All Over Albany

Frederick Hinckel and the Hinckel Brewery

The Hinckel Brewery building with the Empire State Plaza in the background. / photo: Tim Jackson

On the northwest corner of Park Avenue and South Swan Street in Albany's Hudson/Park neighborhood, a multi-building complex takes up almost half a city block and dominates the immediate area. Constructed in the late 1880s, this behemoth played a vital role in the brewing and distribution of beer across the city and the country.

This is the story of immigrant, brewmaster, and former Albany resident Frederick Hinckel -- and the Hinckel Brewery.

Coming to America

Frederick Hinckel was born October 29, 1832 in Prussia (present day Germany) to a working class family. From an early age, the odds were stacked against him. A biography on Hinckel that appeared in the Bi-centennial History of Albany said: "He began the battle of existence as a poor boy, but he set before his feet the resolve that to waste no opportunity that might help him along the pathway to success," and that in his youth he "passed through a rugged experience which while bringing, mayhap, a volume of denials and struggling efforts, surely established the sense of self-reliance and determined energy that worked out the successful purposes of his later life."

This "can do" attitude led to Hinckel emigrating to the United States with dreams of making a better life for himself. Together with Johann Andreas Schinnerer, a Bavarian immigrant to the United States, he opened up the Cataract Brewery in Albany in 1852. The name "cataract" is a reference to Buttermilk Falls of Beaver Creek that was once nearby, where the Lincoln Park ravine is presently located.

Slowly but surely this fledgling brewery founded by immigrants began producing beer for consumption by consumers in Albany and beyond. In its early years, the brewery reportedly produced 500 barrels of beer per year, a small output. Its products included Hinckel's Sparkling Lager, which was popular with its customers and was sold throughout the brewery's existence, as well as Sparkling Pure Malt.

photo: Tim Jackson

Expansion and modernization

By the early 1860s, Hinckel bought out his business partner and renamed the Cataract Brewery as the Hinckel Brewery. With the brewery firmly in his control, Hinckel looked toward scaling up the operation in order to compete with other breweries in the Albany such as the Dobler Brewing Company, located around the corner from Hinckel at the corner of Swan and Myrtle, the Armsdell Brewery on Jay Street, the Hedrick Brewery located on Central Avenue in between Ontario and Partridge, and John Taylor & Sons located at 133 Broadway, just to name a few.

After taking over the brewery and continuing into the early 1880s, Hinckel expanded the original brewery building into the five-building complex that exists today. More space for brewing alcoholic beverages meant Hinckel needed to hire more workers and he would bring on between sixty and seventy-five employees over the next two decades.

The investment made by Hinckel didn't just include adding more employees, but also modernizing his brewery. In the July 28, 1889 issue of the Albany Sunday Express, the paper published an article under its "Albany's Industries" section that highlighted the end result of Hinckel's efforts to modernize, among them the latest developments in artificial refrigeration. (The Albany Sunday Express claimed that artificial refrigeration "is one of the greatest achievements in modern science." )

The Hinckel Brewery was the only brewery in Albany to use such a refrigeration system at the time. To power this massive refrigeration system, the brewery used a 200-horsepower compound condensing engine, standing at twenty feet in height and reportedly weighing fifty tons. The article also mentions that "miles of piping" were needed throughout the brewery as well as several large, 350-horsepower steam boilers.

The brewery also had its own Edison incandescent system made up of two hundred light bulbs, which the paper said "brilliantly illuminated" the brewery's underground rock vaults and passages.

The expansion and upgrades allowed Hinckel to significantly increase production. A few years earlier in 1886, the Hinckel Brewery reportedly produced more than 35,000 barrels of beer in a year.

photo: Tim Jackson

Sadly, Hinckel was not alive to see the completion of the modernization and expansion of his brewery. The October 30, 1881 edition of the Albany Times reported that Hinckel had died the day before at his home at the corner of Elm and South Swan Street, located just three blocks north of the brewery complex.

Hinckel was survived by his wife, Helena, and their four children, two of whom (Frederick Jr. and Charles) worked with Hinckel at the brewery for several years before his death. Hinckel is buried in Albany Rural Cemetery.

With their father gone, it was time Frederick Jr. and Charles to take over the brewery, however, it was not without its bumps in the road.

A beer war, court cases, Prohibition, and today

Hinckel's sons managed the brewery in the years following their father's death and continued his legacy in the brewing industry. While the brewery established itself in Albany, Frederick Jr. and Charles sought to expand their reach and tap into new markets. One potential market was Boston, Massachusetts -- much to the anger Boston's breweries.

In 1899 the Bostonian brewers accused the Hinckel Brewery for allegedly "cutting prices [of their beer] below the profit making point." The Hinckels denied the accusation and said that their beer was selling on its merits, which led the Bostonians to threaten a "beer war" with Albany breweries unless the Hinckel Brewery "loosened their grip" over distributing their product in Boston. In response, the other Albany breweries collectively sided with the Hinckels and reportedly "did not seem very afraid" of a possible beer war with Boston.

In addition to the threat of an interstate beer war, the Hinckel Brewery also experienced the collapse of a 128-foot smoke stack that year. The Saturday, August 20th, 1899 issue of The Times-Union reported that at 6 pm that day when workers were getting ready to leave one of the supports of the giant smoke stack "gave way and the mass of iron fell," striking one of the brewery's buildings and "crushing it like an egg shell."

In 1902 the Hinckels found themselves faced with mounting financial pressure reportedly caused by "recent consolidation of banks in this city" and assigned their brewery to Edward Murphy of Troy. (An assignment can be viewed simply as the transfer of property from one person to another.) Reportedly the brewery was worth $1 million (roughly $28 million in today's dollars) when Murphy took control in his capacity as a receiver of the company.

This commenced several years of legal action over the brewery, which included allegations of misconduct against Murphy, a bankruptcy trial that included testimony by Charles Hinckel, a public auction which resulted in Charles Hinckel's close friend Fred Ullman -- the chairman of the executive committee of the American Malting Company -- purchasing the brewery for $280,000. Ullman then put Hinckel back in charge of the brewery his father started.

The brewery continued to produce beer for almost two more decades until Prohibition, which like most breweries across the country, was a death blow. The Hinckel Brewery shut its doors in 1922.

Today, the Hinckel Brewery now serves as an apartment building, owned by Hinckel Brewery LLC, according to city records and is valued for property tax purposes at $1.9 million dollars.

Justin Devendorf is a resident of the Pine Hills neighborhood of Albany. He currently goes to Albany Law School and created the Photozofalbany Instagram page, where he shares the history and beauty of New York State's capital city and the surrounding region one post at a time.