“The brewery itself is four years old, but my family’s been involved in brewing since 1849, and my partner’s family has been involved since the repeal of Prohibition. You bleed it. It’s a calling, and there’s no other way of making a living from my point of view,” Fred Maier, cofounder of Susquehanna Brewing Co. (SBC) says of his brewing roots.
We’re sitting in the tasting room of the brewery, and he points to an ancient-looking wooden wagon showcased in a shadowbox above the taps (far right in photo above). It was part of the old Stegmaier Brewery that his grandfather founded and a reminder of where everything started. When Stegmaier closed in 1974, Fred’s father took the wagon as a keepsake, and it’s a timely reminder to everyone where it all started. Many of their current brews go back, too.
Fred’s great-great-great-great grandfather brewed the first lager in northeast Pennsylvania in 1851, and Stegmaier brewed a golden lager. SBC’s 2015 GABF bronze-winning Goldencold Lager is a call back to those beers. Fred says, “It’s got malty sweetness, bitter hops, and the sourness (from acidulated malt) is cleansing but with that German bite. And if you leave it out in the sun for five minutes, it tastes like Heineken, which I get a kick out of.”