Dreymiller & Kray: Sink Your Teeth into the Flavor of History

Dreymiller & Kray

Sink Your Teeth into the Flavor of History

By: Kelley White

After nearly 100 years in business, Dreymiller and Kray has seen decades of change come to the town of Hampshire, watching it grow from a dot on the map to a burgeoning smalltown community. Dreymiller and Kray has remained a pillar of Hampshire’s business community since 1929 and owner Ed Reiser talks about the artisan meat market and smokehouse, from its rich history to what it is today. “My father worked here and growing up, we used to go to Howard Dreymiller’s house, who was one of the owners at the time, and he kind of became a friend of ours,” says Reiser, “I know the business because I grew up here. Back in 1929 when we started the business, the storefronts looked like old homes and wooden structures. There used to be a meat market directly across the street from us, and that’s where we believe Frank “Happy” Dreymiller got his start. He always had a smile, so they called him Happy.” Eventually, Dreymiller and Kray moved across the street and Happy brought his brother, Howard, into the business. Tragedy struck in October of 1929 with a fire burning through about six different businesses on the west side of State Street. In those days, the buildings were all wooden structures, turning the town into a veritable tinder box. “By January of 1930, the buildings were all rebuilt, and the business got back up and running,” says Reiser, “They proceeded with their business until after WWII which is when Happy said he wanted to sell the business and retire. At that point, he sold to Edward Kray. That is how the name ‘Dreymiller and Kray’ came about.” Those owners ran the Dreymiller and Kray market until 1988 when Reiser and his wife Carol bought out the last two owners, one of them being Reiser’s father. Over the years, the business’s name has changed a handful of times from Dreymiller Brothers Proprietorship to the Hampshire Cash Market during the war and Depression Era, and then back to Dreymiller and Kray. The meat market is also a part of Illinois meat inspection history, having been the 42nd establishment to go under Illinois Meat Inspection Act after the processes began in the early 1960s. Over the majority of their history, Dreymiller and Kray has evolved from a slaughterhouse and retail market to a smokehouse and meat market with mostly wholesale retail. “In the late forties, early fifties, they did slaughter but then when meat inspection came around in the early sixties, they built a separate slaughtering facility here in town and they would custom slaughter for the most part,” says Reiser, “They stopped doing that in the early seventies and in the early nineties, business changed quite a bit because you had food service companies coming into the marketplace. When we stopped slaughtering, we went to more wholesale and retail. Predominantly today, the business is mostly wholesale.” For Reiser, it’s all about consistency and maintaining

sustainability. “We buy on the market, and we buy a certain size belly,” says Reiser, “98% of the time it’s from the same manufacturer so it keeps things consistent, and our smoking process has not changed since the 1940s.” Dreymiller and Kray smoke their meats the traditional way, cold smoked in a brick smokehouse with real applewood and hickory logs. “Our smoke house has no electric and no gas in it. It is solely run by either hickory or applewood logs,” says Reiser, “I try to explain that when you cold smoke, you’re smoking between 80 and 120 degrees. Once you get over 120 degrees, the meat starts cooking and the smoke flavor will no longer enter into the cells of the belly, ham, or sausage. When you hot smoke, you’re smoking above 120 degrees and most of them start at about 180 degrees on up. The smoke is a short-term smoke, and they’re actually smoke cooking, not cold smoking.” This method of smoking has held steadfast over the decades, and the flavor Dreymiller and Kray is known for continues its legacy. With most smokehouses today using sawdust and hightech machinery to smoke their meats, Dreymiller and Kray’s smokehouse flavors stand a cut above the rest. “We only do cold smoking; it adds more flavor. Ours is a brick smokehouse and we use 100% logs,” says Reiser, “The modern smokehouses are a stainless-steel box and are computer generated. They can smoke, they can add humidity, they have electricity or are gas fired to create the heat, and they can do a whole cycle in eight hours. When we smoke, it goes in around 3:30-4 in the afternoon and the bacon comes out about noon the next day. Hams take about 20 hours to smoke.” Reiser praises modern day smokehouses and the meticulous control they have over their products, but in high production yield, some quality may be relinquished. “Flavor, flavor, and flavor. New smokehouses today do a great job, they have great controls, and the inspector can see all the data,” says Reiser, “We log all of our data, and we certify the thermometers by a calibrated thermometer system that we have here. For every batch, we will make sure that the thermometer is in the range and tolerance that is necessary. We’re apples and oranges to other people’s flavors.” Years ago, after taking a class through UW Madison, Reiser connected with a meat extension adviser which led to Reiser eventually judging meat contests. Tasting hundreds of different meat products at these contests made Reiser realize the difference between his flavors and modernday smokehouse flavors. “I got the chance to taste other people’s products that don’t have smokehouses like ours, and I truly see the difference – it’s not nearly as smoky in flavor,” says Reiser, “When you cook our bacon, it’s a soothing smell. I have done cuttings at grocery stores, and I find it mostly in older people that taste our bacon that they just close their eyes. You can tell they went someplace; they took a trip home and went back in history. When you smoke with sawdust, it does have a different flavor.”

Dreymiller and Kray create memorable, one-of-a-kind flavors that bring generations of families back to their doors year after year. “A grandfather used to drive a delivery truck and he would stop here and grab a slab of bacon, take it home, slice his own bacon and fry it up,” says Reiser, “As his grandchildren grew up, he would give them different gifts, and one of them was bacon. Now that he is deceased, those kids come in here every year at Christmas, and they purchase bacon and one of the guys distributes it to family members. To us it’s the relationship with people, the bacon, the smoked meats, and the sausage – that’s what it’s all about. In between, we do things by science, not a whim.” All of Dreymiller and Kray’s recipes are created and owned by them. They also make their own spice mixes and seasonings, many of which were created by Reiser himself. Tradition has truly been the foundation of Dreymiller and Kray, offering their customers a reliability not many businesses can duplicate. “I see us in the future as it is currently, but just growing even more,” says Reiser, “We don’t change things, we stay the course and people are still excited about it. We do other things than bacon, but that’s our biggest seller.” Currently, the market is offering Goose Island Matilda Beer bacon, cinnamon bacon smoked in applewood, pepper bacon smoked in hickory, the original hickory bacon, and applewood smoked bacon. As for the age-old debate whether bacon should be crispy or not? Reiser points out that melting the fat will leech the bacon of its robust flavor. Therefore, the verdict is bendy. “Bacon should not be crispy. Fat carries the flavor in meat, and the fat carries the smoke flavor, and when you render that out you lose a tremendous amount of that flavor,” says Reiser, “You need to savor it like a good bourbon. I believe in baking the bacon in the oven on parchment paper or foil for fifteen minutes at 325 degrees – which will vary with everyone’s oven. To me that is the most even way to cook it.” Any way you slice it, meats are at the heart of the Heartland – especially bacon. When searching for succulent tastes and homegrown consistency, Dreymiller and Kray fits the bill. For this meat market and smokehouse, art and science come together to create a symphonic blend of flavors that have stood the test of time.