The year was 1961. During early spring, The Milwaukee Journal had published a pictorial story about a little brewery in Theresa, Wisconsin and titled it "America's Smallest Brewery." The German village is situated along the Rock River, its shoreline framed by willow trees. The village's two church steeples and its water tower protruded above the poplar trees and hills of the Kettle Moraine. Visitors can view a picturesque sight as children skate the river during the winter and ducks search for their next meal on the water in the summer. Along the road which bends with the river, sits the tree shaded, old stone-walled brewery. The building once produced a pungent yeasty aroma of fresh barley malt and hops. The antiquated brewery once enjoyed a colorful past dating back to Wisconsin's early pioneer days when legends are born. The day after the Journal story was read by curious readers, they called on the brewery to try a glass of fresh Pioneer Brew. Unknowingly, the G. Weber brewery ceased to exist. Beer drinkers in the surrounding counties started to purchase their beer from the "Big Four" in Milwaukee.
Today, the people of Theresa, Wisconsin are celebrating the village's sesquicentennial (150th anniversary), but without its local brewery that once quenched their thirsts many years ago. The G. Weber Brewing Company now lives in the memories of all of those who still hold on to their German Heritage and tell stories about the company that used to brew the beer.
Theresa (pronounced "Ter ESS a") was founded by Solomon Juneau in 1846 and named the town after his mother. Juneau, who was also the founder of Milwaukee, often traveled the Indian Trail from Milwaukee to Green Bay as a trader for the American Fur Company. During these trips he would become fascinated by the beauty of the East Branch of the Rock River. By 1833, he built a trading post for buying furs and selling goods to the Indians.
Other settlers soon followed. By the late 1840s, Solomon Juneau built a dam on the river to provide power for his grist and saw mill. In 1847 he built his new home in Theresa and moved his family in 1852. His stay, however, was short lived as his wife passed away in 1855 and Juneau, himself, died suddenly in 1856, while making a payment to the Indians in Keshena for the United States government.
Beginning of Brewery
By 1848, the developing German village wanted a local brewery to provide them with fresh beer. An immigrant named Ullrich Oberley arrived in Theresa the following year and established a brewery in the village. The product was called Pioneer Brew; it was from a recipe which was handed down from a long line of German descent brewmasters. More German settlers arrived in Theresa and Oberley's brewery grew just as quick as the village.
One of Oberley's employees, Benedict Weber, saw a greater future with the brewery and wanted to buy into the business. Benedict was a native of the little town of Schwendi in the province of Wuerttemberg, Germany. When he joined Oberley, he bought a half interest in the brewery and about a year later, bought the entire business from his partner and renamed it the G. Weber Brewing Company. The "G" was used after his son's name "Gebhard."
The G. Weber Brewing Company was one of the earliest breweries in Wisconsin and by 1870, Theresa acomondated three operating breweries. The other two companies were the Berthold & Company and John Quast. Quast would eventually become the Fred Bandlow brewery in 1896.
In 1860 Weber's brewery was totally destroyed by fire and it was immediately rebuilt using salvaged field stones from the old building. Benedict Weber was a skilled architect and designed his home and the new brewery. In 1880 the South half of the fieldhouse was replaced with a brick brewhouse and in 1895, the North half of the building was replaced with a brick and stone boiler house. Up until the 1890s, Indians still roamed along the banks of the Rock River. According to some legends, hostile Indians once forced residents to use the stone brewery building as a refuge from an Indian attack.
The Second Generation Brewery Continues On
Benedict Weber passed away in 1864, when his brewery was only 15 years old. The 49 years old Weber was buried on family property across the Rock River from the brewery. He requested his body to be preserved by soldering his coffin shut in a stainless steel vault and to be buried facing towards the brewery so we would always keep an eye on the business. All the other deceased were buried facing east, Benedict was the only one facing west.
After Benedict Weber's death, his son Gebhard became sole owner of the business and remained the principal stockholder until the time of his death in 1917. By 1880, The G. Weber brewery was producing over 1,200 barrels of lager beer each year. During the pre-Prohibition years, the brewery did most of their brewing , ice making and ice storage during the winter months. Fresh ice was cut off the Rock River during winter and the underground cellars were used to store beer during the summer.
