He was a young, married emigrant when he found a job driving a beer wagon near Chicago. He had been only a farmer and a soldier when he left Germany in his early twenties, but Conrad Seipp was a good observer, willing to learn, and anxious to prove that America was the land of opportunity. Twenty years later, he headed one of the nation’s largest and most famous breweries.

Conrad Seipp was born in Langen, Hessen, Germany on September 27, 1825. The youngest of five brothers and one sister, he followed in his father's footsteps and learned the carpentry trade during his early years. The family also owned farmland outside the village where young Conrad spent some of his time working the family farm. Political events in Germany were rapidly changing during this time. Called into military service at the age of twenty, he left his family and served in a regiment of bodyguards for the Grand Duchess of Hessen.

As a protector of royalty, young Seipp was forced to fight against friends and relatives during the German Revolution of 1848. He wisely emigrated to the United States at the conclusion of the hostilities. After a short stay in Rochester, New York, he moved to the town of Lyons, near Chicago, where he drove a beer wagon for The Miller Brothers Brewery. With his wife, Maria, he pulled up roots one more time and moved to Chicago, applying for U.S. citizenship soon thereafter. For the next five years, Conrad operated a small hotel at the corner of Washington and Fifth Avenue (Wells Street), just a few blocks from City Hall and the County Building. His son, William, was born during this time.

The hotel business was a financial success. In 1851, Seipp staked a claim on 80 acres of farm land near what is now 79th and Jeffery, on the Southeast Side of Chicago, and moved his wife and infant son out of the city and onto his new farm. A few years after arriving in Chicago, Seipp's mother, older brother, and sister also emigrated to the Chicago area.

In 1854, Seipp sold the profitable hotel and bought a small brewery from pioneer brewer Mattias Best. Located on the South Side, at 14th Street, the plant soon burned down, a common fatality of Chicago's early breweries. Wasting no time after the fire, he started construction of a new brewery at the foot of 27th Street and Lake Michigan. The main building of brick (one brewery destroyed by fire was enough), had a fifty foot frontage, underground cellars, a malt floor on the ground level and living quarters for his family on the second floor. As barrelage increased, so did his business acumen.

In 1858, Seipp formed a partnership with Frederick Lehmann, and the thriving brewery was now known as Seipp & Lehmann. With the additional capital from Lehmann, the plant was greatly enlarged to keep up with consumer demand. After initial resistance, Chicagoans were starting to take a real liking to lager bier, especially Seipp & Lehmans'.

Chicago’s leading brewery sets national records

In 1872, Lehmann was killed when his horse bolted and he was thrown from his buggy. Inspite of the untimely death of his partner, the brewery continued to grow. During the period of May 1872-1873, the Seipp & Lehmann Brewery produced 103,697 barrels of beer. This made it the leading brewery in the United States. Seipp eventually bought out Lehmann's widow and, in 1876, incorporated the Conrad Seipp Brewing Company.

Although eventually losing it's nationwide production lead to the Best & Co. Brewery in Milwaukee, the Seipp plant continued to dominate the Chicago brewing community. An article in The Chicago Tribune on January 1, 1880, described the Seipp brewery as the largest in Chicago with a barrelage in 1879 of 108,347. Although they made full use of their malting operation, it was now necessary for the brewery to purchase malt from outside sources to keep up with production.

Seipp was one of the few Chicago brewers to ship beer outside the city, and his Salvator bottled beer was greatly appreciated in the developing Western States and Territories. According to the Tribune article, Seipp's bottled beer was often considered a temperance drink, one that "...has done more to reform the mining districts of the West then all the moral agencies that have ever been sent there. It has supplemented the use of stronger drinks."

Seipp advertising runs counter to industry view

Conrad Seipp's extraordinary use of advertising was a driving force in the brewery's later success; calendars, match boxes, coasters and serving trays all spread the gospel of Seipp's Extra Pale and his other premium brands. Seipp's attitude on advertising often ran contrary to the early admonitions of the Western Brewer. In 1878, the trade publication claimed that the solicitation by local newspapers for beer ads was nothing more than extortion. The trade journal went on to warn that newspapers might be inclined to threaten an editorial attitude in favor of prohibition, if sufficient local breweries did not advertise with their hometown papers.

The attitude of the Western Brewer on advertising was typical of the early industry's attitude as a whole. Up until this period in American brewing, little was to be gained from trying to reach the general public with expenditures on advertising. There was the assumption, based on past practices, that it was only necessary to reach the saloonkeepers with a steady supply of beer, price discounts and other perks to keep sales strong. The concept of consumer brand loyalty had not quite taken hold with Chicago's beer drinking public either; they simply demanded two simple things of their beer...that it be fresh and plentiful.

With the advent of pasteurization and reliable bottling techniques, Seipp increased bottled beer production and continued his goals of invading outside markets and strengthening his dominance in the Chicago area. The brewery's extensive use of advertising and Seipp's willingness to export beer was aided by his flair for knowing his market. During the 1880's, a number of horse racing tracks opened in the Chicago area. Seipp took advantage of the racing fad and purchased parcels of land near Washington Park Race Track on the West Side of Chicago. His monopoly of the real estate surrounding the area allowed Seipp to build company saloons near the race track to accommodate the thirsts of the racing enthusiasts.

