The Minnesota River Valley is one of the most bountiful farming lands in the midwest. Driving U.S. Highway 169 near Le Sueur, southwest of Minneapolis and St Paul, you enter the "Valley of the Giant®". Large billboards featuring the Jolly Green Giant line the highway. Though its corporate offices are now in the Twin Cities, the area still boasts of its pride in the land made famous by the Giant.
Thirty-five miles southwest of the Twin Cities, in the heart of the Minnesota River Valley, is a city of Jordan. This Minnesota farming village was once the home of two breweries that supplied beer to its inhabitants and nearby vegetable growers.
The Jordan Brewery Inc. got its start sometime during the mid-1800s when a prominent businessman, Frank Nicolin, opened a general store and a brewery in Jordan. When the brewery became too small, Nicolin built a new plant just outside downtown. In 1867, he sold his second brewery and built another one 300 feet down he road. This last brewery would eventually become the final Jordan Brewery Inc.
These two Jordan breweries were located at the bottom of bluffs along the scenic Minnesota River Valley. The newer brewery, the larger of the two, was three stories high with three-foot thick walls of limestone blocks. The main building had over 11,000 square feet of space and a separate bottling house of over 4,000 square feet. Before Prohibition, separate bottling houses were required by Federal law, so bottles could be checked for revenue stamps as they crossed the street. The main brewhouse had a tap mounted on the outside wall so visitors could sample fresh Jordan beer.
After Frank Nicolin left the brewing business, the two breweries changed hands several times until Schutz and Hilgers obtained control of the brewery in 1902. From 1902 to Prohibition, the brewery was known as the Schutz and Hilgers City Brewery.
The Schutz and Hilgers City Brewery was a popular gathering place for area residents. A beautiful park and pavilion were built near the brewery where dances, weddings, and live music were held every week. Daily commuter trains stopped at Schutz and Hilgers Park to drop off visitors who could enjoy food and a glass of Jordan beer at the brewery.
Brewing came to a halt by 1920 with Prohibition. The smaller Jordan brewery missed the financial difficulties brought by Prohibition. It closed in 1916. Schutz and Hilgers sold their bottling house to the Cedar Lawn Hatchery. The new occupants installed a 47,000 capacity egg incubator, the largest of its kind, and began hatching chickens for farmers in Minnesota.
The brewery park remained open and was so popular that the Scott County Food Seed Association negotiated in 1926 to buy the property for $9,000. When $2,400 was offered as a down payment, Schutz and Hilgers accepted. The park became the original location of the Scott County Fairgrounds. Today, it is the home of the "Mini-Met" baseball park.
After Repeal, the Jordan brewery reopened in 1936 to achieve its greatest success. It reopened as the "Schutz & Hilgers Jordan Brewery Inc." The annual meeting of the stockholders in February, 1936, elected Joseph L. Hilgers, President; Ed F. Nachbar, Vice President; and Frank Hilgers, General Manager.
The Cedar Lawn Hatchery was still producing chickens in the old bottling house, so a new bottling plant was built next to the main brewery. Three weeks after the bottling equipment arrived, Jordan beer was introduced to the local market in a new, non-returnable "Stubby" bottle.
At its peak in the late 1930s, the Jordan Brewery Inc. was producing 40,000 barrels annually. That’s more beer than the Jacob Schmidt Brewing Company in nearby St. Paul, Minnesota. Jordan beer, Natural Product, and Old Style Brew were popular beers in Minnesota and seven neighboring States.
Brewers in other states noticed the popularity of Jordan beers. One brewery owner, J.F. Lancer, of the Lancer Brewing Company and Arizona Brewing Company of Phoenix, offered to buy the brewery that produced the popular Jordan beer. Jordan officers accepted Lancer’s offer and sold him the entire stock of the brewery in June 1946. Frank A. Hilgers remained as manager at Jordan and Ted Hilgers operated the bottling plant. Their task was not to increase production, but to close down the brewery.
After World War II, President Truman introduced a program to help reduce a serious food shortage in Europe. His plan called for a 30 percent reduction from 1945 levels in grain supplied to American breweries. The extra grain would be sent to Europe. Lancer’s real intentions in buying the Jordan Brewery were to acquire the Jordan production allocations and transfer them to his two companies in Arizona. This allowed the Lancer and Arizona Brewing Companies to maintain production of A-1 Beer.
The brewery in Jordan sat dark and quiet, and no beer was produced under the ownership of the Lancer Brewing Company. Brewers in the Twin Cities, Hamm’s, Grain Belt, and Schmidt took over many of Jordan’s past accounts.
The success of the Jordan brewery was remembered by Dan Bruzek, the former bookkeeper of Schutz and Hilgers Jordan Brewery, and later manager of the Mankato Brewing Company. Bruzek negotiated with Lancer for the purchase of the idle Jordan brewery from September to November 1946. Lancer finally decided to sell the brewery to the Mankato Brewing Company when Truman lifted the grain reduction plan at the end of the year.
After the purchase by Mankato, the Jordan brewery manager, Frank Hilgers, announced in the local newspaper that all Jordan beer cases and bottles were to be returned to the brewery. As an incentive, dealers offered up to 80 cents per case for empty bottles.
