Brew North: A Beer Story - Full Documentary

[Music] hibiscus hibiscus IPA is delicious what is craft beer is a complex convoluted complicated question good beer I think it's kind of a sense of community it means that people actually try to put effort into their beer I think if you asked every four thousand person in here they'd have a different answer for it not these big breweries are trying to mass produce it's a different this is an event that we all look forward to coming to it and this is where we want to bring our best beers experimental stuffs that became getting rels a lot of us have brewing good beer and I think it's important to crow about it Duluth beer city here we are now the best opportunity for consumer to have a brewer trying to brew a better beer at the guy down the line that's awesome they're carrying on a tradition that's been going on all over century you're still brewed pretty much the same way with the ingredients the quality of the beers being produced yeah I mean I think there's there's a direct link production funding for brew north is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota [Music] the brewery started basically there was no refrigeration and so a lot of it was local and you saw a lot of breweries either be by water or access to ice or caves where they could store their beer at a constant temperature [Music] Sidney Luce was one of our early pioneers later our third mayor after 1857 we had a big financial panic the copper speculators that were here took off but there were several folks hanging around including four bachelors one of them was a Cooper a barrel maker and he'd pick up some brewing skills along the way a few others were carpenters and Luce gave them a piece of his property and they built the little brewery and started brewing beer in 1859 as as a way to have a little commerce going in what was quickly becoming a ghost town after the war things are looking pretty good in Duluth and he decides he's going to be too busy so Nicholas Dekker who is another pioneer comes to Duluth and buys looses interest in the and runs the brewery for the next ten years and then in 1875 in January mr. Dekker dies of consumption the following year Michael Fink brings his family to Duluth from Stillwater where he was working for a brewer and he leases the brewery from Decker's widow Mary and starts the M Fink & Company brewery out of the same facility there about 1881 mr. Fink realizes that his brewery is not large enough to keep up with the potential capacity of his customer base so in 1881 he builds a brick brewery down at 600 East superior Street which is still today the center of the victors complex [Music] am I just a brewery rat I have to check this out my grandmother was born over in figures brewery they had quarters above the building for employees this is all in the mid 1880s you can see that in some of the photographs especially those of various events that they had where they had parades and had all the fancy horse way again some things there and you'll see people looking at in some little children - 1881 thinks that his new brewery and he's doing pretty well but he's a busy guy he's also city alderman he has other responsibilities he's got a large family and he does not have enough time to take care of this business himself so he hires August vicar August fit ger was typical of the German Brewers who came to the United States worked his way through the brewing centers like Milwaukee and then arrived with a lot of training so he was a practical Brewer that could step in and make the quick adaptations of the recipes to deal with the grain that was available and even the water chemistry vicar arrives in 82 and within six or seven months or so buys a half interest in the brewery within a few years mr. Aniki comes to Duluth joins mr. Fisher as his business partner and Mike Fincke by 1885 is out of the brewery business in Duluth fit first started as a very small brewery and just kept adding on as the demand and their new equipment required their bottling by 1885 in 1891 they have the first ice machine in Duluth before then and after ice was harvested from Lake Superior so you really have some business minded folks and you can see that the growth throughout the particularly 1890s they think they built ten maybe twelve buildings different added on and more growth and in a bigger bottling house eventually in a new office and stables okay well the original brewery was was in this space here that had burned down the original brewery in just after 1900s from here they went west and built the stock house and then the brew house and then later the office in the modeling house the innovation at Vickers never ended they were always looking for better ways to brew their beer to filter their beer to bottle and package their beer so they were always a very innovative company right from the start [Music] in the pre prohibition time beer was still very local and there were enough taverns that could provide markets for even a fairly small brewery most of the beer was drunk in the tavern at that point and even if it was consumed at home it was brought home from the tavern often in the pail called a growler so in that kind of environment Vickers is going to be able to still survive through its taverns and through its shipping business what many many Brewers across the nation did back in the days they would actually build or purchase saloons and hotels would come in by the bar by the bar license and set somebody up to run it and with the understanding they would carry you know Victor's beer would be the primary or exclusive beer Vickers had them in superior figures had then once the Iron Range opened up all over the Iron Range in western Minnesota as far west as the Dakotas and so Vickers reach by the turn of the century was it was pretty impressive they had the Victor hotel on both E so they had real estate holdings you know basically it was in booth area and then northern Minnesota one of the reasons making beer brewing beer was considered a really smart business to get into it's because in the late 19th and early 20th century you had the spread of tuberculosis consumption and typhoid and a lot of that came from the drinking water so beer that's brewed that's superheated and cooked before we check it removes the impurities in fact it was well I think well past 1900 that Duluth firemen were not allowed to drink Luth water at work they had to have beer because they didn't want the firemen getting sick [Music] the original brewery saloon was in this the old building and then eventually that was when the petcock was built they moved it down down to the present location and then that was sold early 1900s to Jolla sake everything was picked up in this old building and and then sent over it was built by Ficker to remind him of the beer halls in Germany his home country and I mean you clearly see that you know the wood on the ceiling the Germans seem to like that with their beer halls you know all that oak woodwork you know it has that feel and you you just don't find that at any other place in Duluth no place has the feel like The Pickwick [Music] George hunter which are George hunter stout he was a Brewer pre-prohibition era up in tower Minnesota he owned and operated the Iron Range Brewing Association for right around 20 years so yeah that it's it's literally and figuratively in my blood Iron Range Brewing Company was one of those ones where with all those thirsty miners up there it seemed like it should be a great money-making proposition but they found that their costs were pretty high too because they were not anywhere near the grain he was also a teacher you know he had he was an engineer so he was he was a multi-talented guy so I would like to think that he did it because he liked to do it but who knows okay this building was a cooler the brewery