During 1970-71 I lived with my family in Amberg, Germany, which is east of Nurnberg and close to what is now the Czech Republic border. I was fortunate to have a summer job at Brauhaus Amberg during the summer of 1971. My first task was working with Otto in the cellar. Delivery trucks would pull up to the window and toss down a list of beers for their orders. Otto and I would scramble around to choose the correct products. Mostly it was cases of twelve 1/2 liter bottles of Brauhaus Amberg’s delicious pilsner style beer. They also had an excellent, but seasonal , doppelbock. There were generally several orders for kegs of beer. I do not recall the keg volume but do recall that they were made out of wood and very heavy.
When the order was competed Otto and I would place the items on rollers and push them out the window. The driver and helper would load the truck. I was always impressed with the way they handled the kegs using a coil of rope to bounce them onto the truck.
There were three breaks during the day. The first was mid-morning and consisted of a quick bottle of beer. The next was lunch and then we had a mid-afternoon break both of which were accompanied by beer. During the lunch break the Bier Miesel would proceed to consume several beers. I recall seeing him throw back as many as 6 beers in about 15 minutes. Then, the Bier Miesel would jump into his truck to deliver more beer. It was explained to me that the Bier Miesel was the master drinker for the brauhaus.
Another one of my tasks was working at the tail end of the Pepsi bottling line. The bottles would travel through the filler and capper and end up on a large rotating table. My job was to take bottles from the table and place them into cases. This was pretty monotonous but as a 15 year- old boy I was ideally suited. One day there was a leak in a pipe above my station. The gas smelled like ammonia. After being fitted with a WW II era gas mask I got back to work to finish packing the remaining cases.
Another aspect of working at Brauhaus Amberg was the pay. I made 4 marks per hour which was approx. $1.25. At the end of my first week I got a big surprise. Along with the monetary compensation each worker also received two cases of beer. On payday my friends and I would camp out down the street from my house near the dump. There we would drink beer and get foolish like only a bunch of drunk teenage boys can be.
Brauhaus Amberg is sadly no longer in existence. It lasted from 1891-1990. Then, the brewery decided to try its hand at becoming an investment bank. Well, it was much better at making beer and eventually folded.