At considerable cost to the Mankato Brewing Company, new and updated equipment was added to the Jordan plant to increase the annual output of Jordan beer from 40,000 barrels to a combined output of 150,000 barrels of beer annually. The brewery’s home office was moved to Mankato, the home of Kato beer. By December, the sweet aroma of beer was again coming from the brewery and residents knew that Jordan beer had returned. The brewmaster, Joseph Handschuh, set the first brew, known as the flushing brew, to clean out the kettles, vats, and pipelines. Dan Bruzek of the Mankato Brewing Company discontinued Natural Product and Old Style and only produced Kato and Jordan beers.
Mankato Brewing Company suffered serious financial problems after refitting the Jordan brewery. The brewery in Mankato also needed major upgrades, and their product quality began to suffer. As sales declined, the Mankato Brewing Company closed the Jordan brewery in 1949. The funds invested in the Jordan brewery were lost. Mankato never recovered the losses from the Jordan brewery, and in 1951, the Mankato Brewing Company was sold to the Cold Spring Brewing Company of Cold Spring, Minnesota. Local business interests in Mankato eventually acquired the Mankato Brewing Company in 1955, and began reduced production of Kato beer for the local market. Jordan beer was discontinued. The Mankato Brewing Company finally closed in 1966.
The Atlas Brewing Company in Chicago, Illinois, a branch of Drewry’s Ltd. of Indiana. took notice of the success of Jordan beer. Atlas acquired the Jordan brand label and began distribution of 12-oz., flat-top cans in 1957. The Jordan beer slogan "Aged In Caves" was replaced by "Slowed Brewed", although the packaging used a 1947 design. Since Jordan beer was no longer produced in Minnesota, local consumers lost interest in the brand, and Atlas discontinued its production. The last Jordan beer was brewed 1962. The original Frank Nicolin brewery is pretty much forgotten. It’s original site is buried under what is now Minnesota State Highway 21.
The closed Jordan brewery property was sold in 1954 to Green Industries Inc., a wholesale egg distributor. They stored eggs in the brewery caves until 1970, when the building was extensively damaged by a fire. After the egg plant closed, the brewery caves become a teen hangout. The building sat empty and was further vandalized up until 1990.
The aging caves, built into the bluffs behind the Jordan brewery, have been the source of many wild rumors. They were originally used to cool the beer and as a "gravity-fed" system to move material used in the brewing process before electricity was introduced in the Minnesota River Valley. It is rumored that the caves run underground all the way to the nearby town of New Prague, some 12 miles away. Another rumor was that secret passageways in the caves led to homes built on the hill overlooking the brewery. The wildest rumor had a monster living in its wet, dark crevices. This one was probably started by concerned parents to keep their children from exploring the caves.
The Univerity of Minnesota helped dispel some of those old legends when they explored the caves in May of 1981. Over the course of three hours, a team of speleologists acquired enough data to produce a map of the caves showing exact locations of ventilation shafts, the size of each room in the caves, and their distance into the hillside. Many photographs were taken of the interior, as geologists were interested in the white sandstone which gives a history of the land going back 50 million years ago. The University of Minnesota expressed the opinion that, even if the brewery is demolished, the caves should be preserved for geological interests. The University of Minnesota offered to construct and install a sturdy, lockable metal door to the entrance of the caves. Information gathered from the exploration of the caves was used in a study of water quality problems in southeastern Minnesota, as in a detailed map which the city could used in the event of an emergency.
One cave story involves collectors "exploring" the caves shortly after the brewery closed. Upon entering, they were surprised by the amount of unused bottle labels left in stacks or scattered throughout the cave’s floor. There is little doubt that many of these discarded labels have found their way into many label collections over the years.
In addition to the caves, the brewery itself has been a cause of controversy. A viewpoint column in the April 12, 1990, edition of the Jordan Independent urged citizens to "Preserve Jordan’s past for its future generations." By the 1980s, the building, while not an eyesore, had become extremely dangerous. The 1970 fire burned through the roof and much of the interior, including sections of the floors. The city was offered the brewery property, but showed no interest. The current owners then considered having it demolished, but this did not sit well with many Jordan residents. According to the newspaper article, the structure, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, deserved a monument or historic marker. The feelings expressed by many were "... take down the brewery, but don’t bury the memories."
In 1973, a Jordan resident, Gail Anderson, bought the brewery property in a partnership for $6,000. The sale included the brewery building and 12 acres of wooded hillside. She hoped to restore it to its original pre-Prohibition grandeur for an apartment or office space. A partnership change led Anderson to sell her share in 1980. In early 1990, city officials again announced plans to demolish the building. At the last minute, Gail Anderson re-purchased the property, this time without a partner. Renovation began in late 1990 with the expected re-opening of the brewery building sometime this year.
In 1995, another Jordan resident, Keith Unger, acquired the rights to the Jordan Beer and Jordan Natural Product labels. One can only wonder if Jordan beer will again be available to the communities of the Minnesota River Valley.
The author, Kevin Busse, ABA #5624, began collecting Jordan breweriana after finding an old Jordan beer bottle at his grandparent’s farm. His discovery started a search for other Jordan breweriana at shows, antique stores, and flea markets. As he acquired new items for his collection, he began asking questions about the brewery. The result is this article for the American Breweriana Journal.
This article appeared in issue 87, Juy-August 1997 by Kevin Busse