About Rich Wagner

Rich Wagner began researching Pennsylvania brewing history in August of 1980 when he and a friend, who would become a research associate, along with their girlfriends hopped into a 1950 Buick and traveled to visit the Pennsylvania breweries that were still in business in search of “hospitality.”

In between brewery tours of the six out of nine Pennsylvania breweries they visited, they saw hulking wrecks of breweries that had, in many cases, only recently gone out of business. The remains looked like carcasses, holes poked into the walls of refrigerated stock houses in order to remove floor after floor of storage tanks, to be sold for pennies on the dollar to breweries looking for used equipment.

Rich, along with his friend Rich Dochter proceeded to visit over 400 former brewery sites throughout Pennsylvania and found some remnants of breweries to photograph at about half of them in order to create an inventory of standing breweries. In the process they expanded their research to include visits to local libraries and historical societies to find additional information beyond just the buildings they found. Beginning in 1987 they developed bus tours of long-gone breweries in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Luzerne and Lackawanna counties, the Lehigh Valley and South Central Pennsylvania. They published guidebooks with information about the breweries on the tours. As time progressed the craft brewing renaissance occurred and later tours included tours of breweries and brewpubs that were in business.

Wagner began homebrewing in 1983 and his interest developed into cultivating hops to brew with. Following that, he planted hops in the herb garden at Pennsbury Manor, a reconstruction of William Penn’s country estate near Morrisville, Pennsylvania on the Delaware River. The site included a “bake and brew house” and the people managing the manor were interested in developing a brewing program. They had tubs and barrels made to make that possible and asked Rich if he would like to demonstrate the brewing techniques of antiquity to which he readily agreed. He conducted brewing demonstrations there in 1990 and 1991.

In 1993 Rich found David Miller, aka “The Woxall Cooper” who agreed to work with him to create his own brewing equipment. They worked over an eight month period, starting out by riving staves from logs to create tubs, found a copper kettle and made a stand for it and constructed various other implements necessary for the process. That summer, Rich and his family loaded the equipment, along with beer he brewed using the system into a trailer and traveled to the Oregon Brewers’ Festival in Portland. They conducted brewing demonstrations to illustrate the historic process over a three day period enthralling 60,000 festival goers with their efforts. On the return trip, they did the same at three sites along the Oregon Trail, as part of its 150th anniversary.

The following year Rich attended the Siebel institute of Technology in Chicago and earned a diploma in brewing technology. When Independence Brewing Co. opened as Philadelphia’s first production microbrewery, he began working there over a four year period. In 1999 he spent three years as assistant brewer across town in Manayunk.

He got to know people in the industry and a number of “old-timers” shed light on their experiences which helped him with brewing at Pennsbury. They encouraged him to attend technical sessions at meetings of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas. After actually working in the industry, he joined the MBAA and served as secretary and membership chair of that organization’s local affiliate, District Philadelphia for a decade.

During this time Wagner was writing articles about Pennsylvania’s brewing heritage for a variety of publications and began giving slide presentations to showcase what his research had revealed. He continues in that vein and has done research for countless descendants of Pennsylvania’s brewing families. He also created several posters that celebrate Pennsylvania’s breweries. In 2012 The History Press published his book “Philadelphia Beer, a Heady History of Brewing in the Cradle of Liberty.” Most recently Rich was instrumental in consulting with the National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, PA helping to create an exhibit “Cheers to 250 Years of Brewing.” In addition, he has given a number of walking tours to highlight sites of Philadelphia’s colonial-era taverns in Old City.

Rich continues to find new sites where remnants of old breweries exist, particularly underground brewery vaults, which frequently become uncovered during construction projects. He also created a list of known standing breweries and remnants throughout the U.S.A., and is particularly interested in “reincarnated breweries” where some of these relics have returned to life as functioning breweries.

Explore the website to learn more.