was right along the backside of it and they made Tower beer and they filled this building up with ice and they kept the beer in here to keep it from going bad and to keep it cool any number of investors seem to think that they would be the ones to turn the business around so it became a stock corporation but the ownership kept changing and while it survived for several decades it was never really a big money-making proposition but it paid some bills in the neighborhood Duluth really malting was one of that next generation where they had a big plan in place and they needed to start relatively big if they had any hope of competing against the shipping Brewers [Music] when you look at pictures of the the structure I mean it certainly is imposing and I mean I think they were trying to make a statement that this is gonna be a big brewery and we wanted first open the capacity I believe was about 40,000 barrels you know initially not that big but it did it did grow they were able to hire architects from Chicago and build in a classic Romanesque Revival style that really gave the impression of being a classic German structure and one that was tall and impressive in an era where people often decided how valuable product was based on how impressive the factory was [Music] it was started by Reiner Hoch and Charles muskie Hoch decided to come to Duluth and start another brewery sensing that there was opportunity here [Music] was pretty well laid out quite a big area I mean two sides of the street he had the brewery house in the malting house all done one big huge building with the railroad tracks coming up behind it the he is for service in playing grain in or hauling out kegs of beer or the freeway as you can see the old office and then the bottling Hollis's had to connect it to it that was the first building you come to in a lot of cases the breweries would use the factory scene either on large lithographs which were to be placed in the taverns it would appear on their letterhead they would print out postcards and most of the time you'd have a couple of interesting features one of them would be that any vehicles would be very small to make the brewery itself look enormous and the other thing in all of the cityscapes and factory scenes of the Gilded Age was that the smokestacks were constantly belching big clouds of black smoke which today we would consider a problem but in that era it was a sign of prosperity employment and wealth coming into the city I believe they did some dry Kyser which was a brand from the Marquette plant maybe even the Castle brew they might have produced but the wrecks in the Moose were the primary labels and that's what turns up we find his collectors point of sale and those were the brands that they had right right up until prohibition it [Music] this is amazing this is a piece of Americana these tanks are well isn't that something well over a hundred some years these are fermentation tanks these either gotta be twenty barrel the story were familiar with about people's is that it was the result of the socialist movement supposedly a bunch of saloon keepers came together to form their own brewery so that they could buy beer that wasn't made by those capitalists over at fit kurz that's the myth we've always had that it was kind of a socialist political bent to it and what we're discovering to recent research is that doesn't appear to be true the peoples of Duluth similar to people's in Oshkosh Wisconsin and to some others were breweries that were largely subscribed to by local saloon keepers who were tired of the very high rates being charged by out-of-town Brewers or sometimes even the other major Brewers in town and they thought they could make a better beer they could make a cheaper beer and in fact that they could share in the profits of making their beer in 1906 a gentleman named FC tole comes to town selling shares and a brewery he wants to build hundred dollars a piece wants to raise 300 thousand dollars to build this brewery about six or seven months later he runs an ad in the Duluth News Tribune saying that the project has been cancelled any left town he didn't take off with the money though right some of the principal investors a gentleman named sands dent and Gleeson and Pat Duran decided we've still got a good chunk of money here why don't we go ahead and do this ourselves you know when you look at pictures of it I certainly wouldn't call that an architectural masterpiece that place I mean the very utilitarian and I mean it was built to do what it did but it was a small concern and you know right from the get-go that's gonna make things more difficult when you're operating on a much small scale when people's opened up they were capable of producing 25,000 barrels of airier and they probably hired about 10 to 15 people and a great many of its shareholders were indeed west Duluth and West End saloon keepers and hotel owners and other people that dealt in the liquor trade and every spring they're announced in the paper that they were giving out dividends to their shareholders they unlike Duluth brewing in Malton fit kurz pretty much stayed at home they didn't expand they didn't build saloons they didn't build hotels most of their beer was sold by the keg to saloons they did a little bottling but not nearly as much as the other two Duluth Brewers so they were they were pretty much your hometown brewery so that was how our third major brewery started in Duluth up and running by about 1909 when they finally hit the streets with their first beer I think there was just a need for beer all over the range and when you look at the range you'll see that the tones are only a few miles apart so if you can get a big brewery that was going to be producing pure then you will had a lot of customers not only in Virginia but all of the range Thomas Virginia's plan was to generally serve the Iron Range they certainly weren't going to be looking for a national market of any kind they were going to be working on simply the range maybe a little bit in Duluth and probably shipping to the west to the extent that the railroads would allow them town had just burnt for the second time right after the turn of the century and everything was mandated to be brick and the the mining industry was just taking off and of course the logging industry was really prolific at that time all the loggers were drinking beer at every place that they could find I'm sure and so rather than bring it up from Duluth or Minneapolis or wherever it had to be they saw an opportunity and builted it was 1905 and became operational in 1906 they had these wagon Lords going all the time to all of these outlying towns that had many you you took a develo they both probably had a good 20 30 different ethnic groups though which meant they they had that many saloons and that would have been true in Gilbert and he would have been true in in the Buell and molten iron and so on so you had all of these ethnic groups at that time and so they had their preference of her different kinds of beer [Music] it was mostly outside investors who thought that the Iron Range had such a heavy beer-drinking possible population that there must be a demand for another brewery there and so that was part of that era where brewery started as corporations rather than little family craft businesses so Virginia also was able to hire Chicago brewery architects and they built a brewery very similar to several others around the country [Music] its current structure is very interesting because since they were open for such a short time they really didn't need to expand their building so it looks very much like it would have when first designed this is just a little cupola it's just a little probably four in the hot air part right above the the tanks and everything let air out and then light in [Music] well this was actually the pup this