Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets

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Title: The Glassblower (PH 10-11)(February 1978) Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Pamphlets Catalog #: PH 10-11 Author: Northwestern Bottle Collectors Association Published: February 1978 Subjects: Bottle Collecting # of Pages: 16 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Metadata By: Shelby Figueroa Printed or handwritten: All printed text Date Scanned: 2024-11-19 10:53:09 Scanned By: Shelby Figueroa Scanning Equipment: CZUR Book Scanner OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: JPGs First Created: 2025-03-17 05:48:59 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:48:59

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

Page: of 16  

adatal by Tom Jacobs Lager and Boca. To beer drinkers from the late 1870s through the early 1890s these words were synonymous. Lager, naturally, refers to lager beer and Boca to Boca Beer, the popular product of the once famous Boca Brewing Company. Before the history of the Boca Brewery is revealed, it is important to understand the nature of lager beer as well as the conditions and events that brought a large brewery to a small town in the Sierra Nevada. Bottom fermentation, the process used in the production of lager beer, was originated in Bavaria in the early 1830s. Prior to this time all beers, principally ales and porters, were made using top fermentation. This brewing technique had one great disadvantage in that a beer was produced that would become gradually sour by contact with the air. Bottom fermenting beers did not have this problem and could be stored in half-full barrels, as well as full ones, without regard to the deleterious effects of air. John Wagner of Philadelphia brewed the first lager in the United States in 1840, using bottom fermenting yeast brought from a brewery in Bavaria where ~ he had been brewmaster. Lager, with its light and mild character and superior storage capabilities, soon became the predominant form of beer, almost displacing the manufacture of ales and porters in the Midwest. California, with the great influx of immigrants brought about by the discovery of gold in the late 1840s, would certainly have participated in the brewing of lager beer, had it not been lacking in one material—cheap and plentiful ice. Low temperatures, near freezing, are required in the fermenting of lager beer, and in the days before artificial refrigeration large quantities of ice were necessary in the brewing process. There was abundant ice in the mountains of California, but during the 1850s and most of the 1860s there was no means of transportation available to bring ice to the brewers. Ice was brought to California via ships from Alaska, but this ice at $25 a ton was too costly to be used in brewing, and in any case shipments were too irregular to be counted upon. Early California brewers were therefore forced by necessity to brew without ice. Ale and porter, which ferment at unaltered cellar temperatures, were brewed as well as steam beer, a bottom fermenting beer, developed by the clever California brewers to be made without refrigeration. The outbreak of civil war in 1860 focused attention on the need for a transcontinental railroad linking the nearly isolated and vulnerable west coast with the rest of the nation. The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California was incorporated in 1861 with the purpose of building eastward across the Sierra Nevada. In 1867 Boca was a construction camp on the CPRR located eight miles east of Truckee, California at the junction of the Little Truckee River with the main stream. Natural resources were abundant in this area, and the coming of the railroad suddenly provided a means by which they could be exploited. The Boca Mill and Ice Company was formed in 1868 with extensive land holdings in the Boca area. Lumbering was carried on around Boca by this firm, and nearby Diges.