Home Brewery

[franillaice]

Anyone know any info about the old brewery at Miami and Wisconsin? I remember reading about it in the book, since it’s kind of a generic name it’s hard to sing any info on it.... it’s a parking lot now but it sounds like it had maybe a couple entrances. Wondering if anyone knows how big it was or what direction it went, etc. There’s a couple houses at the end of the street supposedly don’t have basements bc there’s a cave underneath! PM me if anyone has more info?

[Chris]

It filled the entire block - where the empty lot is as well as where the union hall is now.

[franillaice]

Any idea if the buildings across Broadway or on Miami were connected?

[Chris]

No, I certainly wouldn't think so. The buildings across Broadway are probably 1950s construction and the building across Miami is an old firehouse.

[Chris]

It's my understanding that much of the remains of the brewery were dozed into the shafts when the brewery was demolished, leaving the likelyhood of ever visiting those cellars extraordinarily slim.

That said, if ANY surviving structure has access, it MIGHT be the union hall building. It was originally a Brewers and Maltsters local union hall, and was built when the brewery was torn down. Maybe those guys had enough interest in the history of their trade to build a door in the basement.

Likely? Not at all. Possible? I guess...

[Whitepanther]

62,000 bricks were utilized in the construction of HB cellar. Read that in the STL Mechanical Liens records. It’s believed by some to have been a former quarry rather than an actual cave. The story of Home Brewery is just as interesting as the Rother’s report of the cellar itself though. Theo Archibald was the original owner if memory serves me well and it allegedly was purchased by AB in the mid to late 19th Century as a pilot plant to simulate how to go about making more breweries across the US instead of shipping more product by railroads. Take the historical account there at the end with a grain of salt but personally I believe there was once a natural solution cave there before being altered to its current state. If being brutally honest I also believe it was at one time a portion of English Cave. But y’all didn’t hear that from me.

[Whitepanther]

There's no entrance remaining to Home Brewery cave but of all the one's the Rother's wrote about this was by far my favorite. In the late 60's with the assistance of the Falstaff Museum curator, Missouri's oldest grotto MMV took a series of trips to Home prior to the buildings above ground being demolished. Sadly even back then this cave was full of sewage and is probably even worse off now.

[Chris]

What a loss.

[Whitepanther]

What a loss.

Yes it is. I really wanted to see this one too because the book Lost Caves eluded to the strong possibility that there was a flooded lower level that nobody in the 60’s had even seen. Hubert’s friend fell through a hatch in the floor and over his head in depth and never touched bottom.

[Chris]

I mean on the bright side I guess they're still down there, but the only likely way in would be to excavate a shaft.

[franillaice]

Bump to say supposedly a couple months ago a group of explorers got in! Anyone have any info?

[SubLunar]

Bump to say supposedly a couple months ago a group of explorers got in! Anyone have any info?

Things like this really shouldn't become such public knowledge because when it comes to underground stuff, you generally have one way in/out. It's *exceedingly easy to permanently seal anything underground*, and as such anyone who wants to preserve access to such a site should keep that information private.

In other words, the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.

-

I am aware of coordinated efforts to secure permission to the site which seems to have happened recently.

I'm also aware of shitty actions by careless person(s) who knew that permission was being worked on and still broke their way in anyway and this has caused a pretty massive fallout behind the scenes as a result. This has pissed off a lot of people, including myself.

-

The thing most people don't seem to understand (due to the secrecy involved [which is necessary to prevent locations being sealed immediately]) is that no matter the topic, you can be 99.99% sure that there are already people working on it and maybe they already have access to it. All you gotta do is hang out and get to know people and show through your actions that you're capable of using discretion, you are dependable/trustworthy and you're not an emotionally unstable wreck that will curl up in the fetal position at the first sign of danger. It is also frowned upon to share photos/details of "fight club" locations on social media. Basically, you can try to do it yourself for the social media glory, or you can work with the people already involved and while you might not get to post everything you want to post publicly, you'll get to be involved and see the stuff that you wanted to explore.

I myself took the same path I describe above; when I joined this site, I was a nobody. I then posted some stuff that White Rabbit had to nuke immediately and he explained to me basically what I've explained here. And now I am in the position to know things. Like the current situation at Home Brewery.

[mindwaave]

+1 to all that.

*sigh*

[SubLunar]

As an example:

The L**p Brewery and cave was explorable once upon a time. That hasn't been the case for a pretty long time now. This is a fact.

But back in the day, there was one entry point that was fairly easy to access. Some idiot posted about it online, including a photo of the entrance. I tried asking them to remove that part and they got immediately butthurt and offended as if I was trying to "control them". When I was merely suggesting they remove the entry details from the public internet. They told me to fuck off.

That entrance was immediately sealed.

The difference between that idiot and myself is that my actions (discretion, not talking about "fight club") made it possible to explore L**p over a dozen times over the course of several years, whereas that idiot probably only ever got in the one time and only saw whatever was explorable that one time.

-

If your motivation is to chase hidden mysteries into existence with careful people who avoid destroying things, then you can find what you seek.

If your motivation is to immediately post stuff of this nature all over the internet, then you will have a much more difficult time making any progress and will waste countless hours chasing dead-ends that had been chased long before you.

[franillaice]

(quote). If being brutally honest I also believe it was at one time a portion of English Cave. But y’all didn’t hear that from me.
[/quote]

You think HB would connect ALL the way up to English??? That would be at least a 1/2 mile apart? Which isn't out of the question, but someone actually knowing they were connected or walkable seems highly unlikely?

I'm so intrigued by this damn cave/brewery! I've never seen those pics posted before. Does anyone have any more info or more pics? Was it just a storage area and that's it? I thought the cave Bible book said there were many turn offs! ? Surely there's one still out there... Just like BP