by Jon Landers

Aqua, Louis Bierbauer 12 Oz Blobtop Beer Bottle

An 1872 – 1873 Canajoharie, NY Business Directory, listed Louis Bierbauer Sr. as having a brewery on Mill Street and his residence at 85 & 89 Mill Street.  His son, Louis Bierbauer Jr. lived at 29 Reed Street.

Louis started brewing ale and lager beer in Canajoharie in 1856.  It is probably no coincidence that his brother Charles Bierbauer started the first lager beer brewery in Utica, NY at 93 Third Street in 1855.  Both brothers had come to America from Germany to seek their fortunes making lager beer for our young country.  While earlier breweries made ale and porter, there were few lager beer breweries.  It has been said that one of the gifts the German people brought to America was the art of making lager beer.  While ale and porter were drunk at room temperature, lager beer was enjoyed cold.  Americans fell in love with the cold crisp taste of lager beer and lager beer breweries prospered. 

Charles Bierbauer’s Third Street brewery was so successful that in three years he needed a larger facility to brew his beer.  Bierbauer sold his brewery and relocated to Edward Street in Utica and built a much larger brewery.  Charles Bierbauer named his new brewery the West Utica Brewery.  For many years C. Bierbauer produced the bulk of the lager beer sold in Utica. 

For some reason, in 1879 Louis Bierbauer needed an experienced brewery worker who knew the old world method of brewing lager beer.  A capable young man named Francis Xavier Matt worked at his brother’s brewery in Utica.  Louis asked his brother if he would allow F X Matt to come to Canajoharie to work in his brewery.  Matt was only 20 years old at the time, but had worked at breweries in the Black Forest area of Germany in his teenage years.  A year after Matt relocated to Louis Bierbauer’s Brewery, he became the brew master. 

Aqua, Louis Bierbauer 12 Oz Blobtop Beer Bottle, Close-Up

Back in Utica, Charles Bierbauer died in 1885 and his widow Barbara and adopted son George were unable to continue running the brewery and put it up for sale.  A group of people bought the West Utica Brewery and renamed it the Columbia Brewing Company.  This venture only lasted two years when it failed and the company was sold at public auction at the sheriff’s office.  In 1888, another group of people bought the brewery and all the equipment that went with it, including the horses, wagons and sleighs.  The brewery was named the West End Brewing Company.  One of the people who organized the West End Brewing Company was F.X. Matt who returned from Canajoharie after eight years.  Matt was the first Vice President and served as the Supervisor of the operation.  Later, he would become Treasurer and then President of the firm.  More importantly, Matt was the spark plug that made the West End Brewing Company one of the most successful breweries in America.  Still in business today, after 121 years; the brewery is now named after Mr. Matt.

Both the Charles Bierbauer and Louis Bierbauer breweries were successful companies.  Charles Bierbauer’s West Utica Brewery was probably larger than the Canajoharie firm, but then Utica was a much larger entity and had a large number of German immigrants who would have been partial to lager beer.  Something, common in the early years of these breweries and in general was that they sold most of their beer in casks or kegs.  There are no bottles known to local collectors from the Charles Bierbauer West Utica Brewery and only a small number of bottles known from the Louis Bierbauer Brewery.  While these two Bierbauer breweries left behind an interesting narrative of yesteryear for area history buffs, they left very few bottles for antique bottle collectors.