Gerst Brewing Company
[4][1]: 16 [7] An 1873 news article referred to the brewery as a "mammoth establishment", being "of proportions much larger than one would suppose who had not visited it".
[4] The purchaser was J.B. Kuhn, who took over its operations and changed the name to South Nashville Ale and Lager Beer Brewery.
[1]: 16 During one period in 1880, the company advertised an offer to pay $100 "to any person who can produce a better and purer quality of beer than we are now manufacturing in our brewery".
[3] The existing facility was razed, and Moerlein and Gerst initially planned to invest "between $250,000 and $500,000 into the Nashville Brewing Company", by their own account to "erect the finest and largest brewery in the whole Southern Country" on the property.
[3] The brewery continued its success in Nashville and won the Gold Award at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897.
Due to national advertising budgets of larger breweries, the William Gerst Brewing Company closed in 1954.
The restaurant continued to be a favorite among Nashvillians with beer served in "fishbowls" and German oompah and polka entertainment on the weekends.
The Chandlers operated the Gerst Haus in Nashville until the football stadium was constructed for the Tennessee Titans.
[1] Mary Hance of the Tennessean says that Gerst House was best known "for was its fishbowls of beer and the German food — Bratwurst, Bavarian pizza, kielbasa and pumpernickel bread, Reuben sandwiches, oyster rolls, and pig knuckles."
[13] The Gerst Haus reopened in August 2000 in its third location, 301 Woodland Street, across from the new Tennessee Titan's stadium.
The Gerst Haus would operate in this location until March 2018, when it permanently closed due to slow sales.
The beer was only available on draft at the Gerst Haus and other restaurants operated by the Chandler brothers in Nashville and Evansville.
Gerst Amber Ale was developed and brewed by Yazoo to be sold in bottles and draft in the Nashville market.
[14] In May 2019, Mertie and Vanderbilt University anthropology professor John Janusek used ground-penetrating radar to map the area beneath downtown Nashville's 6th Avenue South, in an attempt to locate tunnels and cellars thought to have been used by the original Nashville Brewing Company, and its successor, the William Gerst Brewing Company.
[15][16] The results of that search will determine whether the Vanderbilt University anthropology department will begin an archaeological excavation.
