TRIP LOG #3

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01/12/02
Max Action, Morning Star,
& Cap

We set out with a three part mission: to get onto the roof of building 27, locate and get into the brewery caves if they existed, and to explore several of the buildings south of the old Brew House.

The reasons for wanting to find caves if they existed should be obvious to anyone. The reason we wanted to get on the roof of building 27 was twofold: it looked very strange on the aerial photo we had, and the adjacent building (Lobby / Hospitality) was shown as extending onto the roof of #27 (Stockhouse #4). The colors and shapes shown on the roof led me to believe that the "hospitality" on the rooftop might even be some sort of landscaped area: a rooftop garden or something like that. It seemed unlikely, given Minnesota's often frigid climate, but it was worth looking into.

We accessed the complex carefully and were not apprehended, so we hit the basements and headed over a few buildings into the steam tunnel that runs beneath Minnehaha Avenue. At that time, I mistakenly believed the tunnel led straight from the Power Plant to the Old Brew House, and planned on getting some new pictures there, as well as hitting the previously unexplored buildings to the south and south east. However, the tunnel proved less simple than my faulty memory had led me to believe, and by the time I realized it, we found ourselves in the basement of Stockhouse #4.

Now, that was supposed to be #2 on the to-do list, but whatever. Since the mystery roof was the top of 27, we headed up the staircase. The Stockhouse was nothing but 9 floors of a single hallway with hatches lining each side. Each hatch led into a massive beer storage tank. After 10 flights of stairs, we got to the top. We explored a neat storage closet full of Christmas decorations and sundry brewery promotional materials. From there, we went out a door and found ourselves on the coveted rooftop.

It looked like a tornado had hit up there. Atop the roof was a blue corrugated metal structure covered in some sort of hardened foam insulation roofing material. The foam had somehow been torn up in huge chunks and was strewn around the lower level of the roof. A heavy iron ladder cage leading up to the top of the blue structure roof was twisted and bent in half, and a doorframe looked like someone had backed a truck into it or something. There was no sign of any landscaping having ever been up there; the weird look on the aerial photos was probably due to the edges of the partly remaining roof foam.

Anyway, it turns out that the "rooftop" part of building 67 is not on the actual rooftop, but is enclosed by the blue corrugated metal walls. We got into it, and were giddy to find ourselves in badly decayed, falling apart old Hamm's Rathskeller. (Although it had been the "Strohaus" while the Brewery was owned by Stroh's). The room was decorated by heavy Germanic chandeliers, and dark, thick woodwork. It was supposed to look old-world German; the effect was no doubt far more convincing to those who had not been out on the roof and seen the bright blue metal exterior. There was a bar, some display cases with unopened beer bottles inside, and a lot of other cool stuff to poke around in.

(When I showed my parents our pictures of the Rathskeller, they recalled having been there twice in the early 1970's with friends: apparently the famous Hamm's Brewery tours would end there, with free samples of beer provided to the guests.)

After completing our exploration of the Lobby and Hospitality areas, we headed back toward the Brew House. We got a little sidetracked on the way, and took a quick second gander at the "blueprint room." We then resumed our meandering course toward the Brew House.

While in the basements, I was keeping an eye peeled for anything that might lead into old lagering caves. As a result of this, we quickly found ourselves a lot more than a little sidetracked, when a rotten old door turned out to lead downward into what smelled like caves.

The rickety, rotten wooden stairs led downward into an extremely humid underground chamber cut from raw rock. There were catacomb-style brick support arches all over the place, lending the space a very cool atmosphere. We followed a tunnel from the initial cave area, passing a couple of side tunnels leading off to the right.

When the forward passage dead-ended in a small cave, we turned back and took the main side branch, which led in turn to 3 further right hand passages. The first of these connected back to the initial tunnel, passing a large cemented area which might have once led somewhere. The second went past a large, broken, disused but nonetheless smelly sewer pipe before ending in a medium sized room/cave with boogary little stalactites.

We backtracked and took the third right, which soon forced us to crawl through a short tunnel just big enough for a person, before coming out in an odd dead end space.

And that was that for the caves. It was hardly an extensive system, and wasn't all that large either. However, it was still really cool in two ways: it was very interesting architecturally, and it ruled because finding the once only hypothetical caves has been an original goal of exploring the Brewery. I loved the things, to be honest. Those brick arches just make my day for some obscure reason.

After that, we finally hit the Brew House, and took some new photos. Then we went south, into buildings 6, and I think 7 and 56 (the new brewhouse). We only got see parts of these buildings on that trip, but they are way awesome. Eventually, we had to leave because it was 3 AM and Morning Star had to get up super early the following day, so we cruised back to the steam tunnels and found our way back out of the Brewery grounds.

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