Land of amber waters : the history of brewing in Minnesota

359 Pages·2007·310.94 MB·English

by  Hoverson

Land of Amber Waters
The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges financial assistance provided for the
publication of this book by Summit Brewing Company and August Schell Brewing Company.
Land of Amber Waters
The History of Brewing in Minnesota
Doug Hoverson
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis • London
Unless otherwise credited, all contemporary photography in this book, including objects from collections, is by
Robert Fogt. The map on page 201 is by Parrot Graphics. Book design and production by Mighty Media, Inc.
Copyright 2007 by Doug Hoverson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, mn 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoverson, Doug, 1964–
Land of amber waters : the history of brewing in Minnesota / Doug Hoverson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8166-5273-0
isbn-10 0-8166-5273-2
1. Brewing—Minnesota—History. 2. Brewing industry—Minnesota—History. I. Title.
tp573.u5h68 2007
663'.4209776—dc22
2006101172
Printed in China on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
12 11 10 09 08 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
From Barley to Bar Stool: The Art and Science of Brewing 1
Measuring Beer 5
1. Pioneer Brewing 13
Becoming a Brewer 26
2. Fewer Ales, More Rails: Brewing Fills the State 31
3. Patronize Home Industry: The Glory Days of the Small-Town Brewer 45
Collecting Breweriana 50
4. Craft Becomes Industry 65
Brewery Architecture 90
5. From Temperance to Prohibition 97
Malt Tonic 111
6. New Jobs, New Containers, New Rules: Minnesota Beer Returns 123
Brewery Jobs in the 1930s 132
7. Sky Blue Waters, Bland Yellow Beer 147
Brewery Advertising 153
“From the land of sky blue waters . . . wah-a-ters” 162
8. The Waters Turn Dark Amber 171
Brewery Preservation 180
Minnesota Breweries: From the Territorial Era to the Twenty-first Century 195
Minnesota Brewpubs: Pairing Beer and Food 311
Notes 317
Index 323
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Preface
T
o a child growing up in Minnesota in the late 1960s and early
1970s, the beers of the state were part of the wallpaper of life. Their adver-
tisements were placed prominently in the game programs and the home
arenas of the Minnesota North Stars, Twins, and Vikings. The shouts of the ven-
dors offering “Cold beer here! Schmidt beer here!” (or Hamm’s or Grain Belt)
built rhythm into the names. The advertising themes fostered regional pride:
Hamm’s was “from the land of sky blue waters,” and Schmidt was “the brew that
grew with the great Northwest.” Grain Belt didn’t need a slogan for regional iden-
tification since its name announced its Midwestern heritage. The breweries’ point-
of-sale merchandise and tap handles repeated the simple yet effective logos over
and over, as did the beer cans left in parks and alongside roads in the days when
environmental consciousness was just developing. Many youthful beer can collec-
tors of my acquaintance were introduced to the hobby by attempting to get all the
different scenes available in the Schmidt scenic, or “sportsman,” cans. But little of
this made any difference in what type of beer came home. In our household, beer
was like bread: my dad bought whatever was on sale. The idea that the beer of the
house would be something other than a local beer was inconceivable.
The only inkling I had that there was any variety to beer came at Christmas
every year, when my uncle Jake brought my dad a case or two of Molson Export as
a present. The stubby bottles were different (my dad usually bought cans), and the
reverence with which the Export was consumed suggested that this beer might
be different. Sure, my friend Jeff had several thousand beer cans, but the contents
were irrelevant and the locations of the breweries never entered my mind.
The light finally dawned in college, when legality was no longer a factor and
I found myself among companions who had traveled widely and knew of other
beers. It was while I was a member of the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club
that I was introduced to such exotic products as Old Style Dark, Stroh’s Bock, and
Beamish Irish Stout. The Village Corner had coolers full of exotic beer, including a
few from small Michigan breweries, such as a porter from the Real Ale Company
in Chelsea, Michigan, and Kalamazoo Stout (the latter from Larry Bell’s Kalama-
vii
Alexandria Brewing Co.’s Gopher Beer was sold in the mid-1930s. The University of Minnesota football team was domi-
nant then, perhaps evoking more positive associations with a beer called Gopher. The link between beer and local culture
enlivens the study of brewery history. FroM The ColleCTion oF Ken MAlz.