The brewery had many brewmasters during the course of its history. Some of the brewmasters were Joseph Wiesenbacher, Schwoba Sepp, Fritz Wagner, Vinzenz Asenbauer, John Greif and Bertram Weber, Ossie Reimer, and Gilbert Radtke. Each brewmaster practiced their own brewing methods and the flavor of Pioneer Brew changed over the years. The beer drinkers of Theresa didn't mind because the product was always "new" and the brewmasters knew how to satisfy the villagers' taste.
In 1901, the Bandlow brewery started a wind-fed fire, destroying the Bandlow plant and a large portion of Theresa itself. Fortunately, Weber's brewery did not experience any damage because it was located below the hill from the fire. Bandlow would eventually become an agent for the Gutsch brewery in Sheboygan. A house, still occupied by Bandlow family today, was built on their brewery site later.
The G. Weber Brewing Company was incorporated in 1906. During the early 1910s, the company started to use paper labels on embossed 15-ounce bottles. A multi-colored paper label featuring a crouching Indian was used on the bottles. After 1910, Gebhard's brewery was the sole beer producer in Theresa until Prohibition tormented America.
Prohibition
To survive National Prohibition, the Weber family made small batches of malt syrup wort so people could used it for making illegal booze. The brewery bottled and kegged the wort and it was sold around Theresa and Mayville, Wisconsin. On paper, the Webers did not make any beer during Prohibition,
There was a narrow tunnel under the road to the Weber house. The tunnel was used for piping steam and water from the brewery. Some local residents believed the tunnel was used to transport bottled beer from the brewery to the house. Bottles of spiked wort were handed one by one through the wall that separated the tunnel from the house. The people in the house would re-case the bottles and placed the filled cases on a horse drawn wagon to be distributed secretly. The local constibulatory rarely enforced the Prohibition law unless their leniency was abused. Unlike many other breweries that manufactured illegal beer during Prohibition, the Webers were never caught. The Weber family survived Prohibition through business holdings in several farms outside of Theresa and taking jobs throughout the community.
Repeal
At the dawn of Repeal, the residents of Theresa wanted the Pioneer Brew back. The Weber family tried to start up the brewery again and Gebhard's son, Bertram C. Weber, took ton he task to refit the brewery with new equipment. The Great Depression put the Weber family's finances in terrible shape. Bertram barely raised enough money to add artificial refrigeration to the cellars and was desperate for additional financial help. Two Milwaukee investors, Mark C. Hanna and Sam Chemer came to Bertram's rescue and financed the opening of the Weber brewery. Bertram Weber continued as President and Brewmaster, Mark Hanna was Secretary and General Manager, and Sam Chemer was the "principle" partner who invested most of the money in the operation.
Chemer and Hanna first met at Chemer's Milwaukee boarding house during Prohibition. After Prohibition, both Mark and Sam resolved to get into the brewing business because they just simply wanted to make beer. They bought into the G. Weber brewery because it was the only brewery near Milwaukee they could afford. After the two financed the brewery, Chemer converted his boarding house on 221 Juneau Avenue into a tavern. His brewery sent beer to the "Pioneer Tavern." on a weekly basis.
Long time residents of Theresa remember Sam Chemer as a headstrong individual. Children during the 1940s and 50s remember arthritis stricken Sam as he hobbled the sidewalks with two canes going to his favorite tavern. Sam used to shake his cane and yell at the children , "Raus, die kinder, Raus!" which means get out of my way.
Sam also experimented along with Weber and engineering new equipment for the brewery. He is credited for designing Weber's pasteurizer. There was nothing complex about the machine. A set of three metal trays was submerged in lukewarm water, then transported into hot water, and back into luke warm water. It was an inexpensive method to pasteurize beer and was used to the day the brewery closed.
Mark Hanna was an autocratic leader. If a person didn't get him upset, he was a good friend. Hanna did most of the business correspondences when the brewery needed to wheel and deal on prices. Mark was the brewery's salesman. His skills were well suited for selling beer. Mark Hanna also had a degree in music and was responsible of forming the Pioneer band and they played at many fairs, carnivals, and parades in the local communities.
