Okay, I stand corrected and down the rabbit hole we go. While most of the Narragansett advertising that one finds on the web is focused on their lager product, searching for breweriana revealed that Narragansett historically brewed what they labeled “Half Stock Banquet Ale.” While I am probably most likely wrong, it appears that the lager product received more focus after the acquisition of the James Hanley Brewing Company. I do not know why that is so, but Rudolph Haffenreffer passed away in 1954, leaving his sons in charge of Narragansett, so that may have had something to do with the company’s shift in focus. I still believe that there is a chance that Narragansett’s ale culture may have originated with Hanley because Hanley predated their opening. It was not uncommon for breweries to share yeast cultures.
What I want to know is what prompted Narragansett to bank the culture with Siebel? Falstaff owned Narragansett in 1967. Did Falstaff’s or Narragansett’s management team decide to get out of ale production? If Narragansett banked the culture with Siebel, then they may have also banked it with Wallerstein Labs, which had its own culture collection (there are several Wallerstain cultures in the ARS NRRL). J.E. Siebel and Max Wallerstein where contemporaries. They were both brewing scientists. Something that a lot of people do not know is that the Anchor Steam culture is not a historical steam beer culture. Anchor acquired it from Wallerstein Labs in the mid-seventies. That was when Fritz Maytag was overhauling Anchor to improve quality. There is some evidence that the Anchor culture descends from the Christian Schmidt lager culture, which Siebel holds as BRY-118. It is available from Wyeast as 2272-PC North American Lager.
Back to the rabbit hole...