zoo Brewing, which is flourishing at this writing as Bell’s Brewery, Inc.). On a
tour of the West Coast, my host in Seattle insisted that I try his favorite local beer,
Rainier Ale. From that point on, my new motto was “Always try the local.” Instead
of returning from a trip with some empty cans in the trunk because I was trying
to be like Jeff, now I filled my luggage on the way home with full six-packs of
Kessler’s beer from Montana, Catamount from Vermont, or Weltenburger Kloster
from Bavaria.
But back in Minnesota, was there a local worth trying? In the mid-1980s it
seemed like there wasn’t much other than the brands my dad drank, which had
taken up valuable space in the refrigerator that I wanted for storing Dr. Pepper.
When I could afford good beer, I usually bought imports. There were a lot of those
on the shelf in the liquor store that I hadn’t seen before. And during bock season
we’d usually try the various available Wisconsin bocks: Leinie’s, of course, Huber
Bock, and, as a rare treat, Point Bock.
By about 1987, though, there were a few new six-packs on the shelves at Sur-
dyk’s that caught my attention. One was Ulmer Braun, which was brewed in New
Ulm. I had vaguely heard of Schell’s brewery in New Ulm, but no one I knew ever
drank Schell’s—not because it was bad beer, but because we didn’t think there
was anything that set it apart. For an inexpensive honeymoon in 1987, my wife
and I went to New Ulm and visited the brewery. Schell’s had just introduced its
Pilsner and Weizen. We were given only tiny samples of those after the tour, but
viii preface
they were good enough to encourage me to buy some when we got home. I have
vague memories of going into Schell’s gift shop and museum and seeing a map
with pins stuck in it showing which cities in Minnesota used to have breweries.
It didn’t interest me much at the time. Little did I know that two decades later I
would help update that map.
There were also some new brands that came in fully enclosed cardboard boxes.
They looked kind of classy, so I tried Summit Great Northern Porter and James
Page Private Stock. Other states had microbreweries, so I was glad to see Min-
nesota finally getting on board. In the early 1990s, Taps and Sherlock’s Home
opened, providing a glimpse of what the brewpub world could be. Now on those
rare occasions when I went out with friends to have a beer, we went to Sherlock’s
almost exclusively. By this time I was a history teacher, specializing in American
history and doing most of my serious research on Minnesota-related topics. But
despite the fact that my motto in history was “Always study the local,” it hadn’t
occurred to me yet to connect my two local interests. Sure, I learned there once
was a brand of beer called Gluek’s brewed in Minnesota, and while driving home
from a friend’s house on Marshall Avenue in Northeast Minneapolis I saw a huge
building I’d never seen before, which turned out to be the Grain Belt brewery. But
these findings sparked nothing other than a vague interest in what Gluek’s Stite
might have tasted like.
The pieces began to come together in the early 1990s, around the time my
mom got me a James Page homebrewing kit for my birthday. It did not inspire
historical research, but it got me more interested in the brewing process. More
important was the summer class I was taking at the Minnesota Historical Society
on Minnesota railroad history. While doing the research for our team project, I
came across an ad in an 1882 Moorhead newspaper for John Erickson’s Brewery.
At first I was more interested in the fact that they had a telephone in a brewery in
Moorhead only six years after it was invented, but eventually I became intrigued
by the idea that there had once been a brewery in Moorhead. Who knew? Well,
who did know? Around 1996 I decided to see if anything had been written about
breweries in Minnesota. In the Minnesota Historical Society library I encountered
the books that got me started: Bull, Friedrich, and Gottschalk’s American Breweries,
Wing’s Brewers Annual of 1887, and Charles E. Dick’s PhD thesis on the geography
of Minnesota’s brewing industry. At first it seemed like everything was pretty well
settled. Dick’s analysis was excellent and the lists contained far more breweries
than I had ever imagined. But then I noticed that the lists contained discrepan-
cies on the dates and proprietors of some of the breweries. I had a massive book
on the history of nineteenth-century Dakota County, and the information it con-
tained on the breweries of Hastings disagreed with that in American Breweries
as well. For the first time I thought there might be something I could add to the
literature on Minnesota’s breweries.
With this vague possibility in mind, I wandered down the hill to a new brew-
pub, Great Waters Brewing Company, located in the Hamm Building. While enjoy-
preface ix