was the bar section of the brewery and of course back in the day they could drink beer on their breaks and everything so supposedly right behind the bar there was a place for them to go and draw their beer and it was called the hole in the wall we also knew that the miners would come through and tell their lunch pails after they carried him to work they'd fill him with beer and go home with the beer to dual-purpose lunch buckets and then of course the saloon was a place where the single men before they had families could congregate and they would rush there after two weekend and then they'd brush back and Monday morning and get their work clothes and go to work again and spending the weekend to the saloon well when they got married then the wives started getting in there and trying to try to stop them from doing that and then the churches got into it too [Music] so the the movie company took all the brewing equipment out when they first came in here they took it and sold it this stuff is just the very last remnants of anything that might even be good to give to Goodwill I put together photographs of people's lives I don't know who they are or anything late what would who is that huh what was that group for oh that temperance sir Church it would be interesting to find out Virginia had a temperance Eveleth had to temperance groups you can look you can go right through the range and you'll find temperance whoops every woman was organized to try to control demon room they had glee clubs they had theatre groups they had gymnastic groups they had libraries they had all kinds of things to try to try to draw them into that and away from the saloon one of the problems they had was that the regions around them were going dry very quickly and the former Indian lands in northern Minnesota were declared dry by congressional action in 1914 which meant a large potential market was now gone and this caused the demise of the Brainerd Brewing Company in the Bemidji Brewing Company as well and so anything Virginia was going to sell outside of his immediate market was going to have to be shipped a long way at great expense [Music] the interesting thing about living in Duluth and superior as we approach to Prohibition is that both communities in st. Louis County all went dry at different times for superior I believe in 1915 went dry and then the following year Duluth went dry but at the same time superior voted itself wet again right so you could always cross a bridge st. Louis County I believe was 1917 went dry and the superior went back to being dry so the only place you can get alcohol in the community was Oliver down by the steel plant in Wisconsin so there was a lot of quite a bit of traffic between Oliver and superior and Oliver and Duluth as each one of these dates approaches the evening before prohibition comes into place there are funerals for John Barleycorn and just about everybody in town it seems has a snootful as there in stocking up you know they're stopping cars on their way back from Olive Oil that are just breaking down because they're so overloaded with liquor we went out with a bang several times before 1920 actually stopped the flow of alcohol a lot of breweries thought that prohibition would not go through because that was the government source of taxes but and went through underneath start of income tax so nobody believed they were gonna outlaw alcohol so they didn't go vote and unless there were four and it passed [Music] breweries had to do a lot of different things to try and survive through a Prohibition Vickers wanted to purchase the Lovett label and the way the contract was written in the attorney missed a flaw in this and it gave Vickers the rights to all Duluth bringing involving company labels so they last the racks they lost the moose and Vickers produced Vickers Rex beer that came from Duluth brewing and malting I've even got labels with Duluth burning and malting scratched out and fit on the bottom so yeah sure that attorney had a talking-to after that as we turn to Prohibition and these companies try to reinvent themselves the names they use I believe the government said you couldn't have the name brewing in your name anymore and if you look at pictures of Pickers the letters on the bottling house where it says victory Brewing Company the ones during Prohibition brewing is gone so it was just the thicker company and perhaps the most interesting case is Duluth brewing and malting which renamed themselves the sobriety company which was going much farther than most breweries did they'd already sold off their pop label loved it to fit curse and so instead of that they doubled down on the malt production they made serial based beverages near beers they made malt extract which you could buy and store them through your own beer with the malt really came into play at that time the 1920s to keep them going it wasn't a success I mean yo Dave when you lose your primary product and look at all the breweries that kill in the United States and that was the one single biggest factor to the decline of brewing in this country finally by 1929 they closed that was the end of the Librium Alton company when Prohibition started figures was doing a number of things they bought out a candy company and started making candy they were packaging cigars for other companies and they were selling soda pop and other things and they started to make what we might call today mixers silver spam berry tart apple based it's a column beer moon and it's pop it was the best mixer in the crowd as they advertised it and they also advertise it as it's not ginger ale element could pretty much anything thanks good basically what it was is a additive to moonshine not so personal vague that's a moonshine and you use a little silver spring put the moonshine in it and then you had a drink Vickers shifted nation wine during Prohibition to mix with you know not the best tasting home room the records show that they never made any profit they lost money every year during Prohibition they tried to cut as few employees as possible they tried to keep salaries where they were they couldn't of course and so they were barely hanging on right after Prohibition they sold all of the equipment and the story that I was told was it was hauled to Fort Frances and sold to a beer company up there they then made Tower pop and then they after prohibition someone came in bought the building and they had the windows blasted in and the bar built and they opened up a 3-2 establishment in this building the bar is made out of iron ore from the underground mine there's courts there's crystals there's fool's gold story was the miners took the rocks out in their lunch pails don't know if that's true either but it's what my dad said when Prohibition started there were only a few people actually working for people's just enough to bottle the soda pop and they picked up a couple of national brands by the end of the decade one of them RC Cola the other one was 7up interesting and what was advertised at the time is that the up and 7up was lithium which we use for mental health patients today it was it was actually sold as the Lithia 'td soda and it was good for curing all sorts of ailments I think the the brewery served a large area and you would look at the the wagons filled with beer kegs and so on it served a lot a lot of people but as we went into Prohibition then the the brewery tried to find any new use and and so they began to start doing a pump which was called Orange Crush and they did a non-alcoholic beer called bingo and then the sole dairy products and ice cream and and also agricultural types of things so they were trying to find a new use for them and keep the people employed as they once had been [Music] and then when Prohibition was over they tried to go back to it and when they went to check on the technology they found