Old West Saloons and 'cold' beer

[Widder, SASS #59054]

Back in the old west, when Miss Kitty served up a 'COLD' beer to Matthew and Festus,  just how cold would that 

beer be?

 

And what might have been the method to make it cold?

 

 

..........Widder

 

[Alpo]

There were several methods that I've heard of for keeping food cold.

 

Cut ice from lakes and rivers during the winter and pack it in sawdust. A spring house. In the basement. A deep cave.

 

As to "how cold"? I rather doubt that it would be the 34° you get out of your refrigerator today.

[Eyesa Horg]

But can't imagine them stopping in at the Long Branch for a warm one or two.

[Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001]

some where close to 56 F 

 

  if the celler is agout 6 to 8 ft deep , and some what well closed to air flow 

 

  

[Sedalia Dave]

35 minutes ago, Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001 said:

some where close to 56 F 

 

  if the celler is agout 6 to 8 ft deep , and some what well closed to air flow 

 

  

 How do you keep the beer in the line between the basement and the tap cool?

[Bailey Creek,5759]

They had Beer in kegs.  After the keg was open you had only a certain amount of time before it went bad.

Probably why whiskey was so popular.

 

[Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001]

the only thing I can think of is a shaft off the celler to funnel the cool air around the keg 

 

  it will still turn rather fast 

 

  CB 

[Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001]

wet towels and / or canvas will help also 

[Rye Miles #13621]

Hollywood, Kitty never served a cold beer! It was all warm but a nice cold beer sounds good !

[Rip Snorter]

When I visited the UK in the early '70's, the beer was good and at least pleasantly cool.  It was in kegs in the cellar and literally pumped manually into glasses.  Bottled beer was on shelves behind the bar, taken off the shelf and served warm.  Not many drinks had ice.  Before the turn of the century there were massive icehouses dug in and filled with ice and sawdust.  Right around TR's time, there were ice making machines.  I believe Marquis DeMores built and owned one in Medora.  When I was a small boy, there were still houses in my neighborhood that had ice boxes and the ice man delivered.  That was after WWII.  It actually took a long time for refrigerators to catch on, 27 years if I recall correctly.

[Subdeacon Joe]

https://blacktailnyc.com/how-did-they-keep-beer-cold-in-the-old-west/

 

https://www.notesfromthefrontier.com/post/beer-in-the-old-west

 

 

[Sawhorse Kid]

Winter Ice harvest and saw dust in many a town.

Some of the large towns of the day had Ice factories.

Ice machine were developed in the 1800's.

[Henry T Harrison]

I live in Amish country there ice houses have at least a foot of insulation and will hold ice cut from a pond for about ten months 

[Subdeacon Joe]

38 minutes ago, Sawhorse Kid said:

Winter Ice harvest and saw dust in many a town.

Some of the large towns of the day had Ice factories.

Ice machine were developed in the 1800's.

 

The first one in Arizona started producing ice in 1879.

 

[bgavin]

Back when Dad was alive, he had a property in Horseshoe Bend, ID.
There was an ice house in town at that time, and we got to enter and look around a bit.
The walls were 20 inches thick and filled with sawdust as an insulator.
In the heat of the ID summer, there were still huge blocks of ice inside, and not melting.

[Michigan Slim]

The lake I grew up on was mostly spring fed and favored for it's ice harvest.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

I don’t think cold was the highest priority.

[Texas Maverick]

17 hours ago, Rip Snorter said:

When I visited the UK in the early '70's, the beer was good and at least pleasantly cool.  It was in kegs in the cellar and literally pumped manually into glasses.  Bottled beer was on shelves behind the bar, taken off the shelf and served warm.  Not many drinks had ice.  Before the turn of the century there were massive icehouses dug in and filled with ice and sawdust.  Right around TR's time, there were ice making machines.  I believe Marquis DeMores built and owned one in Medora.  When I was a small boy, there were still houses in my neighborhood that had ice boxes and the ice man delivered.  That was after WWII.  It actually took a long time for refrigerators to catch on, 27 years if I recall correctly.

I remember the UK in the 80's when I had to go to England for business. I ordered a coke and got a glass of coke. I asked for ice and they brought me 1 ice cube. I guess ice was a premium. I learned to drink it warm for the 4 weeks I was there. That was also the time of the Mad Cow disease so there wasn't any beef to be had for eating. I almost starved to death there. LOL

 

TM

[Cypress Sun]

 

There was an icehouse warehouse near downtown Clearwater, Florida that we used to drive by often when I was a kid. Old, wood warehouse type building with a large sliding door in front on a raised loading dock. It was built just feet away from the railroad tracks. Going across them tracks would rattle your eyeteeth. Haven't been that way in years, don't know what ever happened to it. This thread made me think about it.

