Today is the birthday of Amund Ringnes (October 7, 1840-January 13, 1907). He was a Norwegian businessman, brewery owner and patron. Along with his brother Ellef Ringnes (administrator and salesman) and business partner Axel Heiberg (who provided financing), he co-founded the Ringnes brewery in 1876. Amund was the brewer and the Ringnes remained family-owned until 1978. Today it is part of the Carlsberg Group, and remains the largest brewery in Norway.

This biography of Ringnes is from his Wikipedia page:

He was born in Krødsherad, Buskerud, the son of Anders Knudsen Ringnes (1813–75), farmer, and his wife Maren Amundsdatter (1815–76). He grew up at the Ringnes farm, and commenced working at Akers Mekaniske Verksted in 1860. He left Akers Mek. Verksted in 1865, and was employed by the brewery Christiania Bryggeri. In 1876, he founded Ringnes & Compani brewery with his brother Ellef Ringnes and the businessman Axel Heiberg. It was the eighth brewery in Christiania (now Oslo), and later had its name changed to Ringnes Bryggeri.

The Ringnes brewery became successful, and Amund Ringnes and his brother became benefactors in Christiania. They invested in the construction of the Holmenkollen Line and sanatoriums in the Holmenkollen area. They also sponsored Fridtjof Nansen’s Fram expedition, which they at one point led together with businessman Axel Heiberg and shipowner Thomas Fearnley. The explorer Otto Sverdrup’s 1898–1902 Fram expedition also received financial support from the two brothers; he named two discovered islands after them: Amund Ringnes Island and Ellef Ringnes Island.

On 19 September 1870, Ringnes married Laura Jensen (1850–1902). In 1896, his brother Ellef bought the Ringnes farm from him, which he earlier had inherited from his father. He said to his brother: “Ellef, you have 14 children, and I have only six, so it is most correct that you own the farm”. Amund Ringnes was decorated as a Knight, First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav in 1898. He was upgraded to Commander, Second Class in 1902. In 1899, he built the country house Ringartun in Buskerud, where he maintained a hospitable home. He died on 13 January 1907 in Kristiania, aged 66.

This short biography is translated using Google Translate from the brewery website:

Amund Ringnes was born on October 7, 1840, at Ringnes Gård in Krødsherad. When he was 14 years old his father had to sell the farm and the family moved to relatives in Drammen, where Amund and Ellef completed primary school. 

Amund was interested in mechanics and innovations that came in the wake of the industrial revolution, and in 1860 got an apprenticeship at Aker’s Mechanical Workshop. In 1865, the journey continued to Christiania Brewery where he started as a brewer apprentice and went on to graduate before ending up as a brewer. 

Brygger Amund was known as trustworthy, popular and spacious in relation to his employees. He was down to earth, hardworking, quality conscious, curious, innovative, generous and fond of hunting and fishing.
The days at the brewery could be long, so he built a villa in Biermannsgate for himself and his family.  There he lived with his wife Laura.  In 1896, the brothers bought back the family farm. According to tradition, the elder, the breeding boy Amund, should own the farm. But in all fraternity, the humble and unassuming Amund Ringnes must have said to his younger brother: “You, Ellef, have 14 children, while I have only 6, so it is best that you get the farm.” And so it went. On the farm, they often hosted prominent guests, and Amund used to put bookcases in rivers along the itinerary, so guests would have some strength during the trip.

And here’s a short history of the brewery, from the tourism site, Go Norway:

Ringnes is Norway´s largest brewery company with approximately 1,200 employees. The company is owned by “Carlsberg Group”, the world´s fourth largest brewery group. We deliver beer, soda and water to the entire Norwegian beverage market and we are proud of our many strong brands!

Ringnes brewery was established in 1876 by brothers Amund Ringnes and Ellef, who came from Ringnes Gard. Amund was brewer, Ellef administrator and salesman, and Axel Heiberg was the financier behind now. 28 November 1877 could Amund Ringnes put the first brewed, thus starting what has now been 130 years of brewing history. Ringnes-brothers stood centrally among those who did Fridtjof Nansen and Otto Sverdrup “Fram” – Finished possible. A lasting memory of this is the three islands in the northernmost Canada (west of Greenland), as Sverdrup named after the brewery´s founders, Axel Heiberg Island, Amund Ringnes Island and Ellef Ringnes Island.

