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Historic Beer Birthday: Henry Uihlein II

February 3, 2023 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

schlitz-globe
Today is the birthday of Henry Uihlein II (February 3, 1896-June 8, 1997). He was the grandson of Henry Uihlein, who for many years was the president of the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company early in the 20th century. Henry II was also a director of the family business for several decades until its sale in 1982.

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This paid death notice was printed in the New York Times in 1997:

UIHLEIN-Henry II. Of Lake Placid, NY. Died June 8, 1997, at his winter home in Indian Wells, CA, at the age of 101. He is survived by his wife, Suzanne M. Uihlein, and by his nephews, Robert and August Rohe. Mr. Uihlein was preceded in death by his first wife, Mildred Anthony Uihlein, who died on July 9, 1990. He was a grandson of Henry Uihlein who was a longtime president of the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company early in this century, and was himself a director of the company for several decades until its sale in 1982 to the Stroh Brewing Company. Mr. Uihlein was born in New York City on February 3, 1896, and attended public and private schools there. A promising collegiate career was cut short by tuberculosis and resulted in his spending several years in Lake Placid, NY, where he was restored to health by the altitude and climate. He married Mildred Anthony of South Orange, NJ, on June 10, 1927, and after an extended European honeymoon, they settled in Montclair, NJ, where he founded a real estate corporation. Summers were spent in Lake Placid. In 1933, the Uihleins moved to New York City where Mr. Uihlein attended to his father’s affairs until he died in 1939. In 1941, the Uihleins made Lake Placid their permanent residence, purchasing farm land from the Lake Placid Club which became known as Heaven Hill Farm. Over the succeeding decades, Mr. Uihlein developed a blue ribbon pure-breed Jersey cattle herd, a prize maple syrup operation, and a first class seed potato farm. Stock from his Jersey herd consistently took top prizes at American Jersey Club Shows. Several years ago, the Jersey herd was donated to the Miner Institute of Chazy, NY, where they continue breeding under the Heaven Hill name. Also several years ago, the maple syrup and potato operations were donated to the College of Agriculture of Cornell University under which auspices they continue to be operated as demonstration and research facilities (and in the case of the potato operation, as a disease-free source of seed potatos.) In addition to his interests in fishing, hunting, stamp collecting, and skeet shooting, Mr. Uihlein supported the sport of speed skating in Lake Placid by sponsoring a number of contestants and events, thus contributing to to Lake Placid’s reputation as a winter sports resort. He was an official timer at the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid and an active supporter of the 1980 Winter Olympics for which he was made an honorary member. In 1983, he was named to the Lake Placid Hall of Fame. Henry Uihlein also liked classic automobiles and undertook the restoration of 2 1939 DeLage automobiles. These automobiles, one a coupe and the other a convertible, are one of a kind and were the stars of the French Pavillion at the 1939 World’s Fair. More recently, they have taken top honors at the Concourse D’Legance at Pebble Beach, CA, and other national competitions. Mr. Uihlein has also been actively involved in philanthropy. In addition to funding the Cornell College of Agriculture gifts noted above, he played a major role in the creation of the Uihlein Mercy Center, a geriatric hospital and home located not far from Heaven Hill Farm in Lake Placid. He also has an administration building named after him at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Desert and has served as an honorary Trustee of the Center. He has also actively supported the work of the Mayo Clinic. He will be missed by his many relatives, friends and all those whose lives he touched during his many years. Services will be held on Saturday, June 14th at 11:00 a.m. at the Uihlein Mercy Center Chapel in Lake Placid, interment to follow at North Elba Cemetery, Lake Placid, NY. Memorials may be made to Cornell University College of Agriculture, Uihlein Mercy Center, Lake Placid, NY, Eisenhower Medical Center, Palm Desert, CA, and the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN. For information, call the Clark Funeral Home in Lake Placid, NY.

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This biography was written in 1982, when Uihlein was inducted into The Potato Association of America:

Henry Uihlein II, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on February 3, 1896, is a member of the family that owned and operated the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company for over 100 years.

Soon after Henry was born, his family moved to New York City, where his father continued the family tradition of engaging in the brewery business. He attended public schools and then the Horace Mann Preparatory School in New York City, a part of Teachers College, which was affiliated with Columbia University. As a youth he was active in athletics, participating in baseball, ice hockey and track.

Henry aspired to a career in medicine and with that in mind enrolled at Cornell University. However, misfortune struck. He became seriously ill with tuberculosis and his father was advised that it was unlikely that Henry would live more than six months. So in 1916, in an effort to regain his health, Henry went to Lake Placid, New York, which was famous for its health sanatoria. There he gradually regained his health and as soon as he was able, resumed his interest in amateur athletics. He focused his energies and support behind speed skating, bringing national and international meets to the tiny Adirondack village. His efforts to promote winter sports in Lake Placid continued through the ’20′s, in spite of being involved in a very serious auto accident. Mr. Uihlein played a significant role in bringing the winter Olympics to Lake Placid in 1932.

In 1927, Mr. Uihlein married Mildred Anthony, whom he had met two years earlier at the Lake Placid Club. They recently celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary. After a number of years actively engaged in business in New York City, the Uihleins returned to Lake Placid in 1940, bought Heaven Hill Farm and directed their energies toward farming. Their first Jersey cattle were acquired in 1942, the beginning of a champion show herd which eventually numbered 250 head. Their sire, Brownys Masterman Jester, bred at Heaven Hill Farm, set an unprecedented record by winning five Grand Championships at the National Jersey Show. Seven head of their cattle achieved “Hall of Fame” records. Their love of Jersey cattle continues today and Heaven Hill enjoys an international reputation for their premier breeding stock.

Concurrently with the development of their Jersey herd, the Uihtein’s entered the seed potato business in order to help the war effort. Their annual production eventually reached 30,000 bushels of top quality certified seed. In 1961 Cornell University approached the Uihleins seeking to lease or purchase their Tableland Farm to establish an official seed potato farm for New York State. The Uihleins countered with an extraordinary offer–they had decided to give Cornell approximately 300 acres of prime potato land. This, along with subsequent gifts of land, became known as the Uihlein Farm of Cornell University.

