#beer history

Friday plans include a cold beverage? Meet the beer fridge of 1899.

It’s from a catalog of by L. H. Mace & Co. of New York, now in our @smithsonianlibraries. Early refrigerators used insulation (with an inch between two sets of walls) and circulation to move cool air from the ice chamber throughout the space.

Inside this refrigerator, there were places for kegs to rest and shelves in the lower part of the refrigerator could be removed, making it possible to chill two more kegs.