By: Billy BeerSlugger
Adolphus Busch was a German born co-founder of Anheuser-Busch along with his father-in-law, Eberhard Anheuser. He was the second youngest of 22 children and the family worked in winery’s and brewing supply. He immigrated to the United States in 1857 with three of his brothers and settled in St. Louis.
In 1861 he married 17 year old Lilly Eberhard Anheuser and had 13 children. Busch served in the United States Army during the American Civil War for 14 months. It was at this time that he learned his father had passed away and that he had been left a portion of the estate.
He used the money to start a wholesale brewing supply store. Four year later he bought a share in his father-in-laws brewery (Bavarian Brewery) and the resulting company was called, Anheuser and Company. In 1880 Eberhard Anheuser passed away and the name was changed to the Anheuser Busch Company.
The Anheuser Brewery was a rapid success. In 1891 he bought the trademark and name Budweiser from Carl Conrad and thus the most famous American beer was born.
Busch was intent on making his products a national brand. Probably the most notable and ambitious endeavor was the creation of a network of rail-side ice houses which allowed the brewing industry’s first fleet of refrigerated rail cars to deliver beers to remote locations. After Busch found a method to pasteurize the beer to keep it fresh the beer could now be shipped all over the country. It was these two advances that made Anheuser-Busch become the successful, nationally recognized brands of beer that you find in the beer store today.
On November 18th 2008, the merging of InBev and Anheuser-Busch closed, creating Anheuser-Busch InBev which may or may not have made Adolphus roll over in his grave.
Some of you may be wondering why a German born brewer is one of the Fathers of American beer. Well a majority if not all of the men on this list come from German descent. If there’s two things Germans are good at it’s brewing beer and killing Jews (ohhh, that’s a bad joke).