witches Brew) is brewed only when the moon is full. Then, and only then, according to the ancient secrets of the brewmasters, can their all-natural recipe develop the coffeeish-chocolatey aroma and rich, smooth, malty taste so bewitching in this dark lager.
Our tour ended with a session in the brewery’s quaintly adorned Bierstube, or taproom, where many local retirees were gathered for their weekly afternoon of jass, a card game. We sampled Hürlimann’s beers from bottles, with Roland providing commentary and answering our questions. The afternoon visit turned out to be an ideal way of easing back into the central European lifestyle that we were about to abandon to travel to Albania, where beer is available, but under vastly different circumstances.
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The brewery tour was invigorating, and Zürich itself tidy, prosperous and smug. Apart from the beer and sausages, two memories stand out.
James Joyce’s grave at the Fluntern Cemetery …
… and the scrape-and-grind sound of giant tortoises very slowly copulating at the Zürich Zoologischer Garten.
Thus the time arrived for our flight to Tirana and nine days in Albania, then as now one of the travel highlights of my life. This choice of Albania as a destination, at a time when the country was a mystery even for Europhiles, requires a preliminary explanation.
My stint at UMI/Data Courier (1988 – 1989) was the only “corporate” day job I ever had, allowing for a solitary Christmas holiday, and it was for this festive occasion that our office in downtown Louisville declared a contest for best work station decoration.
With considerable zeal, my friend, co-worker and future East German volunteer work project comrade Jeff P. declared that he’d be winning the prize for first place. Jeff, who was well-connected in local radical leftist circles, soon appeared with scissors, glue, armloads of construction paper and dusty old copies of the English-language edition of the “New Albania” propaganda magazine, as borrowed from a socialist workers group somewhere in town.
Who even knew Louisville had such an organization?
Come the day of judgement, Jeff had transformed his pod into a veritable showplace of smudgy agitprop, with a few bright red placards bearing impenetrable phrases in the Albanian language, and photocopies of stiffly posed Communist leaders like Enver Hoxha and Ramiz Alia.
But it was his genuinely demented crowning touch that I’ll never forget, because snaking along the tops of his gray office partitions were strands of holiday tinsel, wrapped into quasi-menacing coils of barbed wire.
Jeff’s display was dubbed “Christmas in Albania” – at the time, it was the world’s only officially atheistic state – and while the contest judges couldn’t quite bring themselves to award him the top prize, he was given second place for the force of sheer creativity alone.
Albania had always been isolated and obscure, having achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire only in 1912. Two world wars followed, and then more than 40 years of hardline communism.
Mid-1994 proved to be a good time to tour Albania. While still struggling for traction following the collapse of communism, it was a “summer of lull.” Later the same year Albania’s fragile economy crumbled in the wake of an immense financial “pyramid” scandal, and sadly, boatloads of Albanians again took to the Adriatic, seeking refuge and a better life in Italy.
No sooner had Albania staggered back to its feet than the Kosovo conflict flared up. The NATO bombing of neighboring Serbia in 1999 involved Albania in more than a peripheral way, owing to neighboring Kosovo’s predominately ethnic Albanian population.
Since then, Albania has been reasonably stable, engaging in a long, painstaking climb toward membership in the European Union, and finally achieving candidate status in 2014. Three decades after our visit, the Albanians — arguably the continent’s longest-serving underdogs, save perhaps for the Roma — continue their efforts to align laws, institutions and attitudes with those of the club’s other members.
But why Albania? How to explain the recurring, seemingly eternal fascination?
Next: 40 Years in Beer (Book II) Part 54: New Albanians on beer holiday in Old Albania, 1994.
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