Does anyone know what ever happened to Dr. Hersch Gablinger of Basel, Switzerland? In the 1960s Dr. Gablinger invented a process that reduced the carbohydrate and calorie content of beer by fermenting starch that otherwise wasn't fermented. His process basically was responsible for the development of modern light beer. Rheingold bought the rights to use his process, and it produced Gablinger's Beer starting in 1966. IIRC, Miller Lite later used Gablinger's process. Does anyone know what happened to Dr. Gablinger? I've never seen his post-1960s activities mentioned.
I've researched Gablinger in the past and never came up with much. Most US sources are from Rheingold's initial promotion era. Joe Owades seems to have spend much of his subsequent long brewing career (which later included working on early craft beers like New Amsterdam, SA Boston Lager and Pete's Wicked Ale) downplaying Gablinger's contribution - and, maybe, resented Rheingold's name choice and ad campaign?.
While articles on Owades often cite Miller's purchase of the Meister Brau Lite brand as a continuation of his creation of the low-calorie Gablinger's (sources vary as to how Meister Brau got the process), apparently the Miller executives didn't care for Owades' "taste formula":
Thanks. I did find on a genealogy site where Hersch Gablinger was born in Zurich on March 30, 1912 and was living in Basel by 1952, but didn't find anything on him after the mid-1960s when he was still living in Basel. It's odd that so little is known about someone who made such an important contribution to beer. Maybe Europe's stronger privacy laws help explain why he fell off the radar screen. I think Owades was trying to take credit for a discovery that Dr. Gablinger made. Gablinger was awarded a patent in the US in April 1968 for his discovery that enzyme amyloglucosidase broke down remaining starch in beer. He had applied for the patent in the US in August 1965 and had previously applied in Switzerland in August 1964. If Owades made the discovery involving amyloglucosidase as he evidently claimed in 2004, why did Gablinger apply for, and receive, the patent for the amyloglucosidase process? It makes me question how much Owades exaggerated his contributions to brewing.
