Brewery

Late last week, Philadelphia officials applied for a $1.3 million grant from the state to help about 400 former employees of Christian Schmidt Brewing Co. find work. Help certainly would be welcome: So far only 30 members of Schmidt's now- idled work force have found new jobs. And even the lucky ones are still struggling to adapt to the demise, apparently made final this week, of a 127-year-old tradition in Philadelphia brewing. "I always thought I would retire there," said Richard Schmidt, brewmaster at Christian Schmidt for the last decade.

A NEW BEER from Yuengling - can you believe it? After 180 years, it's about time. It's Yuengling Bock , the Pottsville brewery's first seasonal, and it'll be released in town next week. Brewery boss Dick Yuengling told me he was reluctant to brew the springtime brand because "I hate running out of things. " But he acknowledged that, thanks to the likes of Boston Beer, seasonal releases are a hot trend. Yuengling's retailers and wholesalers told him he had to jump into the game, especially this year as America's oldest brewery celebrates the big one-eight-oh.

More than a few great breweries have packed up their hops and faded away in recent years. But their best recipes can survive. That's exactly what happened to Perkuno's Hammer, the powerful and complex Baltic porter Tom Baker turned into a national cult beer at his small-but-mighty (and now defunct) Heavyweight Brewing Co. in Ocean Township, N.J. Baker has plans for a Mount Airy brewpub, Earth Bread + Brewery, this spring, but Perkuno has already resurfaced as the new Baltic Thunder from Victory.

A journalism student, working on a class paper, called to ask what I thought was the most significant domestic news story of 1988. To jog my memory, he tossed out a few obvious possibilities: the election of George Bush, the friendly visit by Mikhail Gorbachev, the incredible shrinking dollar. I interrupted and said: "My choice is James Harvey and his mouse. " He said: "Who?" So I told him the story of James Harvey and his mouse, and why I considered it significant.

Jim Koch, the brewery owner whose familiar voice is as smooth as single-barrel whiskey, is on the phone after a day of meetings in Boston. A variety sixpack of his Samuel Adams beers sits in front of him, and he can't wait to sample a few of them - quality control, you know. "I'll drink anything. I'm interested in any beer I haven't tasted," he says. "You have to realize, I started drinking beer when I was 4 - Shangling, Red Cap . . . " These were the beers Koch's father made 50 years ago as brewmaster at Hudepohl in Cincinnati - a brewery that Koch's Boston Beer Co. recently purchased.

BUDWEISER - FIZZY, yellow Budweiser - now makes a bourbon-and-vanilla-flavored amber lager. If that's not a sign of the impending apocalypse, I don't know what is. Not to worry. The End is precisely why we drink beer to begin with. Drinking is all about enjoying life. It is hedonistic and intemperate. We drink for the moment, not the future. We drink because we know someday we won't. We drink because, as the polka laureate tells us, in heaven there is no beer. The people who make our beer certainly know this.

William H. Pflaumer, the jailed owner of Christian Schmidt Brewing Co. in Philadelphia, is asking a federal judge to release him early to do volunteer community work and save his financially troubled brewery. In a motion filed Tuesday with U.S. District Judge Charles Weiner in Philadelphia, lawyers for Pflaumer painted a picture of a businessman whose incarceration threatens his company and his life. Pflaumer was convicted in 1983 and sentenced to three years in federal prison for his part in a scheme to cheat Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware out of about $125,000 in fuel taxes.

PITTSBURGH - Two local brewers are battling over the rights to resurrect Fort Pitt Beer, the post-World War II king of Pittsburgh beers. Jones Brewing Co. of Smithton, which has brewed Fort Pitt, is vying for the rights to the latest iteration of the beer with Duke Brewing's Mark Dudash, an Upper St. Clair lawyer who resurrected Duquesne beer last year. Jones Brewing, which makes beers under the Stoney's label, has received federal and state approval for a Fort Pitt label.

Peacocks greet the visitor to this shaded hillside brewery, strutting and sticking their giant tail feathers in the air by the old barrelhouse. The road in, one of the few curving lanes in this town of German right angles, hugs the edge of an oak-and-pine state park. At the far end, across August Schell's original grape arbor, stands the brewer's mansion, a three-story Rhinelander Victorian with wedding-cake trim. There are deer in the pen, and the natural amphitheater on the side is sometimes used for music concerts.

Anthony Koppany, 93, of Lansdale, an accomplished chess player who once played Bobby Fischer to a draw, died Monday, Oct. 17, at home. A native of Hungary, Mr. Koppany learned to play chess when he was 10 from a relative who became a chess master. After emigrating to the United States in 1949, he played with the North City Chess Club and was later director of the Franklin Mercantile Chess Club in Center City. In 1964, Mr. Koppany played Fischer at the Cheltenham Township Art Center.