Defunct brewery companies of the United States

Question

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about Defunct brewery companies of the United States

Answer 1

Mayfield Brewery

The Mayfield Brewery was a brewery that operated in Mayfield, California between years 1868 and 1920. The brewery was located at what is now the corner of California Avenue and Birch Street in Palo Alto, California. The brewery produced Steam beer and sold it in kegs to local saloons. The brewery was shut down by Prohibition.

The Mayfield Railroad Brewery was started in 1868 in Mayfield, California (later annexed by Palo Alto) by Michel Kleinclaus, a native of Alsace.

The brewery was started on Lincoln near Third (now California Ave. and Park Blvd.) but was soon moved to the corner of Second and Lincoln (now California Ave.and Birch St.). At some point the brewery dropped "Railroad" from the name to become The Mayfield Brewery (probably after another brewery in the area operating as The Mayfield Brewery shut down).

In 1871, Christopher Ducker bought the brewery from Kleinclaus. Ducker, a local merchant who was also running a saloon with his brother Henry, would go on to become a prominent citizen of Mayfield and a member of Mayfield's first board of trustees when the town incorporated in 1903.

For many of the years of Ducker's tenure as owner of the brewery, Mayfield came under pressure to become a dry town and close its saloons. Mayfield had missed out on becoming Stanford University's service town because the town refused to close its saloons when Leland Stanford asked them in 1886. Palo Alto was later formed and prospered as a dry university town while Mayfield maintained its image as a rowdy drinking town. In 1904, soon after the town had incorporated, the town's board of trustees voted to become dry. Chris Ducker, a member of the founding board, was the lone dissenting vote. But, by a thin margin and with much debate, the board later voted to grant The Mayfield Brewery a special wholesale license to continue operating.

Ducker ran the brewery, sometimes with business partner Leonard Distel, until 1906 when he retired.

Ernest Klevesahl bought the brewery from Ducker in 1906 and ran it with his son, Carl Klevesahl, until it closed in 1920 due to Prohibition.

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Answer 2

Metz Brewery

The Metz Brothers Brewing Company was among the first brewers in the U.S. state of Nebraska, having been established in the city of Omaha in 1859. It was among the earliest manufacturers in the city. After originally opening as the McCumbe Brewery, the facility was sold several times until brothers Frederick and Philip Metz purchased it in 1861. Metz was one of the "Big 4" brewers located in Omaha, which also included the Krug, Willow Springs and Storz breweries.

In 1880 the Metz Brewery was located at 1717 South 3rd Street, and was producing 12,400 barrels (1,970 m³) per year. Later the facility moved to 209 Hickory Street into the former Willow Springs Distilling Company facility. Considered to be modern for the time, the facilities sat on an entire city block. Early brewing equipment included three cooling vaults, two of which were twenty feet wide by seventy-five feet long, and one smaller, being twenty feet wide by thirty in length. The ice rooms immediately above were of the same dimensions. The mash tub and brewing kettle each had a capacity for holding one hundred barrels. Barns for the delivery horses were also located on site. The brewery was said to have "no equal in the country." The Metz brothers also ran the Metz Brothers Beer Hall, located on 510 South Tenth Street, where beer was supplied in barrels by horse-drawn cart from the main brewery.

The Metz Brewery closed because of the Prohibition. The facility was sold to an agriculture company in 1920. The label was brewed until 1961 by the Walter Brewing Company of Pueblo, Colorado.

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Answer 3

Minneapolis Brewing Company

Minneapolis Brewing Company

Grain Belt is a brand of beer brewed in the American state of Minnesota, by the August Schell Brewing Company. The beer has been produced in a number of varieties. Grain Belt Golden was the original style introduced in 1893. The current offerings are: Grain Belt Premium, first introduced in 1947; Grain Belt Premium Light; Grain Belt Nordeast, introduced in April 7, 2010; and the newest offering, Grain Belt Lock & Dam, introduced in 2016. It was originally produced by the Minneapolis Brewing Company which formed with the merger of four smaller brewers in 1891. Soon after introduction, Grain Belt became the company's flagship product. It was brewed at the original Grain Belt brewery in Minneapolis, Minnesota until 1976. A series of other owners followed, and Schell took over the product line in 2002.