Growth for Pioneer Beer
The best years for the Weber brewery were during the second half of the 1930s. By 1940, the G. Weber Brewing Company was producing 10,000 barrels annually. Hanna and Chemer had ideas of shipping Pioneer Brew into Milwaukee. It was successful for a while, but they couldn't compete with the Milwaukee brands. Pioneer was sold throughout the area in towns such as Theresa, Mayville, Fond du Lac, Lomira, Allenton, Nabob, Nenno, St. Lawrence, Addison, Knowles, and Kohlsville. Pioneer Brew was available on draught or in 12-oz steinie bottles. Pioneer Brew could not penetrate the West Bend market, because West Bend-Lithia was well established there.
Most of the brewing equipment was dated from the pre-Prohibition era. The 35-barrel brewkettle was purchased from the Storck brewery in October 1909. The Webers also had purchased the mash tun, grant, paff and other brewing equipment from the Storcks. The mash tun was totally made of wood. The bottle capper also dated back to pre-Prohibition. It was a foot operated model that capped one bottle at a time. For aging the beer, the brewery used ten 100-barrel steel and two 55-barrel wooden tanks.
The Weber brewery experienced some challenges while they enjoyed prosperity in the 1930s. In 1937, a Wisconsin brewery inspector discovered a rodent control problem and forced the brewery to upgrade their rodent control program. The inspector discovered that rats could fall into the grist mill hopper and be grounded with the malted barley before the brewing process began. He instructed the brewers to fabricate a lid to cover the malt mill hopper. Bertram' s son, Cornelius, became a brewery rodent exterminator in 1938. One afternoon, Cornelius was on break and enjoying a beer in the brewery's cellar. He encountered a rat commencing up a steam pipe in the cellar. In disgust and desperation he took his half-empty steinie beer bottle and threw it 20 feet striking the rat square in the head, killing it instantly. He would never repeat that feat again.
Oswald "Ossie" Reimer was a long-time G. Weber brewery employee. Even before he was employed by the brewer, he was involved with his father cutting ice from the Rock River for the pre-Prohibition cooling. After Prohibition he was hired as a part-time brewery worker to assist Bertrum Weber in the brewing responsibilities. By 1936, Bertrum was reaching old age and could not do much heavy work, so Ossie helped him. Later, Ossie was given the full responsibilities of the brewmaster. He was working a minimum of 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Hanna and Chemer hired Reimer with the understanding that he was to do the work of two people. And for that reason, he was compensated more than the other workers.
Ossie's employment was discontinued in 1946 due to a disagreement with Mark Hanna. He had just finished painting the brewhouse. He had asked the employees not to use the room that day to allow the paint to dry. One employee disregarded Mr. Reimers request and tapped a keg in the room. Ossie was furious! He picked up the employee from the shirt and immediately and escorted him out of the building. That employee was a member of the Weber family and complained to Mark Hanna about the incident. Hanna confronted Ossie and promptly disciplined him. Mark Hanna would not hear Ossie's side of the story and he replied back saying that he was quitting and at the end of the day when his chores were done. At the end of the day, he left the brewery and started work at Harold C. Johnson Brewing Company in Lomira, Wisconsin.
After Ossie left the company, Gilbert Radke took over the brewmaster's duties, a position he held for the next 24 years. Bertrum's son, Cornelius, became President after his death on December 7, 1941. In 1946, Gilbert was the youngest brewmaster in the United States, and was the last of the line of Master Brewers of German descent. Gilbert was also a member of the volunteer fire department and used the brewery as an unofficial meeting place for the firemen.
Before World War II, Pioneer Brew used a modified version of their pre-Prohibition label which featured some German phrases. The German translation reads: "How pleasing to the eye, how easy on the throat, a drink of life that gladdens body and soul." This label was used until the early 1940s when Weber removed the German wordings during World War II. Throughout World War II, the brewery had a strenuous time finding ingredients and brewing supplies. The brewery had to cut back on production which lost many of their accounts.
During the brewery's brief prosperous days in the 1930s, brand new delivery trucks were purchased from Louie Beck, the local Dodge dealer in Theresa. Shortly after the war, the brewery had only one remaining 1936 Dodge truck that was irequently inoperational. When the weather was cold, the truck was very slow at starting .