His understanding of niche markets might be considered today either genius or scandalous, depending on the reader's point of view. During this unchecked period of Chicago's growth, brothels and "sporting houses" were common, protected by ward politicians and police alike. Numerous Seipp advertisements were placed in The Sporting House Directory of 1889, a guide to Chicago brothels, another example of Seipp knowing his market and exploiting it. This untapped market proved quite successful. In the early part of the twentieth century, it was estimated that the annual consumption of beer in the Chicago bordellos was more than seven million bottles.

In January of 1890, brewer Conrad Seipp passed away. A few months later, the Conrad Seipp, West Side, and the F. J. Dewes Breweries, along with the L. C. Huck and the George Bullen malt houses, were bought by English investors and combined to form the City of Chicago Consolidated Brewing and Malting Company, Ltd. The plants retained their individual names. Each plant had its own bottling plant and the malt for the breweries was now made primarily at the huge Seipp plant. The Conrad Seipp Brewery continued to grow with a sold barrelage in the early 1900's of about 250,000.

Brewery goes on offensive promoting beer and health

Acutely aware of the pressures of the early temperance movement in Chicago, the brewery went on the counter offensive. It described its leading products as drinks of moderation coupled with wild claims of their healthful and invigorating effects. An example can be found in a World's Fair souvenir pamphlet, published in 1893 by the brewery. The Pilsner and Extra Pale were recommended as a tonic for "invalids and those suffering from dyspepsia..." The Salvator Export was claimed to be prescribed by physicians. The Columbia was suggested for "convalescents and persons whose bodily infirmities have rendered them physical weak..." as well as "an absolute repairer of the daily waste of him who sweats with his brow and frets with his brain."

The claims are laughable by today's advertising standards. But as temperance and prohibitionist pressures increased throughout the local brewing community, other breweries took note of the Seipp brewery's successes with advertising and medicinal claims and soon followed suit with similar therapeutic boasts to hold their sales steady.

Around 1910, the profits of Chicago's breweries took a sharp downward turn. The establishment of package or liquor stores and a dramatic increase in the new habit of drinking at home brought on by the portability of bottled beer and the advent of street cars and automobiles, kept many former customers out of the neighborhood saloons. Now Dad could pick up a case of beer at an off-site retail outlet and take the family to a picnic grove at the edge of town while both him and Mom enjoyed a cold beer with their food. More often, a customer would simply drink his purchase at home. With either scenario, saloons had begun to lose the monopoly of being the only place where one could buy beer. Those breweries that depended on their saloons for reliable cash flow soon found themselves hurting, including the Seipp brewery.

Home delivery hurts tavern sales and brewery profits

In an effort to stabilize, if not increase profits, the Conrad Seipp Brewery took on an unprecedented advertising campaign on billboards, in newspapers and even theater programs, much to the chagrin of the local prohibitionists. Delivery service from the brewery was a new service greatly promoted by the Seipp brewery. With a phone call, brewery fresh beer could now be delivered to the customer's door. This move, however, further cut out the much needed cash flow that the saloonkeepers had once enjoyed. As the local saloons succumbed to increasingly poor sales, local breweries began to tighten credit arrangements with the saloonkeepers. The number of saloon closings increased, thereby shrinking the initial and most reliable source of profit that the breweries had enjoyed.

To counter the increased advertising campaigns of the Seipp brewery, and other members of the local brewing community, anti-saloon forces began their own campaign to put pressure on Chicago newspapers to stop accepting advertising of beer and liquor. In 1913 and throughout most of 1914, the Hearsts' Chicago American and The Record-Herald fell to the demands of prohibitionists and ceased all printed drink advertising.

Weakened by the political and economic events of the years prior to World War I, the City of Chicago Consolidated Brewing and Malting Company, of which the Conrad Seipp Brewing Company was a part of, was forced to reorganize in 1916. During this critical period in Chicago brewing history, Conrad Seipp's eldest son William, did "the Dutch act," and committed suicide.

Grain and coal shortages during World War I left the brewery floundering until the end of legal beer sales in Chicago on June 30, 1919. On that date, the State Of Illinois began to enforce a search and seizure act that prohibited the sale of any drink with an alcoholic strength greater than 1/2 of 1%, thus ending the local brewing trade six months before the beginning of National Prohibition in January of 1920.

During the early years of Prohibition, the Conrad Seipp Brewing Company limped along with the production of near beer, although there is some evidence that they continued to surreptitiously produce full strength beer for the Torrio-Capone organization. By 1925, the brewery ceased all production, but did act as a distributor for soda pop and near beer products of other Chicago breweries throughout most of the Prohibition years.

In March of 1933, just days before the legal resumption of the sale and manufacture of 3.2% beer in Chicago, demolition began on the once great Seipp brewery to make way for construction of a local hospital. The corporate charter of the brewery was allowed to dissolve that same year. The Conrad Seipp Brewery Company was only a memory.