The name refers to the "Grain Belt" of the American Midwest where much of the world's supply of barley, corn, soybeans and other grains are produced. The diamond-shaped logo was introduced early on, though it wasn't until the late 1930s that a rendering of a bottlecap was added as background. After prohibition a large billboard was erected on Nicollet Island next to the Hennepin Avenue Bridge around 1940. For years, it flashed the letters in sequence ("G-R-A-I-N B-E-L-T BEER"). This sign still stands today as a local landmark. Grain Belt introduced cap-sealed conetop cans in the 1930s. At the same time, the company offered its beers in longneck bottles and on draft.

Grain Belt Golden, a traditional golden German-style lager, was popular, but Prohibition halted production from 1920 until 1933. The company temporarily changed its name to Golden Grain Juice Company and, like many other brewers, turned to making near beer and soft drinks until repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Grain Belt Beer returned to taverns in October 1933 with bottled beer reappearing in December 1933.

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Answer 4

National Capital Brewing Company

Coordinates: 38°53′01″N 76°59′12″W / 38.883561°N 76.986534°W / 38.883561; -76.986534

The National Capital Brewing Company was founded in 1890 by Albert Carry and Robert Portner, two successful Washington, D.C. area brewers. The brewery could produce 100,000 barrels of beer a year and was considered state-of-the-art for the time.

The brewery was originally established in 1850 as part of Beckert's Park, and was located on 14th Street between D and E Streets Southeast in Washington, D.C.. It went through several changes of ownership in the following years. In 1882 it was bought by John Guethler and renamed the Navy Yard Brewing Company. In 1886, Henry Rabe bought it and renamed it the Washington Brewing Company, not to be confused with the similarly-named company in Georgetown. After selling his Mount Vernon Lager Beer Brewery in 1889, successful brewer Albert Carry partnered with brewer Robert Portner to purchase the Washington Brewery in 1890. They renamed it the National Capital Brewing Company.

The brewery reopened in 1891. It operated in a five-story fire resistant building, and produced 100,000 barrels of beer per year from using water from its own well. Most of its beer was consumed in saloons, and the brewery did not bottle its own beer, using third-party bottlers instead. To deliver its beer, National Capital initially used horse-drawn wagons. In 1903 it bought an electric truck for this purpose, the first Washington-based brewer to do so.

During Prohibition, the National Capital Brewing Company transitioned to producing ice cream instead of beer, as the facility had an ice plant. Carry's Ice Cream was produced for only one year, after which Albert Carry sold it. The facility became the Meadowgold Dairy, and operated under this name until the 1960s. It was demolished in 1965.

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Answer 5

New Albion Brewing Company

The New Albion Brewing Company is known as the first American craft beer brewery. Founded in 1976 by Jack McAuliffe (born 1945) in Sonoma, California, New Albion is acknowledged as the first United States microbrewery of the modern era, as well as a heavy influence on the subsequent microbrewery and craft beer movements of the late 20th century. New Albion was resurrected in 2012 under the supervision of McAuliffe, himself, and Boston Beer Company. The current president is McAuliffe's daughter, Renee M. DeLuca.

McAuliffe began as a homebrewer, influenced by the beer he sampled while stationed by the U.S. Navy in Scotland, as well that of Fritz Maytag's Anchor Brewing Company in nearby San Francisco upon his return. After graduating college in 1971, McAuliffe worked as an optical engineer in the Silicon Valley, but spent his free time studying the necessities to build his own brewery. Upon presenting his idea to professor Michael Lewis of the University of California at Davis, who would also go on to advise Ken Grossman in the beginning stages of his Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, McAuliffe utilized the Davis library to build a plan for his brewery.

Initial plans to build the brewery in San Francisco and name it the Barbary Coast Brewing Company were thwarted by expensive real estate and a lack of investors. By 1975, McAuliffe quit his job and moved north to Sonoma, a decision influenced by cheaper expenses and a local food and wine scene which focused on quality and would eventually lead to emergence of California cuisine. In October 1976, along with business partners Suzy Stern (née Suzanne Denison), and Jane Zimmerman, McAuliffe officially began the New Albion Brewing Company, the name given to the San Francisco Bay Area by sailor-explorer Francis Drake, as well as a former San Francisco brewery of the same name. This marked the opening of the first microbrewery in America following Prohibition. The next year, the brewery brewed its first batch of ale. The facilities consisted of a shaded steel warehouse with shed housed food-grade 55 US gallons (200 L) Coca-Cola syrup drums he converted into brewhouse vessels and fermenters, a World War Two era bottle washer made from battleship decking, and a vintage 1910 bottle labeler.

