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Bewitching Brew

Minnesota is experiencing a beer boom, thanks in part to the "Surly Bill" that passed in 2011, making it possible for smaller breweries to sell their beer on site. But during the drought before this boom it could have been easy to forget that brewing has long been an important presence in the state. The first "commercial" brewery was started by Anthony Yoerg, a Bavarian native, on November 1st of 1850, near where the parking ramp for the Science Museum of Minnesota is today. He soon had competition both in the neighborhood and around the state. The first heyday of Minnesota brewing came in the 1870s, when the largest number of breweries were producing beer. There were many small family businesses that provided beer for a small area or town. Some early independent brewers such as Yoerg, John Orth in Minneapolis,

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August Schell of New Ulm and others did very well. Within a few years of starting, they were able to expand and build themselves showplace homes. Several of these breweries were among the first brick buildings in their towns— seen as a mark of wealth and progress. In the 1890s breweries began to consolidate. When it was organized in 1890, the Minneapolis Brewing and Malting Company consisted of four breweries – the Orth plant, The Heinrich Brewing Association, the Noerenburg Brewery, and the Germania Brewing Association. In 1893 the consolidated business was reorganized and incorporated under the name of the Minneapolis Brewing Company. Other early Minnesota breweries of distinction in the late 1800s include the William Bierbauer Brewery in Mankato (circa 1850), Gluek Brewing Company in Minneapolis (est. 1857), August Schell Brewing Company in New Ulm (est. 1860), Theodor Hamm Brewing Company in St. Paul (est. 1865), and Jacob Schmidt Brewing Company in St. Paul (est. 1884). Eventually, smaller breweries could not compete against these larger concerns, nor with the Milwaukee and St. Louis breweries that were shipping into their territories. Also, some smaller brewing families simply ran out of children willing to take over the business. Of course, breweries began to close even more dramatically as the temperance movement of 1914 started to take hold. Little known is that a number of Minnesota counties actually went dry before federal prohibition started in 1920, causing many local breweries to close. These, (such as Bemidji) could technically still haved brewed, but they would have had to ship their beer so far it wasn't worth it. Prohibition, was it necessary or not? There's not enough space here to address that but consider this. Then, as now, there was a substantial portion of the population that seldom drank. A rural farmer who was drunk all the time would lose his farm. In the city it

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was often true that drinking at the tavern was the only recreation available for some men, especially if they shared a tenement and really had no place to go home and relax. The newspapers of the time were full of stories of drunken brawls, but, of course, they also didn't publish many stories about men who went home sober to their families. Interestingly, the most impressive stories of consumption published were about some of the old brewery workers themselves. One heard or read about workers who had 20-30 beers a day and still managed to do their jobs safely. Oh well, every side has the other side. The second heyday of Minnesota beer occurred in the 1940s and '50s when brewers like Hamm's, Schmitt, Grain Belt and others had developed a major regional influence. But even so, as breweries continued to consolidate nationally, it became harder for even these large Minnesota brewers to keep up. The refreshing simplicity of Blue Moon, the vanilla smoothness of Boddingtons, the classic brightness of a Pilsner Urquell, the bourbon-barrel stouts of Goose Island just to name a few, all are owned by two companies: Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors. As recently as 2012, this duopoly controlled nearly 90 percent of beer production. These behemoths stamped out innovation and hurt workers. Indeed, between 2002 and 2007, employment at breweries actually declined in the midst of an economic expansion. By the late-1970s the history of earlier craft brewing became almost extinct and America’s brewing landscape started to change. The traditions and styles brought over by immigrants from all over the world were disappearing. Only light lager appeared on shelves and in bars, and imported beer was not a significant player in the marketplace. Highly effective marketing campaigns had changed America’s beer preference and light lager beers soon began driving and shaping the growth and nature of the American beer industry, even to the present day. Eventually, the industry had consolidated to only 44 brewing companies and industry experts predicted that soon there would only be five brewing companies in the United States.

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