out that they had become obsolete and so there was no hope again to make that into a viable Rory as it was hidden in Virginia did not make it out of prohibition like so many of the other breweries it was going to be very expensive to retrofit most breweries and the market had changed as well national brands well advertised or what people aspired to rather than having the pride that the beer was made down the street by people who were sitting at the next table [Music] first shipment went out at midnight to two harbors right and the trucks were lined up along Superior Street and 7th Avenue waiting to be loaded and they say an oompah band played happy days are here again it was a great show because in The Pickwick the place was packed I think it was at the minute after midnight Franklin Roosevelt became elected and thirty to one his platform was Pierre will produce rambling you and will produce yeah it was the stimulus bill of its day there were estimates done by the brewing industry that there were hundreds of thousands if not multiple millions of jobs that were in some way dependent on the return of beer and while those statistics were no doubt self-serving it was probably pretty close 50s was on top of things technologically marketing distribution they were a well-oiled machine and they kept going people's was up and running and Duluth brewing and malting was scrambling to get back up again at that and they would last back into the show because they were the one that actually Carl meskhi you know realized that the appeal was coming and it's time to get the plant up and running again I'm sure you thought what would dad my father have wanted and and done and so I have a prospectus looking for investors and describing the whole brewery and purchasing new equipment and the brewery went through an extensive rehabilitation in anticipation of repeal now vicars and people's have the beer on the market before Duluth Bergen maltine but for everything I've been told it was worth the wait they teased my dad because he's it was a was it a a German beer but there was a boom master with a Norwegian yeah I think this way he was quite well known as a good brew master he came up through the bereavement about early 30s and became a worker and then he became fur they called first shell a man where he's kind of boss of all the sellers and it grew wholesome then they could see that he was pretty good at it so they thought he'd be a good girl master which he was and you smart guy just had a uncanny mind just smart you know smart at everything it seemed like it was right in the middle of a neighborhood there were houses literally right next door to the brewery almost literally on the brewery grounds so that had to be interesting to have a concern like this operating you know and you're living in a house literally right next door to it that big copper kettle that's with all the game one of our jobs is cleaning out the big bats when everything was emptied out and it would use a solution and call in a little hole and well that baby better be clean and because they they wanted to faking it it was you know there was a lot of tough job but I think the worst part when we started up the Malthouse my dad started that up I used to be the one that used to load the boxcars with them the malt and when you were done filling you'd have about or there was only about this much between the grain in the roof and dusty but the static the electricity from this grain moving through them pipes if you got your head up a little too close I mean that's flame would shoot right down so I would always take the scoop and keep on doing that to keep that from happening but boy you really had to go I mean it was a tough there was a huge drum to get to so you could you could actually start drying it and you had to crawl in there and clean him oh and you just could just bared again and you got to go in and come back and pull it stuff with you all the stuff that gets in like green gets into things and that was probably at toughest cuz you were afraid that somebody's gonna close that door onion you there you are you know when they rehab the plant through the capacity one way up so rather than that 40,000 they were brewing all right at the very beginning there he was able to get the the capacity up and the public took to it I mean you can ask anyone who was around at that time and mentioned royal 58 that you know clearly they had the word out there that this is what they were producing and the public took to it I remember it clearly brother hind or down there hanging around sometimes asks the trucker I was in stuff if they needed any help and stuff they were responsible for lawfully loading the trucks so they picked the kids and to do the work for while they went Sapna tapper local trucks that was usually paid upon the buck download our lamb peas and then loaded up with phones and then get lucky to get a semi there's a lot of work but it is get $2 if you didn't get picked for work you go play baseball or something yeah [Music] six seven eight nine ten that's a lot of beer that's an incredible amount of error people's retool and the 1930s 1933 I think it's a gentleman named Hanson who takes over the operation they and delivering them all both buy new equipment invest and and retool and expand their their line of work afterwards they had three different brands of beer stag they started out with stag as in deer and regal supreme which is was they're they're pretty much their flagship local brand with the Sioux Duluth logo you are regal supreme sure you have the finest beer regal supreme is made in Toulouse by the people of Brewing Company write them today and cure rebuilt the preme sir duluth figures prominently and they're advertising the Regal supreme beer label he's the trademark and I like Split Rock Lighthouse is on all the thicker bottles and then they read an Anne cat ad campaign in newspapers know do you know these facts about Sir Duluth it was drawn almost like a Ripley's Believe It or Not and they had a depiction of the same and of text data copied it and went along with it it's clever it really is what do you think about it but it didn't work this is a picture of a celebration of 50 years of the brewery workers union so this was like a 15 year anniversary celebration I would guess my grandfather worked basically his whole life at Regal supreme at people's Brewing Company he worked there before the prohibition and then once the prohibition was over with he went back there again and he retired in 1955 outside of prohibition a brewery jobs a good job to have if you weren't claustrophobic it was an okay job but you had to crawl through that little door and go in that tank with one light bulb and you had to scrub the tank and they were scrubbed no those tanks were clean when the next batch of beer went in him post-prohibition they decided to brew a malt liquor Old English 600 Old English 800 are the names of this and surprisingly enough this became a big beer in the Pacific Northwest he went out on a limb and tried something different and produced a beer that at least some people plate remember the name Old English 600 yes I remember that name you'll never forget the taste wow I can remember in the summer time loading a boxcar load of that at a time and sending it out to Oregon it really wasn't a very popular beer locally they shipped out the Old English 600 malt liquor to Portland Oregon a brewery out there ended up buying that label after peoples closed but when you see Old English 800 on the Shelf of your favorite liquor store now that was born right here in Duluth Minnesota so we we gave the world Old English malt liquor now why is it that beers from other parts of the country don't taste as fresh and sparkling these pictures well it's the water we have up here you know they take the water for pitchers right out of the