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Friday, August 26, 1870   Lewis F. Schultz

Louis (also Lewis) F. Schultz, the pioneer brewer of Huntington, Indiana, died at the age of about 50 years.  Schultz was born in Prussia in around 1820.  He and his wife Amalia emigrated to America and by 1850 they had settled in Buffalo New York, where Louis became a peddlar of coffee and beverages. 

In the late 1850s Schultz began manufacturing a beverage that he called Extract of Malt.  It was a concoction which contained onions, Icelandic moss, malt, hops and a wee bit of alcohol.  Fermentation, according to the recipe, was to be avoided "as much as possible".  By 1860 his drink had earned him a personal estate estimated at $1000.  He patented the tonic on May 16th, 1865, just a month after the end of the Civil War.

Some time during the next four years the Schultz family relocated 420 miles southwest in Huntington, Indiana.  Huntington was an important town on the Wabash & Erie canal, and it promised to prosper now that the war was ended.

In September of 1869 the Louis opened a lager beer brewery on West Market Street in that town, and named it the Buffalo in honor of his former residence.  He advertised in the local paper along with his wife, who ran a boarding house from the same location.  But the brewery would not last, as Louis died less than a year later.  Two years after that, Amalia made the news herself when she accidentally took a spoonful of arsenic after mastaking it for cream of tartar.  She survived the episode and passed away of old age, in the home of her daughter, in 1905.

Learn more at the links below

Associated Breweries

Buffalo Brewery, Lewis Schultz of Huntington, Indiana, USA

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