Yuengling

And the man behind the brand is...
David Yuengling

There is no documentation to verify what the Yuengling family business was in Germany but when David G. Yuengling, an immigrant from Wurtemburg, Germany arrived in America in 1828 at the age of 21 he immediately looked for a place to start a brewery. It is not unreasonable to deduce that the Yuengling brewing tradition stretches back past America.

Yuengling headed for the eastern Pennsylvania coal country and in 1829 opened the Eagle Brewery on North Centre Street in the rolling Appalachian foothills. The new brewhouse was not two years old before fire consumed it. In 1831 Yuengling rebuilt the brewery a few blocks away on a mountainside where tunnels gouged from the rock provided natural cold temperatures necessary for aging and fermentation. That brewery stands today, and Yuengling is officially recognized in the National Register of Historic Places as America’s oldest brewery.

David Yuengling was among the first to brew lager beer and that first year he produced 600 barrels of beer and ale. The malt was transported from Philadelphia by way of the Schuylkill Canal and the final brew delivered throughout the region by horse-drawn wagons. David Yuengling’s reputation was such that many noted 19th century brewers learned their art in the Mahantongo Street brewhouse.

By the time his son joined him in 1873 David Yuengling was brewing 23,000 barrels a year. He died in 1873 at the age of 70, having started a family business that would stretch continuously into the fifth generation.