In 1975 Cornell again approached Mr. Uihlein seeking his support for building a laboratory and greenhouse on the Cornell-Uihlein Farm for the specific purpose of producing pathogen-free potato seed stocks by meristem and shoot tip culture. Having always maintained a keen interest in all aspects of the research program and the production of disease-free seed stocks, Mr. Uihlein very generously agreed to fund this facility. Ground was broken in 1977; the Henry Uihlein II Laboratory was dedicated in June of 1979. Maple syrup production on Heaven Hill was an annual affair since the 1940′s, Heaven Hill having many thousands of mature sugar maples. In 1964 Henry Uihlein conceived the idea of starting a demonstration and research project under the direction of Cornell’s Department of Natural Resources for the production of maple syrup. In addition to funding the construction of the sugar house, equipment and deeding 165 acres of maple forest to Cornell, he has continued to subsidize this project.

The Uihlein’s, in a further demonstration of community spirit, donated 35 acres of land and partial funding for a $4,500,000 nursing home for the aged and chronically ill. This facility, known as the Uihlein Mercy Center, is widely known for its beauty and excellent care. Among his many other activities and interests, Mr. Uihlein served as a Director of the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. for 32 years, then as Director Emeritus and Lifetime Honorary Director. He has also served as Director of the Jos. Schlitz Foundation and as a trustee and president of the Lake Placid Educational Foundation. Mr. Uihlein was honored by the American Jersey Cattle Club in 1968 and was designated “Master Breeder of the Year.” He was on the Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1980 Winter Olympics and has been active in numerous other organizations.

Very few individuals outside the research community have contributed so much to support the development of a basic aspect of the potato industry. Mr. Uihlein’s contributions of land and buildings have made possible a foundation seed farm of unique quality. For over twenty years, scientists, farmers, and consumers in New York State and beyond have benefitted from his personal interest in and active support for research to produce disease-free potatoes.

For his vision and enthusiasm, his high level of interest and unstinting generosity to seed potato research, it is most appropriate that we honor Mr. Henry Uihlein II with an Honorary Life Membership in The Potato Association of America.

And thanks to his contribution of bringing the Olympics to Lake Placid, he was inducted into the Lack Placid Hall of Fame.

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Filed Under: Birthdays, Breweries, Just For Fun Tagged With: History, New York, Wisconsin

Historic Beer Birthday: William Wenzel

January 31, 2023 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

science

Today is the birthday of William Frederick Wezel (January 31, 1854-January 15, 1927). He was born in Germany, but moved to Wisconsin as a boy with his family. He was trained in a number of fields, but is best known in brewing circles for the Wenzel Filtermass, which became the standard for clarifying filters for breweries in the 19th century. Unfortunately, I could not find any photographs of Wenzel. This biography of Weznel is from a “History of Outagamie County, Wisconsin.”

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And this obituary was published in the Post-Crescent of Appleton, Wisconsin, on April 25, 2917.

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Filed Under: Birthdays, Just For Fun, Related Pleasures Tagged With: Germany, Science of Brewing, Wisconsin

Historic Beer Birthday: Frank H. Bechaud

January 19, 2023 By Jay Brooks

bechaud

Today is the birthday of Frank H. Bechaud (January 19, 1848-November 28, 1916. He was born in Rheinpflz, Germany, but emigrated with his parents in 1850, when he was two, settling on Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. In 1871, along with two of his brothers, Adolph and Jean (a.k.a. John), founded the A.G. Bechaud Brewery, which was also known as the A.G. Bechaud & Bros. Brewery and later, beginning in 1875, traded under the Empire Brewery name, before returning to Bechaud Brewery when it reopened after prohibition ended, before closing for good in 1941.

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Here’s an obituary of Bechaud from the Brewers’ Journal:

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Bechaud Brewery Perfect Brew Label
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Filed Under: Birthdays, Breweries, Just For Fun Tagged With: Germany, Wisconsin

Historic Beer Birthday: Richard G. Owens

January 8, 2023 By Jay Brooks

milwaukee-flag
Today is the birthday Richard G. Owens (January 8, 1811-November 10, 1882). He was born in Llanfair-is-Gaer, Caernarvonshire, Wales. When he was 21, in 1832, he moved to the U.S., and moved around doing various jobs for several years, settling in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1837. In 1840, along with two Welsh partners (William Pawlett and John Davis), Owens founded what has the distinction of being the first brewery in Milwaukee. It was initially referred to as the Milwaukee Brewery, but the name was changed shortly thereafter to the Lake Brewery once a second brewery in Milwaukee opened to avoid confusion. Some accounts claim that it was also usually known simply as “Owens’ Brewery” since he quickly bought out his partners. In 1864, he leased, and then sold, the brewery to Chicagoan M.W. Powell who ran it until 1880, when it closed for good.

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This account from “Memoir of Milwaukee County” starts with his son, Richard G. Owens Jr., but mostly goes into the history of his father and the brewery Richard G. Owens Sr. founded.

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Milwaukee in 1858.

This section of “Pioneer Brewing in Milwaukee” from the Brewing entry in the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee includes a mention of Owens:

Milwaukee’s brewing industry formed in the early 1840s, and developed rapidly along with the burgeoning frontier settlement. European immigrants brought both a local market for traditional beer styles of their homelands and the skilled brewers able to produce such beverages. Although German brewers are most known for their role in shaping the industry from its earliest origins, it was a group of Welsh immigrants—Richard G. Owens, William Pawlett, and John Davis—who established the city’s first brewery in 1840 near the North Pier (Lake Michigan) on Huron Street (now E. Clybourn), known as the Milwaukee Brewery and later the Lake Brewery. Herman Reutelschöfer established Milwaukee’s first German brewery on the northwest corner of Hanover and Virginia shortly thereafter.

Brewing proved to be a dynamic and volatile business in early Milwaukee as approximately thirty-five breweries were established between 1840 and 1860. These were primarily small artisanal shops, formed through family connections or brief partnerships that served customers in the immediate vicinity or through a connected or affiliated saloon, beer hall, or restaurant—much like modern brewpubs. Most of these early breweries were located just east and west of the Milwaukee River, north of downtown. The Milwaukee River provided water essential to the brewing process, and the ice necessary for maintaining the proper temperature for the conditioning of German lager in storage cellars that brewers dug into the bluffs along the river. Milwaukee’s early breweries were small, one- to two-story, wood-frame structures, which housed the entire brewing process—from malting to conditioning—and the residence of the brewer and his family.

Initially, brewing equipment and materials were difficult to come by in frontier Milwaukee. The pioneer brewers improvised. The first batches of Owens’ Milwaukee Brewery were produced in a five-barrel brew kettle composed of a wooden box lined with copper, with barley shipped in from Michigan City, Indiana. The Best Brewery—predecessor to the Pabst Brewing Company—acquired their first brew kettle in 1844, by appealing to a local iron maker to construct one with iron brought in from Racine and Kenosha, on the promise of future payment and free beer for life. Difficulties in securing equipment, materials, and starting capital—especially during the financial panic of 1857, and the Civil War—and the growing competition in the area strained the solvency of Milwaukee’s early breweries, and most closed within a few years after starting.

