Lauzus Hotel, Wilhelm Lauzus, Proprietor

Lew Bryson attended Franklin & Marshall graduating circa 1983. He is a beer connoisseur (not to be mistaken with most of us although I don't mean to be all inclusive here - I, for one, am no connoisseur) and maintains an excellent blog on the subject. Here are two links to his Blog and an additional article. All three reference the great tavern man - Wilhelm Lauzus. Lew's descriptions of not only Mr. Lauzus but the beer choices and behind the bar classics (remember the Blind Robins?) will provide a cheer to your heart. Happy reading.

Two blog articles on Wilhelm:

http://lewbryson.blogspot.com/2007/11/session-music-and-memory.html

http://www.beveragebusiness.com/bbcontent/art98/bryson0507.html

and one more without link

by Lew Bryson

I've run into a lot of 20-somethings recently who are telling me all about
the great beers they've found. "We had a keg party, man, 12 halves of Sam
Adams and 6 cases of Sheaf Stout, it ruled!" or "This place had fifty taps,
and they were great, no crap on tap." They tell me about the trips they've
made to Europe, New England, Colorado, California, and the great mecca, the
Pacific Northwest.

No offense, but what do these youngsters know about beer? They've never
known anything but shelves full of the best of European beers, American
craftbrews, some exotic Asians. It's so easy, you can pick up a six-pack
anywhere, you can read about great beers in the local paper. It wasn't
always that way.

I started drinking good beer back in 1981. I was 22, a senior at Franklin &
Marshall College, and I really did know everything. My medieval history
professor decided to straighten me out. Doc Thibault took me to the Lauzus
Hotel, a classic beer palace. This elegantly down-at-heels relic of a bar
was built inside the former Rieker Star brewery in Lancaster, PA, a town
once known as America's 'Munich on the Conestoga.' H.L. Mencken spoke well
of Lancaster's beers, which made me proud to be a local boy.

I arrived ahead of the good professor and checked the place out. I was a bar
novice, and didn't even realize it. I drank Rolling Rock and Stroh's in
places with lots of lights and neons, bars with carpet on the floor. This
place had a pressed-tin ceiling, a mosaic floor, and a huge backbar,
cluttered with memorabilia, beer signs, liquors I didn't recognize, and
about a dozen salecards hanging from the backbar offering everything from
Alka-Seltzer to packs of salted herring (which were called, for reasons
unknown to me still, Blind Robins). I was taken aback, but as I looked
around I felt more relaxed.

Opposite the bar itself was a long bank of glass-fronted coolers,
fluorescent lights and all, and they were full of more kinds of beer than I
had ever seen, more beers than I thought could exist, scads of beer, swamps
of beer. . . There were about 125 beers in those coolers, and in 1981, it
seemed like a vast unexplored continent. And what did I do, Columbus in the
Caribbean, ready to discover new lands and peoples? Why, I grabbed a bottle
of Stroh's and beat a retreat to the bar.

A huge, bald, gentle-faced man took the Stroh's pounder in his hand, opened
it for me, and took my money. This was Wilhelm Lauzus, a man I would grow to
respect and adore, a man who I genuinely mourned at his funeral some 7 years
later. Wilhelm had come to Lancaster from West Germany in 1964, a World War
II naval veteran, an antiaircraft gunner on the Prinz Eugen, the heavy
cruiser which broke out into the Atlantic with the Bismarck. Wilhelm was to
be my first guide to the world of beer.

But it was my professor who started me down the path. He finally showed up,
laughing at my discomfiture, and immediately displayed shock at my choice of
beer. Then he did the simple thing that would change my life like nothing
else ever has. He grabbed a bottle of Altenmünster from the cooler, slapped
the Stroh's out of my hand and stuck the big fat German swingtop bottle in
it.

"There.You're at Lauzus, you have to drink something good," he said.

I popped the swingtop, and took a hearty swig. Damn! This was totally
different from anything I had ever had to drink. There was a depth of flavor
that was immediately obvious to even my inexperienced tongue, a full body
and a sharp sting that I would someday learn to classify as hop bitterness.

And there is all the difference between my malty epiphany and those of today's whippersnappers. In 1981 there was nothing to tell me what I was tasting. There were no books by Michael Jackson. There were no Charlie Papazian homebrewing books. There were no beer geeks to show me the way. There was no Celebrator, no Ale Street News, no Malt Advocate, no Internet newsgroups, no local homebrew shop. The only source of information was brewery tours at places like Anheuser-Busch or maybe one of the regional brewers. Sierra Nevada had only been open three months, Anchor only doing serious ground-breaking stuff for eight years, and neither was anywhere near the East Coast yet.

I was drinking good beer in a vacuum. It would remain so for years. I
remember the joy I felt when I discovered the Brickskellar quite by
accident. I was visiting my old college roommate and happened to mention
that I had begun drinking unusual beers. "Oh, you'll have to go this place
around the corner," he said. "It's got a lot of beer." So after dinner we
walked down to the Brick, and I had my first Anchor Steam. I believe even in
those days the Brick had over 400 beers, but there was still no easy source
of reference on what was good, or even what the different kinds of beer
were. I knew four: stout, pale ale, pilsner, and everything else. With that
tiny scrap of knowledge I was already ahead of 99% of the American
population.

Things changed, of course. By 1987 I had moved to California and found
brewpubs. I started writing a beer journal one night in the Front Street
Pub, in Santa Cruz. I got Jackson's books, I got Papazian's book, I started
homebrewing. I was finding a whole new set of friends, other people who
understood about malt and hops and the strange discovery that Budweiser
tasted like slightly buttery dishwater. That shook me. Realizing that I did
not care to drink beers like Bud ever again required some deep shifts in my
thought patterns.

I look back on those days and shudder. But I miss the thrill of discovery,
the joy of finding a new oasis. I can't remember the last time I was excited
by the discovery of a beer bar or brewpub. Perhaps it was two years ago, the
Country Inn, Krumsville, NY, back in the Catskills and miles from anywhere,
but pouring Paulaner Hefe on tap and 400+ bottles.

Am I bored? NO! Jaded? NEVER! Because the life of beer has entered a whole
new stage in the U.S. The revolution has become established, and like the
progression of wine culture in this country, we can never go back to the way
it was. There are closings in the future as the industry tightens its belt
and begins to compete more fiercely, but we have reached a new standard. It
is now time to solidify our position, and to begin to enjoy the fruits of
our labor. There are cities and towns in America where you can walk from
brewpub to beer bar to restaurant and have ten great beers, none of them the
same. Let's go get some.