America's Oldest Brewery

The company had reached out to markets in New England, New York, and western Pennsylvania -- and then had to beat a hasty retreat when it couldn't keep up with demand. Built to produce maybe 250,000 barrels a year, the old brewery was pushing 500,000. To say the pullback offended customers and distributors would be putting it mildly. "People were on the verge of a riot," concedes Yuengling. Concluding that the shortages weren't going away and that the company was positioned to pursue a growth strategy, Yuengling decided to assess his options. To meet the demand he knew was going begging, he figured he could continue to pour money into the existing plant, he could outsource some of his production, he could buy an existing plant, or he could build a brand-new facility.

During a key strategy session in 1996, Casinelli, Yuengling's right-hand man, began sketching a portrait of where the potential moves might lead. Each idea was spelled out on a chalkboard. The concern with continuing to upgrade the existing plant was that it would merely be a Band-Aid solution. Outsourcing, which Yuengling had tried for a couple of years as a stopgap, could lead to the perception of inconsistent taste -- a potential death knell. As for buying a brewery, there simply weren't many on the market, and those that fit the company's needs were likely to require substantial upgrades.

At the bottom of the chalkboard list were two words: "Do nothing." "Some of us involved in the planning said to Dick, 'You know, this is a valid option,'" Casinelli recalls. "We were operating very profitably, we had low overhead, we were very efficient. Dick could've made a lot of money without a lot of risk involved." But the fifth-generation torchbearer, a maverick from the day he began lugging empty kegs as a kid, was ready to break with tradition. "That idea," Casinelli says, "was taken off the board pretty quickly."

They deliberated for more than a year, ultimately choosing to build a new brewery in Pottsville. Price tag: $50 million. While Yuengling's choice was the riskiest and would involve the most debt (two low-interest loans he expects to pay off next year), it would bring an additional 1.2 million barrels of capacity -- enough not only to meet current demand but also to resume the expansion into neighboring markets. Traditionally, family leaders had kept their wallets deep in their pockets, and Dick Jr. professes to be no exception. "I'm a cheap son of a gun," he says. "But after 165 years, I didn't do this on a whim. I was confident in our ability to grow."

The only problem was that construction would take close to three years. But then, right after breaking ground, Yuengling learned of a former Stroh's plant in Tampa that had become available. With its staff still intact and a capacity of 1.5 million barrels, the facility would alleviate the brewery's short-term crisis while the new brewery was completed. Perhaps more importantly, it would afford Yuengling the opportunity to open up the Southeast, a market that he had long eyed from afar. Moving production outside of Pottsville carried obvious risks, but he was willing to take them. Because technology has made brewing more science than art, the concern over inconsistent taste when a beer is brewed at more than one location is more one of perception than reality. Yuengling was confident his brand would stand up.

In April 1999, Yuengling bought the Stroh brewery for $13 million (and later spent $5 million in upgrades) -- a fraction of what it would have cost to build a similar facility from scratch. Years of fiscal restraint and low overhead provided Yuengling with the cash to pay out of pocket. Within three months, the plant was filling its first Yuengling bottles, bringing some much-needed breathing room. Just two years later in July 2001, the new state-of-the-art facility opened in Pottsville, making Yuengling America's "newest" brewery.

Yuengling capped his string of capital improvements in the summer of 2003 by spending $30 million on a new filling system, including 250,000 new and improved kegs. When all was said and done, the "cheap son of a gun" had committed $98 million toward upgrading the company.

Brewing is a lot easier than it used to be, but someone still has to keep an eye on the stove. At the old plant, that person is Jim Buehler, whose office is tucked away in a quiet corner near the museum, behind a frosted-glass door that identifies him simply as "Brewmaster." He began stacking cases in the bottle shop more than 30 years ago, and he remains a true believer. "Beer," he says without a hint of irony, "is good food. I'd rather drink beer than eat."

That beer first started flowing in 1829, when a German immigrant named David Yuengling opened the doors of his Eagle Brewery on Centre Street in Pottsville. Two years later, the building was destroyed by fire and replaced with what would become America's oldest brewery. Yuengling carved his second facility into the side of Sharp Mountain, using its underground caves to aid fermentation. With horse-drawn carts shuttling the beer in and around Schuylkill County, the company began to establish itself. For many years, though, it wasn't even the biggest brewery in Pottsville.

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