Beechwood chips in a brewing tank: Where the magic happens.

Tom Urani said that early in life, he’d memorized the words on the Budweiser label. I told him I had, too. Together we recited it:

“This is the famous Budweiser beer. We know of no brand produced by any other brewer which costs so much to brew and age. Our exclusive Beechwood Aging produces a taste, a smoothness, and a drinkability you will find in no other beer at any price.”

At 61, Tom Urani is pretty sentimental about the Beechwood Aging part. Since 1994, the St. Louis businessman has  owned the Beechwood Corp. of Millington, Tenn., a suburb of Memphis. As he wrote in a Letter to the Editor of the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday, later this month, his plant will produce its last beechwood chip for Anheuser-Busch InBev. After 62 years, A-B has decided to go to a single supplier.

“Actually it was my idea,” Urani told me Tuesday. “I told them years ago they needed a second supplier for redundancy in case one of us had problems. Then I told them the thing to do if they had to save money was to go to one supplier, but to be fair with the other one. When they told me they were cut one of their suppliers, I didn’t think it was going to be us. I guess they only took half of my advice.”

"A thing of beauty."

Tom felt like his plant was part of the Anheuser-Busch family. After all, he’d bought the plant from Claude McCord, who as a young MIT graduate in 1947, had designed the process that turns beech boards from mid-south forests into perfect helical spiral chips, each one precisely 18 inches long, 1 1/2-inches wide and and 1/8-inch thick.

“Ah, they’re a thing of beauty,” Tom said.

When a batch of Budweiser is brewed, some 30,000 chips (they cost about a nickel apiece) go into the bottom of each stainless steel aging tank at A-B. In a letter to the magazine “All About Beer” in 1997, a Budweiser brewmaster named Mitch Steele explained why:

The Budweiser lagering process involves cooling and transferring nearly end-fermented beer to a closed lagering tank in which clean beechwood chips have been layered on the bottom. A special kraeusen brew, that is actively fermenting, is added immediately. The addition of 15 percent kraeusen allows a secondary fermentation to take place, which creates natural carbonation.

It is crucial that kraeusen is added immediately after Budweiser is put in a lager tank. This marks the beginning of the aging period. Our beers, like traditional German lagers, are aged substantially longer than the column suggests. For example, Budweiser is aged, or lagered, with beechwood chips for approximately 3 weeks, a longer period than used by many brewers.

Many old-world brewers used beechwood chips instead of other types of wood because beechwood is low in phenolics and resins that otherwise would impart woody flavor to the beer. These chips are boiled in water and baking soda-and not soda ash-before use. Having a latticework of beechwood chips on the bottom of our lager tanks allows our lager yeast to settle over the wood instead of creating layers at the bottom of the vessel. This in turn allows a greater amount of yeast contact with aging beer, which ensures complete fermentation, natural carbonation and flavor maturation.

Some beer experts say it’s all a marketing ploy.  Others say it’s magic. As a confirmed Budweiser drinker, I say, “Whatever. It works.”

Beechwood boards prior to becoming beechwood chips at the soon-to-close Millington, Tenn., plant of Beechwood Corp. (Photo by Chris Desmond/Special to The Memphis Commercial Appeal

Tom Urani is pretty upset about being cut out of the loop by A-B’s new owners, the Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate InBev. He’s invited InBev CEO Carlos Brito to the Beechwood Corp.’s last day of production. I told him I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Nine employees in Millington will lose their jobs. Tom, who still has loans against his investment in the $1.5 million a year company, will take a major financial hit.

“But I’m proud to have done it,” he said. “Being a St. Louis boy, I couldn’t be prouder. We did because it was all about relationships. We were always part of the family. For a long time, we had an evergreen contract. Then a few years ago we went to a five-year contract that could be terminated at the end of each year.

“This is not really so much about me as it was the 7,000 people who have lost their jobs (since the InBev deal went through).  Dave Peacock [A-B's new president] says things won’t change, but they’re changing.”

Having paid $52 billion for Anheuser-Busch, InBev is doing whatever it can to cut costs and repay debt. Last week we learned that Emerson Corp. had imposed a boycott against A-B beers in protest of the company’s decision to slow-pay its vendors. “That 120 days?” said Urani of A-B’s new payment schedule. “It’s actually averages 127 days, because they only pay twice a month.”

Tom Urani, a St. Louis boy who drank Budweiser exclusively even before he made beechwood chips and who was part of the A-B extended family, warns ominously that more changes are in the works. Right now, he said, “My dilemma is this: what am going to drink?”