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Milwaukee in 1872.

And this section of “Breweries of Wisconsin,” by Jerry Apps is about “Owen’s Brewery:”

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Milwaukee_1882
These views of Milwaukee are from 1882.

And this article for the Milwaukee Journal newspaper from March 19, 1916, entitled “Birth of Milwaukee’s Brewing Industry is Interesting Story” and begins with Owens’ story.

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Milwaukee at the beginning of the 20th century.

Filed Under: Birthdays, Just For Fun Tagged With: History, Milwaukee, Wales, Wisconsin

Historic Beer Birthday: Gottlieb Heileman

January 6, 2023 By Jay Brooks

heileman
Today is the birthday of Gottlieb Heileman (January 6, 1824-February 19, 1878). He was born “in Kirchheim unter Teck, Württemberg, Germany” and was the founder of the G. Heileman Brewing Company in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1858.

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Here’s how the brewery was described in “100 Years of Brewing,” published in 1903.

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And here’s a biography from Find-a-Grave:

Brewer. He founded the brewery that became the huge G. Heileman Brewing Co. Born in Kirchheim, Wurttemberg (Germany), he emigrated to the USA in 1852, working first in Philadelphia and then went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1853 where he helped Gottlieb Maier found a bakery. In 1857 he moved to La Crosse and was employed in Nicolai brewery and the C&J Michel Brewery until he formed a partnership with Johan Gund in 1858 and they established the City Brewing Co. He became sole owner in 1872 upon Gund’s retirement when production had increased to 3,000 from 500 barrels in 1860; then renamed the firm the G. Heileman Brewing Co. When Heileman died in 1878 his wife assumed ownership becoming the first chief executive of a brewery in the nation. By 1881 production increased to over 7,100 barrels. The commitment to quality paid off well and by 1902 over 160,000 barrels were brewed annually. In 1890 the sole proprietorship was incorporated making his widow, Johanna, one of the first female presidents of a corporation; she remained active until her death in 1917. Until the 1880’s, the brewery sold its beer in oak kegs but began selling in glass bottles for home consumption; as a result, production tripled in the years between 1902, when “Old Style Lager” was introduced, and 1912. Prohibition in 1920 caused the brewery to temporarily switch production to near beer, sodas and malt extract. With Repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the brewery was swamped with beer orders, recapitalized as a public company and by 1953 produced over one-half million barrels of beer. In 1959, G. Heileman Brewing Company began acquiring breweries around the country including Blatz (1969) and Schlitz (1981) and culminated with total production exceeding 17 million barrels of beer annually including 5 million barrels at the La Crosse brewery. The company was acquired by Bond Corporation of Australia in 1987. Subsequently ownership changed hands a number of times until its name and brands, but not its breweries, were sold to Pabst Brewing Company in 1999. Coming full circle to the original 1858 name, former employees and investors acquired the Lacrosse brewing facilities, returned to the City Brewery name and again use Heileman’s 1870 residence on Third Street, directly across from the original brewery, as headquarters. The largest brewery in the United States not owned by industry leaders Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors, its capacity is 5 million barrels annually.

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The G, Heileman Brewery in 1889.
Here’s a much more thorough account of not only Heileman, but also his wife and business partner, from Immigrant Entrepreneurship, entitled The Best of Partners – The Best of Rivals: Gottlieb Heileman, John Gund, and the Rise of the La Crosse Brewing Industry:

The G. Heileman Brewing Company achieved national recognition in the 1960s and 1970s when it aggressively acquired a number of well-known breweries and brands including the Blatz Brewing Company, the Rainier Brewery in Seattle, and the Grain Belt brand (now owned by August Schell Brewing Company). For much of its existence, however, the La Crosse, Wisconsin, firm operated in a conservative manner by brewing for local and regional markets only. This business strategy reflected the vision of one of the firm’s German founders, Gottlieb Heileman (born January 6, 1824, in Kirchheim unter Teck, Kingdom of Württemberg; died February 19, 1878, in La Crosse, Wisconsin), who was content to grow the firm slowly and focus on quality over quantity. John Gund (born October 3, 1830, in Schwetzingen, Grand Duchy of Baden; died May 7, 1910, in La Crosse, Wisconsin), the firm’s co-founder, eventually decided that Heileman’s business practices were too restrictive and ended the partnership in 1872 in order to build a new brewery in La Crosse that could compete with cross-state rivals such as Pabst, Schlitz, and Miller. The G. Heileman Brewing Company and the John Gund Brewing Company continued to pursue separate business strategies until national Prohibition was implemented fully in 1920. Gund’s large brewery collapsed, whereas Heileman’s smaller firm subsisted by producing non-alcoholic beer and malt products until the Twenty-First Amendment was passed in 1933.

Gund’s and Heileman’s different approaches to brewing in the post-Civil War era illustrate the diversity of business strategies employed by brewers during this period. Not all ambitious German immigrant brewers sought to create national – or even large regional – shipping breweries as did the Schlitz-Uihlein family, Adolphus Busch, and a number of other German immigrant brewers. Instead, some focused on serving local and regional markets and utilized technological advances such as artificial refrigeration and pasteurization to refine their products rather than expand their markets and market share. Furthermore, following Heileman’s death in 1878, his wife, Johanna (born August 31, 1831, in the Kingdom of Württemberg; died January 5, 1917, in La Crosse, Wisconsin), served as one of the firm’s main officers until her death in 1917. As the first known female head of a brewery in the United States and as one of the first female corporate executives in any business sector, Johanna Heileman (née Bandel) put her own unique stamp on the firm founded by her husband and his business partner.

John Gund’s vision of La Crosse emerging as the brewing center of the Midwest did not come to pass, but the city’s breweries did briefly outproduce their rivals in Milwaukee during the mid-1880s. This demonstrates that Milwaukee’s emergence as the preeminent brewing center of the Midwest was far from inevitable, and, instead, was contingent on a variety of historical factors that set it apart from other Midwestern brewery cities such as La Crosse, Minneapolis, and Duluth.