Today is the birthday of Frederick Ries (October 5, 1857-July 29, 1899). He was born in Germany, where he trained as a brewer and emigrated to the U.S. when he was 24, in 1880. He worked for several breweries before eventually becoming the brewmaster for the Leisy Brewing Co. of Cleveland, Ohio, which had been founded in 1873 by Isaac Leisy.

Here is a short obituary of Ries from the American Brewers Review.

There’s not any additional information I could find our about Ries, but here is some history of the last brewery he worked for. This is a short history from Cleveland magazine.

Established in 1873 by German-born Isaac Leisy and his two brothers, the Leisy Brewing Co. was arguably the largest independently owned brewing company in Cleveland. In 1882, Leisy expanded into a plant along eight acres on Vega Avenue that included a blacksmith’s shop and stables for 250 horses. Leisy upped production from 12,000 barrels in 1873 to more than 565,000 in 1918. After Prohibition, Leisy continued its brewing tradition until closing in 1959. This month, Gypsy Brewery begins brewing in the renovated 90,000-square-foot Leisy bottling plant.

And this longer history of the Leisy Brewery is from Cleveland Historical, by Michael Rotman.

In 1873, Isaac Leisy and his two brothers (all originally from Bavaria in Germany) left their small brewery in rural Iowa and came to Cleveland after purchasing Frederick Haltnorth’s brewery on Vega Avenue for $120,000. Haltnorth (who was also the proprietor of Haltnorth’s Gardens — a beer garden at East 55th Street and Woodland Avenue) had purchased the brewery in 1864 from Jacob Mueller, who originally opened it in 1858. Only weeks before purchasing Haltnorth’s brewery, Isaac Leissy had been in Cleveland to attend the annual Brewer’s Congress. Leisy must have been impressed with the opportunities for growth and prosperity in Cleveland, which was quickly becoming an industrial metropolis, as compared to those that existed in rural Iowa.

In the mid-1880s, Isaac Leisy (having bought out his brothers) renovated the old brewery and expanded its operations, constructing a multi-building, 8-acre campus along Vega Avenue and increasing beer production eightfold. The Leisy Brewery aimed to be as self-sufficient as possible, and to this end the brewery’s grounds contained, for example, a bottling plant, stables for its fleet of horse-drawn delivery carriages, a cooperage, a blacksmith shop, and two 80-foot silos that held barley prior to its on-site malting. Self-sufficiency was important since competition among breweries in Cleveland at the time was fierce, with nearly twenty breweries operating in the city in 1890. To make matters more difficult for Leisy, in 1898 10 small Cleveland brewers joined the new Cleveland & Sandusky Brewing Co., a massive combination that signaled the brewing industry’s turn towards consolidation. Isaac’s son Otto took control of the company after his father’s death in 1892 and promptly vowed to remain independent of the new combination. He wrote to the Plain Dealer in 1898, emphatically stating that “My firm has existed in Cleveland for over a quarter of a century; has prospered by honorable methods of trade, thereby obtaining, possessing and enjoying the confidence of the same. By its former methods my company proposes to preserve and maintain its trade, and in a fair way compete with its opponent, the huge beer trust.”

Indeed, Leisy Brewing remained an independent, family-owned brewery throughout its entire history. It thrived in the decades before Prohibition, steadily increasing its sales and production. When Prohibition took effect in 1920 and brewing beer became illegal, the company made a short-lived attempt to produce non-alcoholic beverages. This proved to be unprofitable, and Leisy Brewing closed in 1923. Unlike some of Cleveland’s other breweries which had also been forced to shut down during Prohibition, Leisy returned after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. That year, Otto’s son Herbert Leisy reopened the brewery, reequipping it with new machinery to replace the equipment that had been sold off during Prohibition. Industry consolidation, however, continued to chip away at Cleveland’s small, independent breweries in the decades after Prohibition. Leisy Brewing finally closed in 1958, and its plant on Vega Avenue was demolished in the mid-1970s.

The Ohio Breweriana website has an excerpt from the book, Breweries of Cleveland, by Carl H. Miller, that’s all about the Leisy Brewery. Also, the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History has an entry on the brewery plus there’s a book all about the Leisy’s entitled Brewing Beer In The Forest City: Volume I, The Leisy Story that’s available directly from the publisher.