lake and you know how cold and clear that is well yeah it was definitely viewed as a local local beer and they had their when their slogans was naturally brewed naturally better and that was a I think a real nice lowball they were feel pretty creative I think a lot of their their advertising nothing like laying out of here along a stream doing a little fishing a couple of bowls of pitchers when you get thirsty yeah the great North Shore one of the things that made fitters ads so classic so memorable is they really embraced the spirit of the North Woods they used a lot of forest scenes they used a lot of lake scenes and they really positioned themselves as that beer that you picked up when you were going up to hunt and fish in northern Minnesota they always had like Victor fishing contests and stuff were through their advertising person can get a certificate or whatever and so so they did a lot of that oh they made good beer yeah yeah the people elected you know and one time you know let's we drink our local beer thanks for the pictures the beer with the flavor of the Great North Shore it was great signed thirsty I used to hold the king sprint from the racking room went into a basement pick quick and a fresh good finger [Music] I started working here part-time for two summers back in 1966 and 1967 with most of time in a bottling department and then I done a few various other jobs too because at that time a train came up in a back that's where it came to I'd add in and they have brought in cans and bottles and all that and we on Lord of that and we brought it in and we put it into the shorting machine down there you know where you feed bottles he went upstairs and went through the packing machine in the process and all that this isn't a bombing department it's a hotel now one of the things that I think the Duluth breweries had going for them in the period after World War Two was they had recognizable brand names and they had something of a following you know it was people's brewery so I suppose that would be the Articles of Incorporation and everything else but yet the people in the community drank regal supreme beer so that's I'm sure how they remember it we were bottling beer in the summertime might say bottling at capacity they would produce about 3500 cases of beer a day when they were bottling at capacity and they would make one brew a day competition from the big breweries trying to carve out market share up here there's just no way a small burry like that could compete and you know they couldn't afford a lot of advertising either when people's reach the 1950s post-war consolidation was at its high point across the country's larger Brewers were buying up smaller Brewers it was affecting fitters and dues brewing and malt as well but people's was having a tough time surviving in Duluth right against their their local competitors and all the the national beers coming in through through distribution people's went through several name changes I mean you know marketing it as people's beer of the people's choice beer they end up producing stag beer none of the label changes really seem to make much difference as far as the volume there was a steady 35 40 thousand barrels but they rapidly declining after the war I think by the time they finally closed up in 57 early 1957 did they were down to you know just a trickle [Music] Duluth actually holds a interesting place in Minnesota's brewing history because it was the last of the major cities to actually have three breweries st. Paul had three breweries for a time after prohibition but Jurgis closed down in 1951 Minneapolis never had three breweries after prohibition so Duluth was for a while the leading brewery city in the state the people's building stood intact until 1975 and portions of it were torn down and today Brock white company and servpro occupy parts of the facility I believe serve pros in the bottling house if I'm not mistaken this is a part of history I'd never realized was here until you brought us in here thank you very much Kevin for doing this thank you [Music] no one really thought about the fact that was the Duluth brewing and malting company it was royal and like so many cases you know it was just all about global Union royal 4:57 royal 58th you have a royal and not worry about the corporate name the slogans are treat yourself royally or make a date with 58 we're the ones date and then for Carl's brought make mine Carl's bra old time here but formulated a beer as he told me of 5.7% alcohol so royal 57 everybody thinks that Heinz 57 made him change but that says no that wasn't a case I think he just don't want to infringe on them anyway they didn't want their product to be confused with Heinz people were saying give me one of those ketchup beers and I don't blame him if I was a brewmaster I wouldn't want people saying that about my products so handsome okay let's change it to roil 58 because if 557 meant 5.7 alcohol so then he went the Royal 58 and then change that alcohol to 5.8 so he went when he did something he did it you know when it says 58 that's what the beer is gonna be point 5 but I don't think many people knew that so that's where they ended up boil 50 he had a lot to do with the corrals bra when they came out with that I think that was mainly his that was just got you know this formula and that did real well Carl had a contest for the brewery out of contest named our new beer and Carl's brought Carl's beer not a surprise he chose that name so and they produced that right up until they closed I think it was 1960 when the State Highway Department notified the brewery that the plant was going to be sitting smack dab right where I 35 would go through yeah it was the freeway that wanted it I can remember working the way up and there I'm looking out I could see what you could kind of tell what was gonna go on that's too bad the state was gonna have its way and it's too bad they couldn't have shifted i-35 a little more towards the harbor there and you know maybe you just take the malting plant but the railroad apparently that was more important when I look at I 35 the bank right where the taproom should be I often wonder you know did they just knock it in you know is it still sitting underneath there but as far as the duals breweries go yeah that that one was the nicest one hands down remember today tomorrow and in the days and months to come at this giant promotion effort for perhaps Blue Ribbon beer is your advertising our extensive newspaper advertising we'll do a more forceful selling job for you than ever before it will rank at seven and a half out of every ten home the years after World War two the Milwaukee st. Louis breweries as well as the Twin Cities ones were not only able to ship more efficiently but they were also able to afford television advertising which is beginning to shape the demand for the brands and people are identifying with popular brands rather than necessarily the best tastes so all the sudden Miller's and paths and buying of corns on the Bing guys they're like huh we can really put beer on we need a market oh there's television open a Budweiser and bore yourself the most inviting glass of beer you've ever tasted Goldin Budweiser with that good taste or good tires so go ahead one a medium right and who watched it the painting boomer more than one frame use these images on television the nice-looking woman and and beautiful home and people looking and well I guess I wanted me band and ran six back home beer sparkling golden pure refreshing after prohibition much of the consumption has moved to bottled and canned product and while fitters was able to make bottled and canned beer and in fact was one of the very first breweries to adopt a beer can they really had economies of scale that favored the bigger Brewers they were really getting squeezed on multiple sides and because