Gottlieb Heileman, Johanna Heileman, and John Gund each contributed to the development of the brewing industry in La Crosse, and any study of the G. Heileman Brewing Company’s early history must take into account the commercial, social, and cultural milieu that influenced these three immigrant entrepreneurs’ decision-making after they settled in the United States in the 1850s. Their success partially reflected the growing strength of the American brewing industry after the Civil War – made possible by the waves of German settlers who arrived in the U.S. during the mid- to late nineteenth century and who served as both producers and consumers of lager beer and other malt beverages. Nevertheless, the Heilemans and Gund were ultimately responsible for their individual successes and failures during this era as this study will demonstrate.

Family and Ethnic Background

Gottlieb Heileman (originally Gottlieb Heilemann), Johanna Bandel, and John Gund (originally Johann Gund) all hailed from the southwestern German lands. Gottlieb Heileman was one of eight children born to Caspar and Frederika Heilemann (née Meyer). He was born on January 6, 1824, in Kirchheim unter Teck, a small upland community southeast of Stuttgart in the Kingdom of Württemberg. Johanna Bandel, who also hailed from Württemberg, was born to Johann Ludwig and Kathrina Bandel (née Sigel) on August 31, 1831. She had a number of brothers who later immigrated to the United States. John Gund, on the other hand, was born approximately seventy-five miles northwest of Kirchheim in the community of Schwetzingen in the Grand Duchy of Baden on October 3, 1830. Schwetzingen lay in the rich, alluvial farmland between the Rhine and Neckar Rivers approximately six miles southwest of Heidelberg. Gund was the second of eight children born to Georg Michael and Sophia Elizabeth Gund (née Eder or Edes).

Both Heileman and Gund came from established families within their respective communities. Heileman’s father and maternal grandfather were bakers and Gottlieb Heileman received training as a baker and brewer during his youth. Gund’s father was a farmer who grew hops and tobacco, but John Gund served a two-year apprenticeship as a cooper and brewer following the end of his common school education at age fifteen. He worked an additional year as a journeyman brewer after his apprenticeship ended. The two men immigrated to the United States within four years of each other. Gund arrived in New York City in May 1848 at the age of eighteen, having traveled from Schwetzingen down the Rhine River to Rotterdam and then on to Le Havre and New York. Heileman reached Philadelphia in 1852 at the age of twenty-eight. Johanna Bandel settled in New York City in either 1852 or 1855 at the age of either twenty-one or twenty-four, respectively, and lived with her brothers for a number of years.

All three Germans followed a similar migration trajectory and made their way westward to Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin during the 1850s along with tens of thousands of other German immigrants, primarily from Baden, Württemberg, and the Palatinate. Gund’s parents settled in Freeport, Illinois, in the northwestern part of the state. John Gund found employment sixty miles to the west in Dubuque, Iowa, a commercial center situated on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He worked in a brewery operated by a German named Anton Heeb for two years. In June 1850, he relocated to nearby Galena, Illinois, to operate a brewery with a German named Witzel, possibly twenty-year-old Sebastian Witzel, who may have been an old friend. John Gund’s parents died of cholera the following month. After less than a year, he sold his share in the Galena brewery operation and rented another brewery in the community, known as the Cedar Brewery. About this time, he married fellow German immigrant Louise Hottman, a resident of Galena, with whom he eventually had five children. Two years after renting the Cedar Brewery, Gund decided to relocate to a larger and more prosperous community that would provide a better market for his beer. He and his wife moved approximately 180 miles northwest to the Mississippi River settlement of La Crosse, Wisconsin.

La Crosse had a population of approximately 2,000 residents in the mid-1850s. Situated on the east bank of the Mississippi River, the community had experienced rapid growth during the 1850s as settlers arrived to take advantage of the surrounding farmland and forests. The lumber industry flourished, facilitated by the community’s access to steamboats that plied the Mississippi River from St. Paul down to St. Louis and New Orleans. The city was incorporated in 1856 and benefitted further when a cross-state railroad connection was completed between La Crosse and Milwaukee in 1858

John Gund founded a brewery in La Crosse in August 1854. The small operation was located in a log cabin near the community’s waterfront. A number of other German immigrants founded breweries in the city in the months and years that followed. Gustavus Nicolai and Jacob Franz founded the Nicolai Brewery shortly after Gund founded his brewery. Due to production problems with Gund’s initial batch of beer, Nicolai and Franz were first to bring their beer to market. Charles and John Michel founded the La Crosse Brewery in 1857 after a failed attempt to strike it rich in the California gold fields in the early 1850s. After returning from the West Coast, they attempted to settle in Chicago but soon grew to dislike the community and made their way north to St. Paul. Ice on the Mississippi delayed their river journey and they eventually settled in La Crosse instead. After noting that existing breweries in the community could not meet local demand, they founded their own brewery.

Gottlieb Heileman reached La Crosse via Milwaukee the same year that the Nicolai brothers arrived in the city. He had worked for a year in Philadelphia after arriving in 1852. He then moved west to Milwaukee around 1854 and established a bakery with Gottlieb Maier in March 1856. The two men took out a $2,550 (approximately $70,000 in 2011$), three-year mortgage on the property, but paid off the balance within a year. Heileman was apparently less interested in baking than brewing, because he sold his share in the bakery for $1,525 (approximately $40,500 in 2011$) and moved west to La Crosse in October 1857. He found employment briefly as a foreman in the Nicolai Brewery but lost his job when Nicolai and Franz ended their partnership shortly thereafter. Heileman found a new position in the Michel brother’s La Crosse Brewery. In June 1858, he married Johanna Bandel, whom he had met during his three-year stay in Milwaukee. She had worked as a domestic servant in the midwestern city after leaving New York. Gottlieb Helieman returned to La Crosse with his bride and soon entered a new phase in his professional brewing career.

Business Development

Gottlieb Heileman and John Gund formed a partnership in November 1858 to operate the City Brewery in La Crosse. Their timing was propitious since the city of La Crosse continued to experience significant population growth, particularly among Northern European settlers, and the first outside railway connection had been completed to Milwaukee the previous month. The structures comprising the City Brewery were constructed at 1018 South Third Street. The location was south of the city’s commercial center near the Mississippi River waterfront. Early production figures for the brewery were modest. During the first decade of operation, production averaged around 500 barrels of lager beer per year (approximately 15,750 gallons). Originally, lager beer production had been limited to the winter months, but during the 1860s local brewers began using ice harvested from the Mississippi River to chill the beer during the critical lagering stage, which could last between six to eight weeks and produced a translucent and highly-carbonated final product. Heileman and Gund produced beer primarily for the local market and sold casks to hotels, taverns, and occasionally individuals. The partners constructed a hotel in downtown La Crosse in 1867 and named it the International Hotel. The facility likely offered an additional source of income for the partners and also provided a venue in which to sell their beer.