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Answer 6

Olympia Brewing Company

Olympia Brewing Company

The Olympia Brewing Company was a brewery in Tumwater, WA founded in 1896 by Leopold Friederich Schmidt, which existed from 1896 until 1983, when it was acquired by Pabst Brewing Company.

Pabst is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. On November 13, 2014, Pabst announced that it had completed its sale to Blue Ribbon Intermediate Holdings, LLC. Blue Ribbon is a partnership between American beer entrepreneur Eugene Kashper and TSG Consumer Partners, a San Francisco–based private equity firm. Prior reports suggested the price agreed upon was around $700 million.

Leopold Schmidt, a German immigrant from Montana founded The Capital Brewing Company at Tumwater Falls on the Deschutes River in the town of Tumwater, near the south end of Puget Sound. He built a four-story wooden brewhouse, a five-story cellar building, a one-story ice factory powered by the lower falls, and a bottling and keg plant and in 1896, began brewing and selling Olympia Beer. In 1902, the firm became Olympia Brewing Company and chose the slogan "It's the Water" to promote its flagship product. Statewide Prohibition, which began in January 1916, four years before National Prohibition, ended beer making operations. After Prohibition ended, a new Olympia Brewery was erected just upstream from the original, and Olympia beer went back on sale in 1934.

Olympia Beer was a very popular regional brand in the Pacific Northwest for half of a century. It eventually expanded nationwide, repositioned as a low-price lager. During the 1970s, Olympia acquired Hamm's and Lone Star. Olympia Brewing also produced Buckhorn Beer, which had previously been a product of the Lone Star Brewing Company.

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Answer 7

P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company

P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company

P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company was an American brewery founded in 1840, making Ballantine one of the oldest brands of beer in the United States. At its peak, it was the 3rd largest brewer in the US. The brand is currently owned and operated by Pabst Brewing Company. Throughout history it is best known for its Ballantine XXX Ale; however, in August 2014 Ballantine IPA relaunched and has been received with very favorable reviews. This is Pabst's foray into the craft beer market.

On November 13, 2014, Pabst announced that it had completed its sale to Blue Ribbon Intermediate Holdings, LLC. Blue Ribbon is a partnership between American beer entrepreneur Eugene Kashper and TSG Consumer Partners, a San Francisco–based private equity firm. Prior reports suggested the price agreed upon was around $700 million.

The company was founded in 1840 in Newark, New Jersey, by Peter Ballantine (1791–1883), who emigrated from Scotland. The company was originally incorporated as the Patterson & Ballantine Brewing Company. Ballantine rented an old brewing site which had dated back to 1805. Around 1850, Ballantine bought out his partner and purchased land near the Passaic River to brew his ale. His three sons joined the business and in 1857 the company was renamed P. Ballantine and Sons. The name would be used for the next 115 years, until the company closed its brewery in May 1972. By 1879, it had become sixth largest brewery in the US, almost twice as large as Anheuser-Busch. Ballantine added a second brewery location, also in Newark, in order to brew lager beer to fill out the company product line. Peter Ballantine died in 1883 and his eldest son had died just a few months earlier. His second oldest son then controlled the company until his own death from cancer in 1895. The last son died in 1905 and the company was taken over by George Griswold Frelinghuysen, the company’s vice-president, who was married to Peter Ballantine’s granddaughter.

George Griswold Frelinghuysen was the son of Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen and Matilda Elizabeth Griswold. He graduated from Rutgers College in 1870, received his Bachelor of Law from Columbia University Law School in 1872, and was admitted to the New Jersey and New York bars in 1872 and 1876 respectively. George married Sara Linen Ballantine on April 26, 1881. Sara was the granddaughter of Peter Ballantine, the company founder. George and Sara had two children together: Peter Hood Ballantine Frelinghuysen I (1882–?) who married Adaline Havemeyer (1884–?); and Matilda Elizabeth Frelinghuysen (1887–?). He started his career as a patent lawyer, eventually working for and becoming President of Ballantine at the death of Robert Francis Ballantine (1836–1905), who was the last surviving son of founder Peter Ballantine. George died in 1935 and the George Griswold Frelinghuysen Arboretum is named for him. The 18th Amendment was passed in 1920 beginning the prohibition. The company was forced to consolidate, and they manufactured malt syrup to stay in business. The Ballantine family continued to own the brewing company all throughout the prohibition. But by the time the 21st amendment was passed in 1933, the family was ready to sell the company.