of that fitters was not able to sell as much meaning they didn't have as much cash flow to replace equipment and while they had something of an advertising budget they really couldn't compete on television this is Vickers the beer with more taste to it flavor that comes through on the second sip the third and the fourth in fact it comes through right to the bottom of the glass and here's why Vickers is not a beer factory it's a brewery where they still practice the fine art of natural brewing it takes time and the human touch to brew this more hearty robust beer but it's worth it you try it for yourself and you'll see that fit kurz has more taste to it right to the bottom of the glass I'm workin here on 1920s machinery in 1966 a lot of your equipment manufacturers were not really interested in supplying an all-new small outfit for anyone they were primarily looking to supply the big Brewers well program manual dexterity and strengthen we pile cases 9920 for long necks after reached from me but I had to throw that top one in kappa and then feeding sulker ain't kidding three men standing and roll in front of this huge behemoth machine and it's like a honeycomb in the fourth guy he does the glass he opens up the casings that come in I want everything was returnable [Music] they just have to keep kind of piecing it together and you get quality control problems if you're bottling and you're canning equipment is old because oxygen might get in the beer and wreck the batch and you know bye-bye fitters regal royal or wrecks when Miller tastes good every time and maybe regal royal and rax don't the brewery never really modernized I remember they never did get a forklift we had pride but Wimmer so we couldn't produce efficiently and our beer tasted old world more than tamarind beer alone and we own 10 but pay me boomers let's get a pound sir Oh walking what got to in the 70s with advertising was national advertising and that's pretty tough for a regional to compete with the final days it would bottle beer once or twice a week so they hire temporary work workers so I was hired to go down there and pull cases off a conveyor belt and stack them and all over their trucks were loaded one case at a time by hand the conveyor belt ran from in the brewery probably ran out at about 30 feet or so the last week there was two days when the Tuesday was on canning and Thursday was was bottling and yeah and then after their shift was over on Thursday they walked out with and it's if you would have walked in there ten years after it's like they just locked out the yesterday [Music] yeah what happened here is home brewing you know was really a big thing and there were some really really strong clubs and really good Brewers in those clubs that you know started to having fantasies about going pro and that's where the experior he emerged from if home brewing hadn't been legalized and taken off as a hobby I don't think the craft beer industry would have evolved as it has when Prohibition was repealed the government legalized winemaking that somehow left beer making out of the legislation until the legislation was passed by California senator Alan Cranston and signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 there really wasn't a legal and open way of doing the home brewing and as a consequence it was pretty rudimentary in a lot of cases very experimental and there wasn't a way of getting it particularly systematized there wasn't a lot of ingredients was a lot of people home brewing at least in the state of Minnesota and most of the ingredients were malt extracts used for baking and we would go to the whole foods co-op to get hops so we brewed our first batch in 82 and it was just good enough to get us to brew another one as we were learning how to brew with different ingredients the more ingredients and the hobby itself was growing so they became more available and then finally we got together and with like-minded people said we're gonna meet and talk about home brewing and we started the local club the lstart northern lstart and so there's just this wonderful camaraderie and you'd get together at least once a month usually at someone's home the swap home brews and you got smarter because of that you know obviously there's people that were better than you were but you all everybody ever did was help and there were horrible beers drink some of them were mine and we just got better you know at first it was very limited because you had to know somebody who was a homebrewer to get any of theirs but as that expanded people's definitions of beer expanded and they were interested in creating something new because everyone's making a stout now what can we try that's different and so that spirit of creativity I think also informs both the consumers and the new Brewers [Music] I really enjoy making beer we you know we do it very traditionally you know the process for us is still a lot of hand stuff there's very few buttons that we push one thing that's gotten harder but for me for brewing as my vocals know I have to add my head and I place the circuit you see I was first paid craft brewer in northern Minnesota Lake Superior Brewing was really important for brewing in northern Minnesota because they were the first one that brought back a lot of these styles that we today think of as the craft beer styles I think they did a great job with using names that started to again evoke northern Minnesota to bring in kayak kölsch or to name another one seven bridges to really use the heritage and Lake Superior was able to stand the test of time of that welcome to the brewing quarters of the Lake Superior Brewing Company Bob drums Hauser is president of the company and its head brewer he is also part of the cleaning crew the Quality Control team and its chief pipefitter we had a pump that's about the fanciest thing we had was a pump and a couple of hoses and you pumped it into the into the other tank and when we opened we really only had a couple things that were designed for brewing we have a few lengths of brewing homes and we had some kegs use kegs that we had bought from Leinenkugel's actually and that was the only equip that was designed for brewing all the rest of it was designed for some other beverage we used milk tanks or other stainless steel tanks to do things when we get the other on Sunday and Brewer the three of us could actually stand in one place and hand things to each other we didn't have to walk around because it was such tight quarters this is well we had a single wall round stainless steel tank that we used as our brew kettle to boil in and in order to boil we had a 500,000 BTU gas burner underneath it so it was an open flame gas burner when we lit the thing it sounded like a jet engine roaring and we actually had we were next door to a coffee shop and for a while you actually had to go through the coffee shop to enter our space and that burner would use so much oxygen that we actually had to prop the doors open make sure we had enough make up air coming in there instead of sophisticated thermostats and precision tools Bob uses a regular dairy thermometer on a stick to check his temperatures it was tight space and we could rule once a week we only did six barrels which is about a hundred and eighty gallons and you'd roll the kegs in there and so say you'd have ten kegs you know that's it we did a batch of beer we got ten kegs I think the reason that Lake Superior Brewing Company opens up in fitters is just a happy coincidence of available space and the type of building that would house it well first time we brew and we stood there and looked at you know we think the walls are smiling they're smelling beer being produced again and that's just a good thing it was just one of those that made the beer gods happy to see brewing coming back we're gonna add our bittering hops at this point so they'll