After nearly fifteen years in business together, Heileman and Gund dissolved their partnership in 1872. Heileman seems to have been content brewing beer primarily for the local market and this was reflected in the brewery’s modest output of approximately 3,000 barrels per year by the 1870s. By comparison, Eberhardt Anheuser and Adolphus Busch’s Bavarian Brewery in St. Louis produced approximately 100,000 barrels of beer per year during the same decade and the Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee produced 121,000 barrels annually. John Gund was far more ambitious than his partner and wished to establish La Crosse as a major center of brewing that would rival Milwaukee and St. Louis. Supposedly, the partners flipped a coin to determine which partner would receive the brewery and which would receive the International Hotel. Heileman won the City Brewery and Gund gained control of the hotel.

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The G. Heileman Brewing Company

Gottlieb Heileman continued operating the City Brewery, now renamed the G. Heileman Brewing Company, following John Gund’s departure in 1872. The firm continued to produce a moderate volume of beer for local and regional consumption through the decade. Heileman died young in February 1878 at the age of fifty-four. Since his son, Henry, was only ten years old at the time, control of the enterprise passed to his forty-six-year-old widow, Johanna. She was assisted by Reinhard Wäcker (sometimes spelled Reinhart Wicker), who served as brewery foreman and dealt with technical matters. As president of the enterprise, Johanna Heileman became the first female head of a brewery in the United States, and after the business was incorporated in 1890, possibly the first female corporate executive in the nation. Of note, on the 1880 federal census, she listed her occupation as “keeping house,” whereas on the 1900 census she listed it as “owner of brewery.”

Other members of the Heileman family also participated in managing the business during the 1880s and 1890s. Emil Traugott Mueller, the husband of Johanna Heileman’s eldest daughter, Louisa, was hired in 1884 as a bookkeeper and assistant manager. As an adult, Henry Heileman served as vice president and assistant manager of the firm until his death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1895 at the age of twenty-six.

Under Johanna Heileman’s oversight, the G. Heileman Brewing Company gradually expanded its production and market reach. In 1880, the brewery produced 7,170 barrels of beer, which put it in a distant third place compared to the Gund Brewing Company and the Michel brother’s La Crosse Brewery. Five years later, the brewery produced 12,000 barrels and employed roughly thirty-five men. The firm produced a number of different beers during this period including a Vienna lager and a dark lager named Hofbrau. They also began bottling beer for regional distribution. They opened their first distribution agency in Glencoe, Minnesota, a city approximately fifty miles west of Minneapolis in 1885 and gradually expanded their reach to the Dakotas and Illinois over the next two decades. The firm also established tied houses, taverns that sold Heileman beer exclusively (i.e. they were tied to a particular producer), in various cities. One was located in downtown La Crosse and another was situated approximately thirty miles east in Cashton, Wisconsin.

The firm sought to maintain good relations with the other breweries in the community and avoid ruinous price wars. In May 1898, the major breweries of La Crosse, including Heileman, Gund, Michel, and a number of smaller facilities agreed to establish uniform prices for kegged and bottled beer. They set the rate for kegged beer at eight dollars per barrel (approximately $224 per barrel in 2011$). For bottled beer, the rate was $2.20 for two dozen quarts of export-strength lager and $1.90 for two dozen quarts of regular-strength lager. At the same time, Heileman and three other La Crosse breweries began quietly investigating the possibility of forming a trust in order to compete against Gund locally and the major Milwaukee shipping breweries regionally. The impetus for the proposed trust was Chicago accountant Otto W. Heibig. After overseeing the installation of brewing equipment at the Gund Brewery following the destructive 1897 fire, Heibig grew interested in pooling the financial resources and physical plants of the other La Crosse breweries. Heibig estimated a combined value for the Heileman, Michel, Franz Bartl, and Zeisler breweries at $930,000 (approximately $26 million dollars in 2011$). In September 1900, the brewers and Heibig filed incorporation papers for the La Crosse Brewing Company and prepared to offer $700,000 in capital stock and $500,000 in bonds. They proposed constructing a new brewery with the capacity to produce 400,000 barrels annually, which was twice Gund’s output of approximately 200,000 barrels per year. Industrial architect Otto C. Wolf of Philadelphia designed the new brewery at a proposed cost of $300,000 (approximately $8.4 million dollars in 2011$). The existing breweries of the members of the trust would be adapted to other purposes with the Heileman facility being converted into a malting plant and the other breweries becoming storehouses and a dedicated ale brewery. Despite the great potential of the project, it never progressed beyond the planning stages. Shortly after the trust was incorporated in September 1900, a brewer in Cincinnati purchased the equipment intended for the proposed facility in La Crosse. The following January, the trust announced its new slate of corporate officers, which included Emil T. Mueller of the G. Heileman Brewing Company as treasurer. Little further action occurred over the next two years and eventually the trust collapsed in 1902, apparently due to resistance from officials at the Heileman Brewery.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, G. Heileman Brewing introduced their best-known beer brand and went through a reorganization. The firm had acquired the trademark for a light lager, Golden Leaf, from a Milwaukee brewery in 1899 and a year later introduced a new heavier lager, Old Times Lager. In 1902, they renamed the beer Old Style Lager following a complaint from another brewery producing a similarly named beer. They also ended production of Golden Leaf to free up capacity for Old Style, which the firm produced exclusively in bottled format, as it was intended for distribution to regional markets. Emil T. Mueller played a key role in promoting the beer brand extensively over the following decade. Johanna Heilemann and the other brewery executives also expanded the firm’s capitalization to $350,000 from the original capitalization of $75,000 and used the funds to increase production to approximately 175,000 barrels per year. The firm’s brewery workers organized themselves around the same time and the firm signed a contract with Local 81 of the International Brotherhood of Brewery Workers, thus avoiding labor conflict.

By the 1910s, Heileman was shipping cases of bottled Old Style Lager to thirty-four states and had entered the lucrative Chicago market with more than fifty saloons and a number of distribution agents. Firm president Johanna Heileman passed away in January 1917, setting in motion a gradual transition from family to professional management at the firm. Johanna Heileman’s son-in-law, Emil T. Mueller, assumed the presidency of the firm, a position he held until his death in 1929. After Mueller died, another son-in-law, George Zeisler Jr., took over as president of G. Heileman Brewing until 1933, when the firm was reincorporated and non-family members assumed the presidency and key positions on the board of directors.

