History of the District

The first board of directors of the District was composed of:

President Eugenio Gebauer
Vice-president Carlos Roubicek
Secretary Ernst Lerch Treasurer Daniel Erich
Auditor Edgar Scheller

Edgar Scheller was elected as succesor of Eugenio Gebauer as president of the second board.

Several members of District Venezuela have served the MBAA well. Eugene Gebauer, of C. A. Cervecera Nacional, was president in the year 1974/1975 and was the person who originally proposed the name change to “. . .the Americas” to better reflect the extended limits of the association, what with districts in Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and the Caribbean. Fred Gerhardt, of Cervecería Regional was president of the MBAA in the year 1981/1982. It is also worth noting the long years Thomas Meier of Cervecería Polar served on the Technical Committee, serving there also as Technical Chair.

The first years

The District held two three day conventions with an international flavor, with talks given by renowned presenters and with the participation of colleagues from Colombia and the Caribbean area. The first such convention was in june of 1962, with one hundred and thirty people registered, including six from Colombia, one from Panamá and 21 from the USA. The technical program included talks given by Leonard Saletan, Dr. Joern Olshausen and Bob Gross (of Wallerstein, Siebel’s and Schwarz, respectively) and four papers on filtration from the Great Lakes Carbon Corp. (Dicalite), plus one other paper on filtration given by our Ernst Lerch (Cervecería Unión). Bernie Erf, Editor of the Brewers Digest, gave a talk on the brewing industry in the USA; this magazine had an ample report on our convention (three pages, with many pictures) in its August, 1962 issue.

The following brewmasters attended from Colombia: Carlos Uribe V. de Cervunión Medellín; Fabio Cabal P. de Bavaría S.A., Dirección Bogotá; and Genisberto Conde M. de Bavaría S.A., Santa Marta; a few months later, our district delegate to the meeting of the districts in Chicago presented the Colombian request for a charter, with the curious condition that the members of their Colombian Association of Technical Brewers all be accepted as founders of District Colombia; the reason for this was that one of their members was Lucy del Castillo and at that time there were no femenine members of the MBAA. District Colombia received its charter in October of 1962. Both Lucy del Castillo and Genisberto Conde were thereafter tireless workers for District Colombia.

In those first years, when the Venezuelan economy was more favorable than at present (4,35 Bs./US$), it was not unusual for members of our district to attend Caribbean District conventions as a group. The first one which had a massive contingent from Venezuela was in Barbados; there was also a strong Venezuelan presence at the Jamaican convention (with a paper on The Statistical Evaluation of Triangular Taste Tests given by one of our colleagues)and later at the Puerto Rican affair. Our ties were so strong that we followed in 1974 with a joint Venezuelan/Caribbean convention in Caracas, our second convention with an international flavor. At this convention, we were treated to a paper by Georg Marx (Cervecerías Polar) on the evaluation of bottle washers with the novel idea of using uniformly prepared dirtied bottles.

There were also some memorable excursions, such as the time we went together to the Canaima camp of Avensa Airlines, with a fly-by at Angel Falls on the way. There were two options: two days, leaving Saturday morning, sleeping over in a cabin by the lake with the roar of Canaima Falls to rock us to sleep, returning on Sunday; the other posibility was a one day trip on Sunday. There were also the usual one-day excursions, for example, to the Owens-Illinois bottle factory, the El Palmar sugar refinery and the Santa Teresa rum distillery.

These days the conventions are usually one-day affairs (with only two or three technical papers), usually on a date near Brewers Day (Oct. 30), such as the one in October, 2004, at the Hostal Rancho La Quinta in San Joaquín, Carabobo state, attended by the Caracas brewers and their families who mostly went by chartered bus, and counting with the participation of our colleagues (and families) from Cervecería Polar del Centro, Cervecería Regional del Centro (Cagua), Cervecera Nacional (Brahma) of Barquisimeto and Cervecería Tovar.