What Made Milwaukee Famous

I recently finished reading Jerry Apps' Breweries of Wisconsin (2nd ed.). The publisher's blurb reads:

The story of the Dairy State's other major industry—beer! From the immigrants who started brewing here during territorial days to the modern industrial giants, this is the history, the folklore, the architecture, the advertising, and the characters that made Wisconsin the nation's brewing leader. Updated with the latest trends on the Wisconsin brewing scene.

Apps begins by tracing the origins of beer back to 7000B.C.E. in Mesopotamia. Fast forwarding, he notes that the pilgrims brought beer with them on their trek across the Atlantic Ocean. After this introductory section, he then proceeds to trace brewing in our fair state to 1835 and continues the tale until 2004 with microbreweries and brewpubs flourishing. And where was the first brewery in Wisconsin? Apps quote the History of Iowa County, Wisconsin:

In 1835, the first manufacturing enterprise was begun in [Mineral Point] by John Phillips, who started a small brewery near Mineral Point Mill east of the end of High Street.

As he notes, Wisconsin's love affair with beer is due in no small part to the massive waves of German immigrants who came here in the years prior to the Civil War. They brought with them their love of beer, specifically, lagers. If beer is beer to you, let me give a very brief explanation: lagers use bottom-fermenting yeasts while ales use top-fermenting yeasts. I should note that the book has a chapter dedicated to explaining the brewing process. (I should also note that a super-abbreviated version of the story of brewing in Wisconsin can be found in this PowerPoint presentation.)

The first half of the book details how the brewing industry of Wisconsin rose to prominence. He shows how it was integral to the state's economy. Although hops are not grown much here any longer, they sure used to be. "Between 1860 and 1865, the amount of hops grown in Wisconsin increased fivefold, and no other crop could approach the marketability of hops." The book describes how communities would get together to harvest the hops and basically make a festival of it with food and music. The story of Wisconsin brewing centers around Milwaukee and Apps documents the rise of Wisconsin's largest city. Throughout the book, he throws in little anecdotes such as how Miller Brewing shipped free beer to Chicago as it suffered in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1871. (Yeah, I know Peshtigo had its own fire that year.) So, if anyone from Illinois is reading, never let it be said that we Cheeseheads never look out for y'all.

Prior to Prohibition, there were about a billion breweries in the state. Every town, no matter how small, seemed to have had one. Then in 1919, the sky fell. Many breweries closed their doors permanently while others remained in business making soft drinks, malt tonics, et al. And, when beer is outlawed, only outlaws will have beer. Apps devotes a few paragraphs to the Chicago mob and its "Wisconsin Connection":

A long-time cooper who manufactured barrels for breweries and certain distillers in the state admitted in an interview that during Prohibition when his markets were supposedly closed he was "busier than ever." The cooper, when promised anonymity, explained that he had had a contract with a certain group of Chicago gangsters to produce as many barrels as he could. The finished beer and whiskey barrels were hauled to Wausau, where the gangsters picked them up.

He recalled a night when he and two of his employees delivered a load of barrels to a collection point, and abandoned barn just outside the city limits. As the barrels were being transferred, a lookout ran into the barn and announced, "The law is coming."

The "boss" forked aside a pile of hay revealing a trapdoor in the floor and ordered the cooper and his employees through the opening. The boss and three or four gang members followed. Two gangsters were left behind to be arrested.

"The gangsters wanted to protect me and my employees at all costs," the cooper said. "They desperately needed my barrels."

In the next chapter, Apps tells of the Frank J. Hess and Sons Cooperage of Madison which was founded in 1894. Ed Hess, the founder's son, recalled, "We put a cattail between every stave. We got our cattails right here in Madison, from where the Dane County Coliseum is now and from where the new city bus depot is."

The post-Prohibition era is mostly an account of the rise of the major brewers in Milwaukee – Miller, Blatz, Pabst, and Schlitz – along with the decline of smaller, regional breweries such the Oshkosh Brewing Company and Fauerbach which was here in Madison. Each of the major Milwaukee breweries is given a chapter along with Leinenkugels of Chippewa Falls and G. Heileman out of La Crosse. The late 1970s/early 80s were a sad time full of corporate takeovers, closings, and beer as a mass market product with little to distinguish one brew from the next. But the mid-80s brought the rise of microbreweries with Sprecher in '85 and Capital the following year. And this updated version of the book ends by documenting the rise of microbreweries and brewpubs throughout the state in the 1990s through 2004.

In addition to finding the book immensely interesting, it also made me want to drink beer! Plus one of the latter sections made me feel old. Apps describes how G. Heileman (the makers of Old Style) were innovators as it was among the first to start using aluminum cans instead of steel ones as well as pull tabs. It was the early 80s when my friends and I started stealing beer from our fathers and, oddly enough, most of our dads drank Old Style. So my first beers came in still fairly new aluminum cans with pull tabs. Whose dad didn't make daisy chains with the tabs? And when were non-detachable tabs introduced?