Unlike Gund Brewing, Heileman weathered the storm of Prohibition. Rather than risk producing low alcohol beer in 1919 and 1920, the firm began brewing a new, non-alcoholic beer called New Style Lager in May 1919 when the Wartime Prohibition Act went into effect. Like other breweries around the nation, the firm also produced a variety of hopped malt syrups and extracts that could be used by home brewers to produce beer and a line of soft drinks. Such measures helped the firm eke out an existence during the 1920s and early 1930s. In 1931, a major fire destroyed a number of warehouses and nearly bankrupted the firm, since the brewery had not insured the structures. Brewery officials warned that the firm was unlikely to survive much longer given the prohibition on alcohol sales and the general business disruption caused by the Great Depression. Fortunately, the gradual repeal of Prohibition beginning on April 7, 1933, gave G. Heileman Brewing a second lease on life. In the weeks leading up to April 7, the firm began brewing 3.2 percent beer permitted under the repeal act around the clock and released truck- and trainloads of the beer shortly after midnight on the seventh. Demand was so great that the firm could not fill all its orders and was forced to return numerous checks uncashed. Following the firm’s reincorporation, professional managers sought to update the brewery’s physical plant, improve quality control, which had slipped during the 1930s and 1940s, and expand production and distribution. This process continued into the 1950s and 1960s.

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Personality and Social Standing

Both the Gund and Heileman families participated in the German institutions of La Crosse, Wisconsin, as well as in the local and regional brewing community. Little information survives about their specific involvement in the secular and religious institutions of La Crosse, but records show that John Gund’s eldest son, George, was a member of the local Turnverein in the 1870s. The physical education society had its origins in the post-Napoleonic German lands and was first introduced unsuccessfully to the United States in the 1820s. German 48rs reintroduced the Turner movement at the end of the 1840s and within a few years, Turner societies had emerged in major American cities with German populations. The La Crosse Turnverein was organized in October 1855 and John Gund granted the group permission to practice in the yard of his small brewery in 1856. They may have continued using the space through 1858, when Gund sold the property following his partnership with Heileman.

Gund and Heileman were members of the Lutheran Church and Heileman’s 1878 funeral at the local Lutheran church in La Crosse was considered to be one of the largest funerals in the history of the city to that date. More than 160 carriages belonging to mourners participated in the funeral procession from the church to the nearby Oak Grove Cemetery. Six prominent brewers in the community served as Heileman’s pallbearers, however, John Gund was not among them. This may have reflected lingering animosity between the former partners. When Gund died in 1910, members of the local Liederkranz Society, which was affiliated with the Turnverein as part of the local Deutscher Verein von La Crosse, attended his funeral along with members of the Brewer’s Union.

Politically, John Gund’s party affiliation reflected broader shifts in German immigrant political participation during the second half of the nineteenth century. He supported the Whig ticket shortly after his arrival in the United States and voted Republican in the 1860s and 1870s, but his allegiance shifted to the Democratic Party in his later years. This may have been linked to the Democrats’ opposition to the growing prohibitionist movement in the United States and the support they enjoyed from populist, agrarian elements in Midwestern states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. No information exists on Gottlieb Heileman’s political views.

Networks

Members of both families were active in professional and personal networks of largely German-American composition both at the local and national levels. These networks often overlapped, particularly in the case of marriage. John Gund’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Louisa, married La Crosse brewer Charles Michel in 1872. This cemented a bond between the two families who operated the largest and second largest breweries in La Crosse, respectively, throughout the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Similarly, Gottlieb and Johanna Heileman’s daughters married men who would later play key roles in the management of their family firm in the twentieth century.

Family members also participated in professional associations related to the brewing industry. The Heileman family joined the United States Brewers’ Association in 1886 and members of the Gund family participated in the association’s lobbying efforts on behalf of the American brewing industry. The Heileman’s son-in-law, Emil T. Mueller, served as secretary of the Personal Liberty League’s La Crosse chapter. Supported by the U.S. Brewer’s Association, the League lobbied against prohibitionist policies at the local and state levels and worked to protect the business interests of breweries in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

Lastly, family members were active in local civic associations and enterprises in La Crosse. John Gund’s eldest son, George, served on the city’s Board of Trade as its first treasurer. Later, he was selected as president of the La Crosse Baseball Association in the late 1880s. He was also among the original investors in the city’s Street Railway Company in 1879, a position that gave him influence over the city’s economic development.

Immigrant Entrepreneurship

John Gund and Gottlieb and Johanna Heileman participated in the introduction of European lager beer and German beer culture to the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. They initially served kegged beer to a largely German local clientele. Advertisements for their products appeared in German in local periodicals such as the Nord Stern. Labels for their early bottled products also contained German phrases and in the Heileman’s case listed the producer as “Heilemann City Brauerei.” Over time, though, John Gund and later Johanna Heileman expanded the scope of their respective breweries’ operations in order to provide bottled beer to a broader, regional consumer market that was less directly tied to German ethnicity. Their success in the lucrative Chicago market through tied houses helped to make both Peerless and Old Style well known among regional beer brands, and their advertising and bottle art embraced European iconography but typically avoided explicitly German references.

John Gund and Gottlieb Heileman acquired knowledge and experience in German brewing practices through apprenticeships, and they brought this knowledge with them to the United States. Both men entered the brewing trade on a limited scale after they immigrated and settled in the Midwest. No evidence exists that either man received remittances from family members in the German lands, so they likely had to accumulate slowly the necessary capital in order to open their brewery in 1858. Gund worked in a number of breweries in Iowa and Illinois before moving to La Crosse. Similarly, Heileman worked as a baker in Milwaukee before gaining experience as a foreman at two breweries in La Crosse. Once the partners founded the City Brewery, they pursued a conservative business strategy and likely reinvested their profits in the operation. Rather than trying to grow the business quickly and expand into distant markets, they found plenty of consumers in La Crosse and its hinterlands during the 1860s and 1870s.

Gund returned to Germany in 1873, shortly after he ended his partnership with Heileman. The purpose of the visit was social, but it is likely that he also surveyed the brewing landscape in Germany and brought back knowledge with him that he employed in founding the John Gund Brewery. It is unknown if Heileman returned to German at any point before his death in 1878.