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Answer 8

Pabst Brewery Complex

Pabst Brewery Complex

The Pabst Brewery Complex in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is the former brewery of the Pabst Brewing Company. The facility was closed in 1997. On August 16, 2006 the brewery complex was purchased by Joseph Zilber's investment group Brewery Project LLC for $13 million to create The Brewery, a renovated complex for residential, office, and retail use. The Pabst Brewing Company Former Corporate Office Building & Visitor's Center have been reopened as "Best Place," in reference to the brewery's founders Jacob Best and Phillip Best, and feature an antiques gift shop, Blue Ribbon Hall and the "Little Tavern on the Hill." Enclosed by the building are two courtyards, one of which houses a statue of Captain Frederick Pabst. A statue of King Gambrinus, the unofficial patron saint of beer, used to be displayed in the other courtyard, but was removed when the brewery was shut down in the mid-1990s. The sculpture was loaned back to the complex by the Pabst Corporation after a lengthy negotiation period on May 21, 2011.

The former Pabst Brewhouse was also transformed into a hotel by Gorman & Company, a firm based in Oregon, Wisconsin. The hotel opened for business in April 2013. The project included partial restoration of six original brew kettles viewable in the hotel's atrium, fixtures made from repurposed wood beams, and a green roof. Jackson's Blue Ribbon Pub & Grill is attached to the hotel.

Renovated portions of the complex also house facilities for local universities, including the Cardinal Stritch University College of Education and Leadership and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Zilber School of Public Health.

Coordinates: 43°2′20.21″N 87°54′40.98″W / 43.0389472°N 87.9113833°W / 43.0389472; -87.9113833

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Answer 9

Pearl Brewing Company

Pearl Brewing Company

The Pearl Brewing Company (also known as the Pearl Brewery or just Pearl) was an American brewery, established in 1883 in Downtown San Antonio, Texas, USA. In 1985, Pearl's parent company purchased the Pabst Brewing Company and assumed the Pabst name. In 1999, the Pabst Brewing Company began transferring its production to Miller Brewing, on a contract basis, and closing all of its breweries. Pearl beer is still in production at Miller's Ft. Worth, Texas facility, but the Pearl Brewery in San Antonio was closed in 2001. Since then, the former brewery was purchased by Silver Ventures, Inc., which has made the property the crown jewel in revitalization efforts of southern Midtown and northern Downtown San Antonio.

The site owned and operated by the Pearl Brewing Company was originally known as both the J. B. Behloradsky Brewery (1881–1883) and the City Brewery. Privately held and poorly run for two years, the City Brewery was purchased by an investment group in 1883. The investment group was composed of local businessmen and several moguls already involved in brewing at San Antonio's other major brewery, the Lone Star Brewing Company. Together they formed the San Antonio Brewing Company (1883–1888), and began to raise capital to fully restart and improve operations at the brewery. In 1886, after three years, the company had secured the necessary capital and began full-time operations at the brewery again. The name San Antonio Brewing Association was used as a parent to the brewing company, since it also managed some of the founding members' other business interests. Functionally, the business structure worked, but it caused confusion with city officials, customers, and business partners; therefore, in the end, the investment group dissolved the San Antonio Brewing Company and used the San Antonio Brewing Association (1888–1918) name for all operations and business transactions. Thus, in seven years, the same brewery had three different names. In addition, the name City Brewery was frequently used. The first logos used for the San Antonio Brewing Company/Association even featured the name City Brewery in the logo. City Brewery was carried over from the Behloradsky days and was used until the beginning of Prohibition in 1918.

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Answer 10

Periolat brewery

The Periolat brewery was founded in 1850 by Napoleon Periolat near Chicago, Illinois. The brewery was across modern-day Milwaukee Avenue from the Union Hotel in Wheeling. The brewery operated continuously under the management of the Periolat family until 1905, when it was sold by Robert and Henry Periolat. The brewery was razed in 1909.

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