Columnist John Gurda offers a hearty “prosit” to the return of Pabst Brewing to Milwaukee.
Let’s hope this run lasts as long as the last one
Pabst is back. Not in a big way, but the Milwaukee-born icon is making beer in its hometown for the first time since 1996. The company has set up shop in the old Forst Keller, a long-abandoned church-turned-tavern on the western edge of its original property. The plan is to bring back some old brands, experiment with some new ones, and re-plant the Pabst flag in Milwaukee after an absence of 21 years.
The brewery has been serving beer for weeks, but its official grand opening will take place during a block party on Saturday. The scale of the operation is undeniably modest. At peak production a year or two from now, the Pabst Milwaukee Brewery will turn out 4,000 barrels a year. When you consider that its parent company sold 5 million barrels of its various brands last year — the vast majority contract-brewed by MillerCoors — the new operation’s output will be barely enough to wet the bottom of the bucket. (For a more local comparison, Lakefront Brewery produced 45,000 barrels in 2016.)
Whatever its output, Pabst’s decision to open a brewery in Milwaukee combines smart marketing with powerful symbolism. It restores a continuity that goes all the way back to 1844 — two years before Milwaukee became a city.
The original business, however, was not a brewery, and no one named Pabst was anywhere near it. In 1842 Jacob Best, Jr., and his brother, Charles, emigrated from the Rhineland to Milwaukee and started a vinegar works. The young community was already a popular destination for German immigrants. Their prospects were so promising that the brothers persuaded the rest of the family to join them and enter a field they had already mastered in Europe: brewing.
The second wave of Bests included patriarch Jacob, Sr., who was nearing 60, and his younger sons, Phillip and Lorenz. In 1844, the five Bests — father and sons —established the Empire Brewery on 9th St. and Juneau Ave. Its initial capacity was 300 barrels a year, which makes Pabst’s new brewery seem positively oceanic.
The Bests did well in a crowded field. By the time Phillip assumed sole control in 1859, annual production had climbed to 7,000 barrels, good for fourth place in Milwaukee. Three years later, Phillip’s son-in-law, Frederick Pabst, joined the business. The former Great Lakes ship captain proved to be an astute businessman, a natural leader and a born promoter. By 1868, the Best brewery was the largest in Milwaukee, and in 1874 — only 30 years after its founding — it became the largest in America, with an output of more than 100,000 barrels.
Best, which was renamed Pabst in 1889, was expanding rapidly, but that
didn’t prevent a church—a temperance church, at that—from building literally in the brewery’s shadow. In 1872, the First German Methodist Church dedicated a pleasant Cream City brick structure on 11th St. and Juneau Ave. — just two blocks west of the main plant. The Methodists, who stood foursquare against “the universal evil of drunkenness,” soon had reason to regret their decision. The brewery’s malthouse was next door, its stables were across the street, and the rich aroma of malt and hops from the brew kettles wafted through the church’s windows every Sunday morning.
Enough was finally enough. In 1895, Frederick Pabst paid the Methodists $25,000 for their building. The congregation moved one mile west, beyond range of the brewery’s sounds and smells, and Pabst made a few alterations. The church’s steeple was replaced by a castle-like turret that matched the rest of his complex, and in 1899, presumably to the consternation of the Methodists, the old church reopened as a saloon and concert hall. Called the Forst Keller (“forest cellar”) and operated by lessees, the new landmark was described by the Milwaukee Journal as “an attractive place of amusement, arranged in Old German style.”
Both Pabst Brewing and the Forst Keller prospered for decades. The brewery remained America’s largest through the end of the century, weathered the rigors of Prohibition, survived the end of family control in the 1930s, and rose to new heights after World War II. The Forst Keller became a mainstay of German Milwaukee. It was a favorite of the courthouse crowd—generations of judges and attorneys walked over for lunch every day—and its accent was decidedly Teutonic. The menu featured Old World favorites suc as wienerschnitzel and hasenpfeffer, a zither-player entertained every Friday night, and the Liederkranz and the Liedertafel men’s choruses both practiced in the upstairs hall.
The Forst Keller’s connection with all things German created some problems in the late 1930s. Its hall became a favorite meeting place of the German American Volksbund, a group of newer immigrants who were openly pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic. A rash of front-page stories and the prospect of losing their license prompted the managers to ban the Bund and any other minions of the Third Reich.
I was an occasional patron near the end of the Forst Keller’s long run, particularly for the Friday night fish fry. I recall a dimly lit place with checkered tablecloths and waitresses who wore dirndl dresses at an age when dirndls might not have been the wisest fashion choice. But the food was great, the beer was fine and the place dripped with tradition.
It was in the 1970s that things began to come unglued. Changing tastes, a changing neighborhood and a six-lane freeway literally next door doomed the Forst Keller. After nearly 75 years as an ethnic and culinary landmark, the converted church closed its doors on Sept. 15, 1973. Pabst announced plans to turn the building into a brewery museum for display of its “old beer steins, antique brewing equipment and other mementos.” Pabst, however, was soon having problems of its own. In 1977 the company lost its place among the nation’s Big Three brewers (with Anheuser-Busch and Schlitz), in part because it couldn’t afford to keep pace with the industry’s runaway advertising expenditures.
Falling farther behind and ripe for the picking, Pabst was purchased in 1985 by Paul Kalmanovitz, a California investor who cut capital spending, canceled the advertising program entirely, and generally bled the brand for all it was worth. I described him in one angry column as “a blunderer and a plunderer” with “the public-relations instincts of Attila the Hun.” To no one’s great surprise, the Milwaukee brewery closed in 1996.
For the next decade, the historic Pabst complex simply moldered. Trees grew on its rooftops, brick walls sagged, and vandalism was rampant. Milwaukee real estate mogul Joseph Zilber finally halted the decay in 2006, buying the entire property and launching a mixed-use development that has breathed new life into the northwestern corner of downtown.
Zilber’s project also created a place for Pabst’s homecoming. “We had to be here,” CEO Eugene Kashper told me at an April 12 reception. “If we were going to brew in Milwaukee, it had to be here.” The company’s re-entry has been more graceful than its departure. After a $3.2 million renovation by an ownership group that is largely Chinese, the old German Methodist church fairly gleams. The sanctuary and choir loft are still identifiable, but drop lighting and crisp white walls give the space a contemporary feel.
What I was most looking forward to on my initial visit was tasting Andeker again. Creamy, rich and slightly nutty, Pabst’s super-premium beer was my favorite during the years I was a regular at Big John’s Tap on S. 12th St. I was disappointed to find that the new Andeker bears little resemblance to the original — too light, too sharp —but I’m sure the brewers will keep trying. Experimentation, after all, is their charter.
The more important story is that a company with an impeccable Milwaukee pedigree has re-established a presence, however modest, in the place of its birth. Welcome home, Pabst, and may this stay be even longer than your last.
John Gurda writes a monthly column for the Journal Sentinel about local history. Email: mail@johngurda.com