7 days ago
- Business
- Indianapolis Star
Retro Indy: Indiana has long rich history of brewing its own beers
(Editor's note: A version of this story originally appeared in 2014.)
With its rich German history, Indianapolis has had a long tradition of being home to many a brewery.
From the time John Young and William Wernweg set up the city's first brewery in 1834 until April 2, 1918, when the state of Indiana went dry due to Prohibition, Indianapolis had a bustling beer brewing industry.
A contractor for the National Road bridges, Wernweg stopped work long enough to join forces with Young to create the city's first brewery on the south side of Maryland Street near West Street.
Once Wernweg returned to building bridges six years after the brewery opened, the two original owners sold it to Frenchman René Faux, who found more profit in the sale of yeast to housewives than in the sale of beer. That did not stop Faux from opening a second brewery at Washington Street and College Avenue, according to the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. At that point, his former partner John Philip Meikel opened his own brewery down the street at Washington and California Streets.
These early breweries all offered "strong beer," a concoction that was neither lager nor ale. In 1859 C.F. Schmidt began turning out barrels of suds and proved to be the first successful brewmaster serving lager. The Schmidt brewery occupied an entire block on Alabama Street with a two-story brewery, huge ice house, malt and bottling houses, and 50 horses and 30 wagons.
Competition came in 1863 in the form of the Pete Lieber Brewery on Madison Avenue followed by the Casper Maus Brewery on West New York Street in 1868. The three breweries joined forces in 1889 to form the Indianapolis Brewing Co. and began exporting beer to Canada and Cuba.
Eventually there were at least 18 breweries operating in Indianapolis, turning out brews called Duesseldorfer, Lieber's Gold Medal Beer, Indiana Club Pilsner Style, Imperial and Duselager. In brewing terms, the industry "bloomed" until Indiana became a dry state in 1918 — about a year before Congress passed the Volstead Act Oct. 27, 1919.
Across the state, Indiana had 76 breweries at the time that Prohibition took effect, according to the website Indiana Beverage. After Prohibition ended in 1933, however, it took decades for Indiana to see a robust craft beer industry again. While some breweries did reopen after Prohibition, many did not survive to the competition from national beer brands.
Craft beer started experiencing a resurgence in Indianapolis the 1990s. Many credit the opening of the Broad Ripple Brewpub in 1990 with its microbrewery next door with starting the trend here. By 1991 the Indianapolis News reported that the brewpub had become a "hot spot for others who enjoy stronger, more flavorful drink than the average American brew," serving more than 40 different beers, five of which were brewed on site.
In 1993 the Indianapolis Star reported that the Broad Ripple Brewpub and a brewery in Mishawaka were the only two brewpubs in the state. But soon after that, the trend started to catch on and more breweries opened their doors.
In 1996 the inaugural Indiana Microbrewers Festival was held. The annual event grew by the year and by 2004 the number of microbreweries in the state had grown to at least 17, an Indianapolis Star story about that year's festival reported. Among that number was the Broad Ripple Brewpub, whose owner reported that he had seen his business grow by 5% to 10% each year.