be boiling for an hour when we moved out to the West End where they are now on with superior Street then you got the equipment with the refrigerator shion's and you know you could really regulate I mean you really want to ferment that particular temperatures and and chill it and then by then we had a chiller and so we could cool the beer down as fast as we could and it became real like it was the real brewery I guess we also bought a brew kettle man the same one that they're using right now and that that changed everything because that was walled and automated and we could whirlpool we weren't standing up there going like this and we actually had big-boy pumps and things like that and then tanks and that's what you needed now we're doing 500 gallons in a single batch and we do multiple batches of course during the course of the year so it's a lot different process now than it was back then in 1999 we started bottling products and now we have four year-round products that we are bottling and five seasonals that we bottle the process is simple the ingredients is simple and straightforward and with water malt hops and yeast and that's what we put together and so far we've collected 14 medals in the world beer championship so I guess we're doing okay that very next year figures came out at the brew house and made wonderful beers then there was that brew pub experience versus the brewery and that really kicked it in the gear I think fitters Brewhouse was really important to the development of Duluth becoming beer City because the Brewers at filters did such a good job of creating a variety of styles of creating great beer introducing people on the North Shore to nitrogen taps to cask beer to barrel aged beers and Vickers really became a destination for people from all over the country I know it was for me Vickers burrows was a really kind of a cool story you know the now pretty infamous young entrepreneurial partners Tim Nelson and rod Raymond fresh out of college were looking to start something had a few different ideas but the the the true story and it's been told a lot is that they were out in Colorado on a ski trip they were both you know high-level competitive skiers cross country they went to Boulder and went to the Oasis probably they probably went to Mountain Sun they went to a couple places and they were really kind of blown away and they came back home with the idea of first and foremost starting a place we can get a good burger and have a lot of different beers to choose from and they did that they opened in 95 segue and to my brother Mike had mentioned Mike hoops he's the head brewer at townhall brewery in Minneapolis and he's pretty well-known but he was they he was pretending bar for them and he was a very very experienced home brewer and he pitched the guys on considering the idea of putting a small system in and one thing not to another and they ended up buying a small system from Glenwood Springs brewery and gun wood Canyon Colorado Brenner you all went out there dismantled it themselves brought it back here built it themselves and started brewing beer in late 96 and went on tap in 97 as a brew pub they're able to do so many fun styles and Duluth as a culture really connected with the brew house for that reason it's got you know a calm almost hippie vibe and it's just a great place just like a tap room has that meeting place and has been for Duluth for a long time they made the really brave move of not pouring any you know macro beers at their bar which got them a lot of guff now they made a light beer of their own but they had a lot of people to storm out or refuse or harass the server's and they kind of kept their wits about them and they will really try to be polite and just say hey or try this if you like it great if you don't you know I'm not for you and that went on for a long time the beers were always good and also what that did when when Lake Superior was in business you'd only make so many beers you couldn't just make other beers all the time we're a brew pub I think today we're gonna make a anything that comes to my head we're gonna make this beer with ginger and oranges you know whatever so that was the best part Vickers comes in and the brew house comes in and they start making all these different education what's that it's it's a it's a scotch ale here try some the education process the the hosting homebrew gatherings D giving speeches and talks you know by the time I came in 99 it was it was ready to go my brother and Tim and rod did a lot of heavy heavy work and experience for a vicar's brew house to come in like they did somebody had a place to go slowly it started being when you go up to Duluth or go to the North Shore you have to stop and get a growler of Hitler's beer and that happened organically it'll almost not by accident you know like I said our production numbers were rising every year and I surrounded myself with unbelievable Brewers which allowed us to really really be successful and then I like to make kind of interesting recipes and not really follow the typical rules that's why I wanted to work at a brew pub and that gave me a probably of I don't know a little bit of a reputation fair or not and you a little bit difficult but it was fun too through that way [Music] I think I was flipping through a magazine and it might even be as simple as a Cabela's catalog that they were because around the holidays and I think they were selling up your kid and I was like really you can make beer at home homebrew goes too quickly it's five gallons you get a couple of friends over some family and the beer goes so let's make a little bit more and maybe sell enough so this hobby can you can just sustain itself well usually okay so all of our conversations happened while we were cleaning cabins we took over the resort in 2005 you know we opened the first the original brewery in 2011 for about a year we were just talking about it and what system he would get and how you know basically was just talking in tourism I mean basically what we still do but you know if he was gonna go with a smaller system that was going to be much more labor intensive or the three barrel that was going to cost more money but be more efficient and it just topped it over long enough that we figured the the more expensive [Laughter] it's applied to the rustic in you know few places up and down the show we debated on even selling growlers I mean like should we you shouldn't be and then picture why not and then there's a good decision if it's a good decision because also you know six months later the taproom law came into effect and that completely changed everything [Music] the doors opened in August of 2014 I came in January of 2015 and look those are the days I mean I think there were three people back there and now there's 12 total different we're approaching nine thousand barrels this year which is excited you know two years in to this operation as is a lot it just keeps going it just does [Music] 30 over 460 barrel fermenters here and when we opened and now we have 12 and we have for the 14th 13th and 14th coming in March a lot of this just problem-solving like this is historically how it's been done how does it work for us and we tie that into our processes as we go [Music] we started relatively larger than other breweries were starting at the time with a thirty barrel brew house and we quite quickly outgrew that it was small enough that you can still be really flexible and you can produce a lot of different types of beer on it but it's large enough that you can you can pump out a good amount of beer I have the venture pills are Pilsner lager in a brewery setting the tanks are constantly just moving beer from tank to tank and sofa beers tying up a tank for 28 days we could have made two batches of that top in that thing two times the amount of bent hop for one time