Walter Scheurle, the Sam Adams German Brewmaster
A few weeks ago, I interviewed Walter Scheurle, who was a brewmaster for Pittsburg Brewing Company, Sam Adams Boston Lager, and Blitz-Weinhard Brewing Company, and also consulted for many of Oregon’s early microbrewers. Scheurle was born in Germany in 1939 in his family’s brewery, Stugartt Hofbrau, and in his interview, he talks about his family’s brewing business, the impact of World War II, his immigration to the United States, his career in brewing, and his adventures hosting food and beer pairings.
One of my student workers, Lance, prepared a wonderful research document for me, so I’m going to share that here. Scheurle was educated at Schickhardt College in Stuttgart, Germany, as well as at the Landes Fachschule Brewmaster’s School in Ulm, Germany. He and his brother decided not to take over for his father at the family brewery, and instead Scheurle emigrated to United States in 1961. He worked as an interpreter in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was a rocket engineer, and was officially in the US Army. My history is a sketchy, but I think because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip??
Starting in 1979, Scheurle worked for Pabst in both Wisconsin and Oregon. He did this until late 1982, when he went to work at Pittsburgh Brewing as the brewmaster and then Director of Brewing (1985); while there he developed several “Iron City” beers. Sometime in 1984/1985, Pittsburgh Brewing started brewing Samuel Adams under contract by Boston Brewing; Scheurle helped Jim Koch with this original Sam Adams recipe. In February 1986, he was promoted to Director of Brewing and in April 1986 Pittsburgh Brewing merged with Swan Brewing Co., Ltd. from Perth, Australia. That same year he was officially hired by Jim Koch and the Boston Beer Company. In the late 1980s, Scheurle traveled to West Germany to determine if Beck Beer used adjuncts apart from barley malt in their brewing (which was illegal at the time because of Reinheitsgebot). In 1990, he returned to Portland to brew Sam Adams at the old Blitz-Weinhard facility, which was the main source of Sam Adams distribution apart from the East Coast and internationally. If you want to learn more about this time you should read the 2001 Fred Eckhardt article “The spy who saved the Reinheitsgebot” (http://allaboutbeer.com/article/the-spy-who-saved-the-reinheitsgebot/).
This production of Sam Adams in Oregon was actually a decently controversial issue (I’ll write a second post on this to share the documents I found in the Eckhardt collection). In 1994, the Oregon Ale and Beer Company was established by Boston Beer to “develop and market Pacific Northwest style beers.” Gregg LeBlanc and Walter Scheurle in charge of operations and it seems that the beer was brewed out of the Saxer Brewery in Lake Oswego and the Blitz-Weinhard facility in Portland. As far as we could tell it was brewed at Blitz-Weinhard until the plant closed in 1997.
When I asked Scheurle when he retired, he said he never did! But it is clear that by 1997, he was hosting beer/food pairing dinners around the country, and his position as “brewmaster” of Samuel Adams was repeatedly used in advertising the events. My favorite story had to do with serving Muhammad Ali on a plane… Scheurle loved to travel, and his apartment is decorated with souvenirs, beer related and otherwise cool.
What a joy it was to spend time with Walter – a beer history treasure just up I-5! Many thanks to Ben from the Oswego Place Assisted Living Facility for taking such great care of Walter and for connecting us so this interview could happen.
Listen to Walter Scheurle oral history interview, May 22, 2019
A sad update note: Walter passed away June 5, 2021.