Conclusion

The firms founded by German immigrants John Gund and Gottlieb Heileman reflected the broader fate of the American brewing industry in the twentieth century. Like hundreds of other breweries, the John Gund Brewing Company did not survive Prohibition. The family shut down the operation and eventually sold off the firm’s assets piecemeal over the next two decades. G. Heileman Brewing survived the turmoil of Prohibition and its professional managers eventually determined that the firm had to expand or fall victim to industry consolidation in the 1960s. Consequently, the corporation purchased breweries across the nation during the 1970s, while also fending off challenges from the other major brewing firms of the era, including Pabst, Miller, and Anheuser-Busch. At the same time, publicly-traded Heileman stock became a target for speculators. The firm fended off hostile takeover attempts successfully in the 1980s, but eventually sunk into bankruptcy and was acquired by Stroh in 1996.

La Crosse, Wisconsin, failed to emerge as a major center of brewing comparable to Milwaukee. It simply lacked the population and financial resources of its cross-state rival. By the beginning of the 1960s, Heileman was the only brewery left in the city, whereas Milwaukee was home to major national shipping breweries including Miller, Pabst, and Schlitz. These firms had the financial resources that Heileman lacked and were better able to weather the storm of industry consolidation in the 1970s.

Over multiple generations, the Gund and Heileman families left their mark on the economic and physical landscape of La Crosse. Both Heileman and Gund’s names remain part of the city fabric. One of the old Gund Brewery buildings now houses loft apartments and the former G. Heileman Brewery is currently operated as a contract brewery for a number of brands. Surrounded by busy brewery buildings, Gottlieb and Johanna Heileman’s large brick home still reflects the conservative values of the company’s German immigrant founder.

John Gund and Gottlieb Heileman found success by selling beer to their fellow immigrants. Over time, this success translated into greater business opportunities. Though neither firm exists today, both left a legacy that is felt within the local La Crosse community and the national brewing industry.

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Filed Under: Birthdays, Just For Fun Tagged With: Germany, History, Wisconsin

Historic Beer Birthday: Henry Rahr

December 24, 2022 By Jay Brooks

rahrs
Today is the birthday of Henry Rahr (December 24, 1834-April 14, 1891). He was born in Wesel, Germany, but came the U.S. in 1853, when he was 19. He worked in his uncle’s brewery in Manitowoc, and then opened his own brewery near Green Bay with a partner, August Hochgreve, which they called the Bellvue Brewery. They later had a falling out, and in 1866 Rahr left to start his own brewery in Green Bay, which was initially called the East Rivery Brewery. When he died in 1891, his sons continued the business, but renamed it the Henry Rahr Sons Co. Brewery, later shortening it to Rahr Brewing Co. It survived prohibition, and was known as the Rahr Green Bay Brewing Co. until closing for good in 1966.

History of Brown County, Wisconsin: Past and Present

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Note: This biography gives his birth date as December 25, but a photo of his tombstone clearly shows it as December 24.
Rahrs-Beer-Coasters-Rahr-Green-Bay-Brewing-Co

Rahrs_Brewery_Green_Bay_1895

This short history of the brewery is from The Neville Public Museum:

One hundred fifty years ago, Henry Rahr established a brew house on the corner of Main Street and N. Irwin Avenue in Green Bay known as the East River Brewery. It would become the largest and most well-known historic brewery in Green Bay. Following the death of Henry Rahr in 1891 the business was passed to his sons Henry Jr. and Frederick and became Henry Rahr & Sons Co. Prior to Prohibition (pre 1920) Rahr’s was producing 60,000 barrels of beer per year. After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the brewery was back in business and began pumping out “Standard,” “Special,” “Belgian” and “Old Imperial Pale Beer.” In 1966 the company was sold to Oshkosh Brewing Co. Exactly 100 years after opening, Rahr’s Brewery was shut down. The brewery buildings were demolished, leaving no trace behind except for Rahr’s merchandise, barrels, and bottles.

Rahr-packers-1965

And this brewery history is from “Breweries of Wisconsin,” by Jerold W. Apps and Jerry Apps:

rahr-sons-brew

rahr-all-star-brew-1936

Filed Under: Birthdays, Breweries, Just For Fun Tagged With: History, Wisconsin

Historic Beer Birthday: Philipp Jung

December 23, 2022 By Jay Brooks

milwaukee
Today is the birthday of Philipp Jung (December 23, 1845–July 10, 1911). He was born “in Dorn-Assenheim, Hesse-Darmstadt, which today is a part of Reichelsheim in Wetteraukreis, Hesse, Germany,” but came to the U.S. when he was 25, in 1870. He came first to New York City, then Cincinnati before settling in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “Jung married Anna D. Best, daughter of the brewer Jacob Best, and they had six children.”

philipp-jung-photo
Here’s a history of his career, from his Wikipedia page:

After his arrival in the United States, Jung was employed by Rogge and Feigenhaln Brewing Company in New York. He also worked as the maltster for the Foss, Schneider and Bremer Brewing Company in Cincinnati. After moving to Milwaukee in 1873, Jung became second foreman for the Phillip Best Brewing Company, then first foreman, and finally superintendent of the company’s south side plant. In 1879, he left Best to form a partnership with Ernst Borchert, founding the Jung & Borchert Brewing Company. In 1888 this became the Falk, Jung & Borchert Brewing Company in one of the earliest mergers involving Milwaukee breweries. The company became a rival to the Philip Best Brewery, which was operated by Frederick Pabst and later became the Pabst Brewing Company. Jung was considered “an important factor both as a manufacturer of large quantities and also as one who gave a distinctive quality to the goods sent out from his plant.”

In 1896, Jung purchased the Obermann Brewing Company at Fifth and Cherry Streets in Milwaukee, where he established The Jung Brewing Company. This firm grew and outlived its founder, finally closing because of Prohibition.

Falk-Jung-and-Borchert-Brewing-1870s
The Falk, Jung & Borchert Brewing Company.

This biography is from 100 Years of Brewing, published in 1903.

philipp-jung-100yrs

MJS Jung employees - compressed.jpg
I think this is the Jung Brewing Co. employees, but it’s hard to tell. There were actually at least four Jung’s who brewed commercially in the U.S. One in Ohio, one in Texas, and two in Wisconsin. But seated in front, second from our left looks like Philipp’s mustache, so think this is the right one.

Jung_Beer_ad

Filed Under: Birthdays, Just For Fun Tagged With: Germany, History, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Historic Beer Birthday: Peter Schreihart

December 21, 2022 By Jay Brooks

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Today is the birthday of Peter Schreihart (December 21, 1825-<1916). This is an odd one, insofar as there are conflicting or accounts which are odds with one another, and I suspect there’s some truth somewhere, I just don’t know what that might be. Anyway, Peter Schreihart was probably born in Austria and may have founded the Schreihart Brewing Co., most likely along with his son John Schreihart, in Manitowoc, Wisconsin in 1879. The confusion begins with his being mentioned in “The Brewers’ Journal and Barley, Malt and Hop Trades’ Reporter, and American Brewers’ Gazette, consolidated, Volume 41,” published on November 1, 1916.

