KEEPING LOCAL HISTORY ALIVE
This is a promotional painting from the early 1900s of the Sioux Falls Brewing & Malting Company located on the 800 block of North Main in Sioux Falls. Notice both the brewery and malting facility were multi-story. The cheapest and most efficient industrial power-source is gravity and most large-scale brewing operations at that time had 3+ floors—one for each phase in the brewing and packaging process.
TODAY’S CRAFT BREWERIES ECHO YESTERYEAR’S BREWING INDUSTRY The old is new again. The rise of craft breweries in Sioux City, Okoboji, Sioux Falls and elsewhere over the past 20 years is an echo of a brewing industry that was important to this region from the earliest days of white settlement. The first European settlers to come to Iowa and the Dakotas brought with them items which made life a little easier on the untamed prairie ... from hammers and nails to lumber and lamps and raw goods like coffee and sugar. For many settlers, especially those of German descent, beer 20
was part of their list of needed items. Even before German immigration accelerated from 1840-1890, the United States was a beer-loving country. In 1830, the annual per capita alcohol consumption in the U.S. was 5 gallons. Today, it’s 2.3 gallons per adult. Commercial brewing of beer requires several key ingredients. The first is demand from a thirsty public. Water is obviously a crucial ingredient. Next, grain, hops and yeast are provided by hard-working farmers. Finally, entrepreneurs with access to capital are needed
The Farming Families Magazine | www.agemedia.pub | October 2019
to build the breweries. In the mid- to late 1800s, all those variables were either quickly emerging or plentiful with the booming railroads connecting to cities in Iowa and Dakota Territory. Sioux City’s first brewery opened in 1859, one opened in Yankton in 1866, and Sioux Falls’ first brewery tapped the keg in 1875. Because of on-and-off state prohibitions of alcohol beginning in the 1850s, commercial beer production was a challenging business enterprise. In 1854, Iowa passed an alcohol prohibition law which proved