[Rip Snorter]

46 minutes ago, Texas Maverick said:

I remember the UK in the 80's when I had to go to England for business. I ordered a coke and got a glass of coke. I asked for ice and they brought me 1 ice cube. I guess ice was a premium. I learned to drink it warm for the 4 weeks I was there. That was also the time of the Mad Cow disease so there wasn't any beef to be had for eating. I almost starved to death there. LOL

 

TM

The only ice in my favorite pub consisted of two small ice trays in a fridge small enough for a dorm room.  On a very hot day, the publican, who had become a friend, made me an iced drink.  Very good, so I ordered another, and that was all the ice in the place.

[Texas Maverick]

26 minutes ago, Rip Snorter said:

The only ice in my favorite pub consisted of two small ice trays in a fridge small enough for a dorm room.  On a very hot day, the publican, who had become a friend, made me an iced drink.  Very good, so I ordered another, and that was all the ice in the place.

When my wife and I visited Mexico they didn't have ice except in the fancy restaurants and hotels I guess because it was made from the water down there and most people didn't drink the water. My wife got sick and they said it was from the ice cubes. So we always drank room temp drinks from then on.

 

TM

[TN Mongo, SASS #61450]

Anheuser-Busch was shipping cold kegs westward by the 1870s, but once they learned that saloons were watering down their "Budweiser" beer they began bottling and labeling their beer.

 

From Wikipedia:

Adolphus Busch, a wholesaler who had immigrated to St. Louis from Germany in 1857, married Eberhard Anheuser's daughter, Lilly, in 1861. Following his service in the American Civil War, Busch began working as a salesman for the Anheuser Brewery.^[17][15] Busch purchased D'Oench's share of the company in 1869, and he assumed the role of company secretary from that time until the death of his father-in-law.^[17]

Anheuser-Busch was one of the first companies to transport beer nationwide using railroad refrigerator cars.

Adolphus Busch was the first American brewer to use pasteurization to keep beer fresh; the first to use mechanical refrigeration and refrigerated railroad cars, which he introduced in 1876; and the first to bottle beer extensively.^[1][18][19] By 1877, the company owned a fleet of 40 refrigerated railroad cars to transport beer.^[19] Expanding the company's distribution range led to increased demand for Anheuser products, and the company substantially expanded its facilities in St. Louis during the 1870s.^[20] The expansions led production to increase from 31,500 barrels in 1875 to more than 200,000 in 1881.^[20]

To streamline the company's refrigerator car operations and achieve vertical integration, Busch established the St. Louis Refrigerator Car Company in 1878, which was charged with building, selling, and leasing refrigerator cars; by 1883, the company owned 200 cars, and by 1888 it owned 850.^[21] To serve these cars and switch them in and out of their St. Louis brewery, Anheuser-Busch founded the Manufacturers Railway Company in 1887. The shortline operated until 2011, when Anheuser-Busch sought to shut down operations.^[22]

During the 1870s, Adolphus Busch toured Europe and studied the changes in brewing methods which were taking place at the time, particularly the success of pilsner beer, which included a popular Budweiser beer brewed in České Budějovice (in German (Budweis).^[16] In 1876, Busch took the already well-known name Budweiser and used it for his new beer, even though his product had no connections to the city of České Budějovice.^[16] His company's ability to transport bottled beer made US Budweiser the first national beer brand in the United States, and it was marketed as a "premium" beer.^[16]

 

 

The last time the wife and I were in London (2002) the bartender asked if I wanted my Guinness "iced".  I asked him if he meant pouring it over ice?  He said no. He explained that many pubs now had decent refrigeration and they could actually serve draught beer at a cold temperature.  He said certain patrons still preferred a just cool Guinness like the old days.  I explained that, being a Yank, I wanted it as frosty as possible.  He said most patrons were adjusting to a colder temperature of their beer.

[Chili Ron]

Howdy,

On a hot summer day the floor m y basement is darn cold.

I might check and see what the number is next summer.

My Dad often used wadded up newspapers for insulation

He insulated the heck out of his house too.

Really left no attic.

Best

CR