Brewery Vignettes (Original B&W Photography)

in #photography5 years ago (edited)

Howdy,

It was an overcast weekend, but temperatures are back to seasonal norms. Deciding to escape Mankato for awhile, I headed to New Ulm to, among other things, tour the brewery. The August Schell Brewing Company started in the 1860's, before the US Civil War, and is the second oldest family-run brewery in the country.

MM201920191116EOS_96554.jpg
Best Sink Ever

The brewery, itself, has some interesting history and our group got a great guide. The brewery was built shortly before the Dakota War (AKA "Dakota Uprising") that destroyed many of the other structures in the area. The Schell family had traded with the native Dakota people and were on good terms so, when things started to get ugly, the natives warned them to get out of the area in advance. When August and his family came back, they didn't expect anything to be left standing, but the brewery was completely untouched. Good relations, indeed!

MM201920191116EOS_96792.jpg
Needs Orthodontics

I've visited the brewery quite a few times over the last three years and taken photos with a variety of lenses. This time, I decided to challenge myself by bringing my telephoto. The spaces are a bit tight, so it wouldn't be a recommended lens for the situation under normal circumstances.

The previous photo appears to be some sort of bottle checker, although I couldn't say how or what it was used for. The six light bulbs behind may have been used to check for impurities in the glass or, possibly, in the brew. There were signs explaining most of them, but dyslexia and my eyesight make reading difficult.

The valve on the left is was on the exterior of a CO2 tank out front of the brewery. The one on the right is inside an older part, near an enormous hand-crafted copper brewing structure. I'm not entirely sure what it measures, but it had an interesting form.

MM201920191116EOS_96612.jpg
End of the Line

This is an older bottle-filler, housed in the brewery's museum. The one currently in operation is thirty years old. The machinery in focus in this next photo is for canning beer. I didn't know they sold cans, and this was the first time a guide mentioned it. Apparently, the canning machine is only seven years old. It is also capable of going twice as fast, but their infrastructure can't handle the speed. They run it at about 50%.

MM201920191116EOS_9666.jpg
New-fangled

While I wouldn't suggest most first-time visitors bring only a tele lens, I found it to be a fun challenge and am satisfied with the close-ups and details I was able to get. After the tour (a bargain at $5!), we headed down to the tap room for our free samples. I ended up at the end of the table with a few empty seats, which meant extra "samplage." They also let us try one of their sour beers at the end, and I hadn't had lunch beforehand. After the tour, I had to walk around and lok at the museum whiler the samples to wear off!

MM201920191116EOS_96642.jpg
Riveting

Okay, one more!

MM201920191116EOS_9667.jpg
Safety First!

Thank you for taking a look! If you enjoy my work, please click the upvote button. Comments are also greatly appreciated.

BlogtagOrange.jpg

Sort:  

I LOVE seeing you get great votes and LOVE LOVE your titles of your posts always!!! Thanks for the chuckles :) Hey, what is palnet and creativecoin? You seem to also come up with new tags that I've never seen before too :)

Thanks!

Palnet and Creativecoin are tribes. I'm not sure if that's a Steempeak thing, or Steem in general and I'm far from an expert on such things, but they seem to help with promotion somehow. At least, I seem to get more views since I started using them.

Incidentially, the "photography" tag reads as a tribe, too. Sorry I'm not much help with the details!

Howdy @fotosdenada thats a great idea to having a tour in a brewery, guess had to do the same in some here in Andalusia might be funny.
The pictures had their own charming look in B&W its strange to think behind the bottle in the manufacturing of all, see the old instruments its an amazing scenery.
And the new filling station is for sure from my home country like the sign "KRONES" shows me they are the worldmarket leader in that market, made in Germany sometimes this message is still true ;)

with sunny greetings from Andalusia
Don T

Thanks! It was fun to bring the "wrong" lens for the job, too!

The brewery still has strong ties to its German heritage, so it doesn't surprise me that they purchased German equipment. Back in the early 1900's, they had a huge copper brewing kettle hand-made in Germany and sent to the USA. It was absurdly expensive at the time.

uuh yeah that is a huge investment with the brewing kettle, but people who is working with alcohol is often doing very silly things if you know what I mean ;)

And about the wrong lens don´t worry about that, the pictures are fine as they are, good job -that´s it-

Howdy sir fotosdenada! Great photos here and what an interesting place to go! I love old, family owned businesses that have been in business for ages, very impressive information and photos. How was the beer?

Howdy! Schell's has some very good beer nowadays. They bought a brewery called Grain Belt some decades ago, and it really improved their variety and quality. I can't say as I like their sour beers, but I have yet to find any sour beer that I like. The normal beers are great, though!

I've never had a sour beer and didn't even know they made them. lol..but they sound terrible!

Great photo essay and interesting history of the brewery! It didn't really cost $55 to tour, though, did it? Glad you got plenty of samples! Did you like the sour beer?

Ha! Thanks for pointing that out. It was only $5.

Scheels has some good beers, and quite a variety. I'm not fond of the sour beer, though.


This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
@c-squared runs a community witness. Please consider using one of your witness votes on us here


Your post has been curated by the bitcoin myk project. Tokens are available for this account you can trade for steem at: https://steem-engine.com/. Join our curation priority list to earn more tokens by registering here

Visit our discord at: https://discord.gg/n7aCkcr