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Shreihart-beer-sign

Part of this confusion stems from another mention in the “American Brewers’ Review, Volume 31,” from 1917, the year after the previous mention above.

peter-schreihart-brewers-review
Note that Peter Schreihart is referred to as a “pioneer brewer” and “founder” in that blurb, but most accounts state that Peter’s son John Schreihart founded the Schreihart Brewing Co. Here’s one such account from the “History of Northern Wisconsin, containing an account of its settlement, growth, development, and resources; an extensive sketch of its counties, cities, towns and villages, their improvements, industries, manufactories; biographical sketches, portraits of prominent men and early settlers; views of county seats, etc.,” published in 1881 by the Western Historical Co., of Chicago:

Pautz’s Brewery was built in 1849, by Mr. Hottleman, he being the first to brew beer in the county. G. Kuntz purchased the brewery of him in 1865. Messrs. Fred. Pautz and John Schreihart became the owners in 1875. In November, 1878, the former purchased the interest of the latter, and is now conducting the business alone. The capacity of the brewery is about 1,600 barrels of beer per annum.

Schreiharts’s Brewery. In 1879, John Schreihart established himself in business, and is now conducting a brewery on Washington street. He has been brought up in the business and understands it.

Schreihard-das-schmeckt-gut

From what I can piece together about the brewery itself, it appears to have been built in 1849, and went through several name changes from the William Fricke Brewery, the Christian Fricke Brewery, and then the Carl Fricke Brewery. It seems to have been called by the latter name when Frederick Pautz and John Schreihart bought it in 1875, but it didn’t become the John Schreihart Brewery until he bought out Pautz in 1879. A few years later, in 1884 until the following year, it was known as the John Schreihart & George Kunz Brewery, presumably because Schreihart took on George Kunz as a partner. Then there’s a gap in the record, but by 1891 it was known as the Schreihart Brewing Co. until it was closed by prohibition in 1920. The building apparently lay dormant after repeal in 1933, but from 1937-1942 housed the Bleser Brewing Co., which I assume was because they leased or bought the building where the Schreihart had brewed.

schreihartbeertray

Filed Under: Birthdays, Breweries, Just For Fun Tagged With: Austria, History, Wisconsin

Historic Beer Birthday: Charles N. Hamm

December 8, 2022 By Jay Brooks

wisconsin
Today is the birthday of Charles N. Hamm (December 8, 1886-October 16, 1918). This is one of the brewer’s birthdays I know the absolute least about. What little I know came from a snippet from a genealogical page about the family that bought the Hamm’s family brewery in 1932, although the Jung’s had apparently been leasing it for many years before that, possibly as early as 1918. Charles N. Hamm and his family, as far as I can tell, owned and possibly founded (although it seems more likely they bought in to) the Silver Lake Brewery, which was founded in Random Lake, Wisconsin in 1866. Charles’ father, Carl Hamm, was born in 1853, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany so it seems unlikely he started a brewery in Wisconsin when he was thirteen, plus records indicate he came to the U.S., initially New York, in 1872, and didn’t settle in Wisconsin until at least 1883, which is where his son Charles was born.

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But at some point the Hamm family did acquire it, renaming it the Charles Hamm Brewery in 1910. In 1917, The Brewers Journal listed Charles N. Hamm as the “president, general manager, and brewmaster.” Hamm apparently enlisted in the Army and was sent to Europe to fight in World War I, leaving William Jung as brewmaster. Unfortunately, Hamm caught pneumonia while overseas and died in 1918.

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In 1920, Jung leased the brewery from the Hamm family, and called it the Jung Beverage Co. during prohibition, but bought it outright in 1932. From then on it was known as the Jung Brewing Co. and 1952, when Jung sold out to Herman Sitzberger, who kept it going under the same name until 1958, when it closed for good.

Random-Lake-8-Medium
Random Lake, Wis. today, with a population as of the 2010 census of 1,594.

Filed Under: Birthdays, Breweries, Just For Fun Tagged With: History, Wisconsin

Historic Beer Birthday: Henry Rahr Jr.

December 6, 2022 By Jay Brooks

rahrs
Today is the birthday of Karl Heinrich Rahr, anglicized as Henry Rahr Jr. (December 6, 1865-September 24, 1909). He was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the son of Henry Rahr, who founded the East River Brewery in Green Bay. When his sons were old enough, he brought them into the business, and in 1891, when Henry Sr. died, Henry Jr. became president and his brother Frederick also worked for the brewery. They re-named it Henry Rahr’s Sons Brewing Co., but later shortened it to Rahr Brewing Co. It survived prohibition, finally closing in 1966.

rahr-memohead
This obituary is from the American Brewers Review from 1909:

henry-rahr-jr-obit

Rahrs-Beer--Labels-Rahr-Green-Bay-Brewing-Company
And this lengthier obituary is from the Green Bay Press-Gazette on September 24, 1909:

Rahr-obit-Green-Bay-Press-Gazette-24Sep1909

Rahrs-Beer-Coasters-Rahr-Green-Bay-Brewing-Co

Rahrs_Brewery_Green_Bay_1895

This short history of the brewery is from The Neville Public Museum:

One hundred fifty years ago, Henry Rahr established a brew house on the corner of Main Street and N. Irwin Avenue in Green Bay known as the East River Brewery. It would become the largest and most well-known historic brewery in Green Bay. Following the death of Henry Rahr in 1891 the business was passed to his sons Henry Jr. and Frederick and became Henry Rahr & Sons Co. Prior to Prohibition (pre 1920) Rahr’s was producing 60,000 barrels of beer per year. After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the brewery was back in business and began pumping out “Standard,” “Special,” “Belgian” and “Old Imperial Pale Beer.” In 1966 the company was sold to Oshkosh Brewing Co. Exactly 100 years after opening, Rahr’s Brewery was shut down. The brewery buildings were demolished, leaving no trace behind except for Rahr’s merchandise, barrels, and bottles.

Rahr-packers-1965

And this brewery history is from “Breweries of Wisconsin,” by Jerold W. Apps and Jerry Apps:

rahr-sons-brew

rahr-all-star-brew-1936

Filed Under: Birthdays, Breweries, Just For Fun Tagged With: History, Wisconsin

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