Today's Craft Breweries Echo Yesteryear's Brewing Industry

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

By Bob Fitch, Farming Families Iowa Manager

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 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 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 to be unenforceable. The law was amended in 1858 to allow the sale of beer and wine made from fruits and grains, in part to appease the growing German-American community, according to Rev. George McDaniel, professor emeritus of history at St. Ambrose University, as quoted in the Quad Cities Dispatch.

McDaniel said, "(Beer) helped define who they were as Germans and was a reminder of what they left behind when they immigrated."

Sioux City’s first brewery was the Simon Hotz Brewery which operated from 1859-1875. The Steam Brewery opened in 1860 and later operated under the names of The Pioneer Brewery, Selzer’s Brewery and Selzer’s Steam Brewery. In 1871, Franz Brewery, originally known as Sioux City Brewery, was established in Sioux City.

Iowa lawmakers passed prohibition laws again in 1880 and 1882, with voters affirming their support by approving a constitutional amendment. When Iowa’s prohibition went into effect on July 4, 1884, it had violent consequences. According to historian Marlin R. Ingalls, writing in Little Village magazine, three breweries operating in Iowa City at the time ruled the Northside community there. They were known as the German mafia. Ingalls said the law left Iowa brewers with hundreds of thousands of gallons of beer that was illegal to sell. The situation turned ugly that summer. In the worst beer riot in Iowa City history, lynch mobs ranted, women and children were threatened, city lawyers were tarred, and drunken mobs reigned in the streets. Later, leading brewers attacked and tarred County Justice John Schell.

But Iowa beer business revived later in the decade when a local option law allowed each county’s residents to decide their own liquor laws. In Sioux City, the J. Arensdorf Weiss Brewery operated from 1898- 1903. The second entity to use the name of Sioux City Brewing opened in 1899. The Interstate Brewing Company opened in 1908. Both Sioux City Brewing and Interstate Brewing lasted until 1916 when Iowa again passed a state prohibition on alcohol.

Across the border in Dakota Territory, the Sioux Falls Brewing Company started operations in 1875. They produced 250 barrels in their first year (a barrel equals about 31 gallons). Production levels grew quickly. By 1885, Sioux Falls Brewing Company employed 25 people and produced more than 10,000 barrels per year.

Construction at Sioux City Brewing Co. is nearly finished prior to its opening in 1899. Photo courtesy Sioux City Public Museum.

A staff photo of the Sioux Falls Brewing Company in front of their new brewery taken in 1905.

A staff photo of the Sioux Falls Brewing Company in front of their new brewery taken in 1905.

ing was able to survive by shipping their beer to “wet” states until South Dakota repealed its state prohibition in 1896. This change in the law enabled the owners to ramp up production and expand into the malting business and the Sioux Falls Brewing and Malting Company was formed. This is when the company really expanded, and distribution increased throughout the region. In 1900, Sioux Falls Brewing Company paid out $200,000 for barley alone, and it was reported that over 300,000 bushels of barley were used to produce beers like Bohemian Lager, Kumbacher, Anberger, Maerzen and their popular Blue Label beer.

Local farmers could receive 5 to 10 cents per bushel more by selling to the brewery rather than to their local elevator. As a result, many farmers grew grains exclusively for the brewery.

In 1901, Sioux Falls Brewing Company sold 30,000 barrels of beer and over 1.4 million bottles of their Blue Label beer. The following year the company expanded their malting operation and, in 1904, opened their 6-story, castle-like brewery which cost more than $200,000 to build (about $5.7 million in today’s dollars). The new facility had a capacity to produce 100,000 barrels per year as 92 employees worked for the company with six traveling salesmen calling on accounts in neighboring towns and states. By the end of the first year of operation, the boilers in the new brewery consumed more than 400 railcars full of coal and 15 refrigerated railcars stood by ready to distribute product at railroad stops around South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska.

Nationally, in the pre-prohibition economy in the U.S., proceeds from federal excise taxes paid by breweries accounted for up to 70 percent of the overall federal budget (this is not a misprint). Keep in mind, this was at a time before a federal income tax and Social Security; and pre-World War I when the federal government’s budget was nothing like it is today.

The growth of Sioux Falls Brewing Company was stopped in its tracks in 1917 when a second statewide prohibition was enforced. The company tried to produce non-alcohol drinks as did other large breweries, but to no avail. The 1920 Volstead Act crippled the company. The assets of the company were valued at over $1 million, but it was worth nothing as it couldn’t legally produce any product. The company was sold to Crescent Creamery which produced butter, ice cream and milk for area consumers, and that company eventually sold to Foremost Dairy.

Blue Label was one of the Sioux Falls Brewing Company's top selling beers. However, perhaps due to pressure from the makers of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, SFBC renamed this beer in 1910, The Reverend Curt Taubert of Leola, SD was given the prize of $50 in gold for submitting the name "Ambrosia" in a statewide naming contest.

Blue Label was one of the Sioux Falls Brewing Company's top selling beers. However, perhaps due to pressure from the makers of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, SFBC renamed this beer in 1910. The Revered Curt Taubert of Leola, SD was given the prize of $50 in gold for submitting the name "Ambrosia" in a statewide naming contest.

Western Brew, Ace Beer and Heidl Brau were three of the favorite brands produced by the third iteration of Sioux City Brewing Co. (Photo courtesy Sioux City Public Museum.)

Photo courtesy of Sioux City Public Museum.

Photo courtesy of Sioux City Public Museum.

The name Sioux City Brewing had a third life after national prohibition was repealed in 1933. The new firm manufactured Heidel Brau cone-top cans, Ace Beer, and Western Brew flat-top cans. Kingsbury Breweries of Manitowoc and Sheboygan, Wisc., purchased the Sioux City Brewing Company in 1959. The brewery was renamed Kingsbury Sioux City Brewing Company and continued production of Heidel Brau as well as producing Kingsbury brands until operations ended in 1960.

On display at Remedy Brewing Company in downtown Sioux Falls are these original beer crates from Sioux Falls Brewing Company, Blume Brewing Company, Schwenk-Barth Brewery and Black Hills Brewing Company. Also, at Remedy, is a room dedicated to the original Sioux Falls Brewing Company with several other artifacts and advertising pieces.

The Farming Families magazine extends credit and thanks for assistance on this article to:

• Ken R. Stewart and the South Dakota State Historical Society. • Sioux City Public Museum. • Rev. George McDaniel interviewed in the Quad City Dispatch. • Marlin R. Ingalls, writing in Little Village magazine. • Garrett Gross, Remedy Brewing of Sioux Falls. • www.angelfire.com/ia/beercans. • Wikipedia.com.