of the lager but that was a commitment we made to the brewery initially initially we knew we wanted to have this beer and so we designed and scaled in order to be able to do it we had the name bent paddle and we came up with this idea of bending tradition so all of the flagships are traditional styles so we have this little edge this little bend to each of them that makes them American inventiveness but also just our own version of that style it tells the Pilsner story it tells the east story tells the water story those are the elements we wanted to focus in on we end up brewing a lot you know where we're operating 24 hours a day four days a week right now but it you know it is holding its own what is your opinion on where that would finish one over to a friend's place P home-brewed and I went help the following day and spent a hundred and fifty dollars and built my my first all grain Bruce ystem and brewed the following day and never really looked back well for me it was a passion for beer that's kind of what got me into this whole this whole thing so home brewing with some guys back in college they're like hey you want to make some beer I was like you can make beer yeah and it's something that was pretty new to me as a music major so I went to the Siebel Institute in Chicago and the world bring Academy which was located in Germany kind of learning the process side behind brewing and then kind of went from there you know we're constantly trying to find people that are better at what we do and put them around us yes this is kind of the goal it was such a whirlwind at the beginning it took us a while to decide to do it but once we got into it they're just you know starting a family moving you kind of had to put the risk out of your mind for a while and just concentrate on the task and concentrate to doing it and failure wasn't an option there's a lot of growth that happened a short amount of time so and we're so happy to be up here we opened in May of 2013 and that first semi full year we did 1500 just over 1,500 barrels and this year were going to be close to 16,000 so sometimes we have to say let's stop and smell the roses for a second because we're always I mean we're all working on to the next thing and what's great about a packaging brewery is you're producing but you're not tied to here you're extorting the beer so we can go you know as far as the beer will take us we're not reliant on the local population necessarily if we were just a taproom focus or just a brew pub and I remember the first time we left the tap room and went home and fell asleep before 11:00 we were like we made money well we great because it was still operating gear was in the marketplace and we felt like we did it and we're very proud and very excited about that the unexpected part was and we're so happy for it was the growth success so we wrote a seven-year business plan and we outgrew it in a year and a half so so we just kept on building on that plan using the same trigger points that we had for expansion and keeping the same math and doing a small small tweaks here there and it it scaled up the demographic has you know it's 21 plus if someone asked you who drinks your beer I mean I can cite examples in our tap room weekly of that spread 21 - 95 you know it's there's really not a tight demographic you can identify there's always a lot of room for education and it's and it's really fun seeing those people for the first time experience a craft beer that they really enjoy you know that's that's one of the main things that we do here it's it's it's fun to see people really enjoying a product that you spend a lot of time and a lot of work making we've had this dream for over a decade and it's finally coming to fruition John and lost and I grew up together and we kind of always knew that we wanted to do a project like this together we've always done crazy things as we grew up we started brewing in the basement and giving it to our friends and family and making labels for it and then we kind of groomed ourselves to take it to the next level then comes in mr. TJ Estabrook and as a third partner he brought everything else to the table that we didn't have between the actual you know physicality of the construction and all the regulatory hurdles you have to jump through and the financial hurdles you have to jump through it's a delicate balance to get them all to kind of play well together and it takes a lot of patience and calm [Music] [Applause] in our heads we always again we never questioned whether we were gonna get to a point like this it's fun to see it actually happen and terrifying but I think it was never doubt our mind that we would take it as far as we did [Music] [Applause] just like everyone I started home brewing I was a biology major and they they were hand in hand and then started doing internships at Lake Superior and vicars and it I couldn't I couldn't look back it's the the challenge of taming untamable things I guess I would say you know between the live microorganisms that you're always working with and and it also brings an element so of cooking and baking which I've always liked to do so creating and to me that that's something that has never could never become boring right now it is gathering what we've learned in the month that we've been open refining things working on the product working on our atmosphere in the back you know we were trying to have a little more fun and make it a little more homey in public so it's kind of got the shelves that you would expect like a built out elements you know I come from like an artistic background and like Midwestern arts tends to have this kind of neurotic behavior to it so gluing 20,000 pennies to some board that fits right in line with that it's hard to tell what's next really I try to tell myself one foot in front of the other which I know is not uncommon but it's true because if I think about too far that it then you're not sleeping so I wake up and tell myself what can I make today you know how could I make today a little bit better and that helps me not become overwhelmed I think even though I still end up being overwhelmed this is a place to brew beer it was I mean really built to grow beer water barley hops and yeast those four things if you're making a wheat beer you got it put the weed in there that's craft beer and then whatever you've got up in there here's these four ingredients make something history repeats itself the technology has gotten so much better for packaging canning that you can get these smaller breweries now they can enjoy some of these luxuries only a big plant would be able to have I'm glad that we have some of these small breweries coming up they're bringing it back now hope they really do well my dad was going to be proud I think I think that the people that are brewing the beer now have a real passion for what they're doing and those people then had a passion for what they were doing almost all even a bad day in the brewery is still a good day because you're in a brewery a lot of these the Brewers now they're started as home brewers and they just had a passion for it and make excellent beers [Music] we're definitely grateful for Lake Superior brewing and Vickers kind of pioneering the way for craft beer in Duluth the mentors that I've had between Dale and Dave hoops Frank Zuba and others it's an impressive history line it makes very proud to be part of it and I do feel like each and every Brewer is carrying on that tradition and making it better and constantly being passionate about it and not letting something so so interesting in ancient died off [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: PBS North

Views: 86,062

Keywords: Beer, Documentary, PBS, Craft Beer, Virginia, History, Minnesota

Id: DeixGz8kkqY

Length: 84min 38sec (5078 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2017