Located in the heart of Wisconsin’s dairyland, Wausau has been a thriving community on the Wisconsin River in the shadows of Rib Mountain for many years. George Stevens, founder of Stevens Point, first established a lumber mill near the Big Bull Falls on the river. The mill allowed a community to grow in the valley and later, other industries would follow. George Ruder, one of the founders of today’s Stevens Point Brewery, took his brewing skills to the community. His arrival marked the beginning of Wausau’s brewing industry.
By the 1900s, Wausau had grown to be a commercial industrial center. European immigrants arrived daily to the city. With them they brought their hard work ethic, the want of a better life, and a thirst for beer.
Lumbering, paper making, and the manufacture of sand paper were principle industries in Wausau. Farming in the surrounding countryside provided the population with food, but the people never forgot their beer. Even during Prohibition, Marathon County continued to manufacture beer and liquor. At times during the 1920s, the county accounted for half of Wisconsin’s Prohibition violations. The people viewed beer as a food as well as a drink
Frank Mathie and George Ruder both started successful breweries in Wausau, Wisconsin, during the 1860s. By the late 1890s, both breweries were producing over 50,000 barrels of beer to the people living in the small city and the surrounding villages. The long north central Wisconsin winters provided the cool temperatures needed for producing good lager beer. Both brewers prospered and the demand for their products increased with their reputation for excellence.
After the deaths of Wausau’s original brewers, George Ruder (1893) and Frank Mathie (1900), the two breweries production leveled off and the breweries stopped expanding. Demand for fresh local beer continued to grow around the surrounding area. Mathie and Ruder heirs began planning a merger of their two plants, a plan that took nearly 17 years to complete. During those years, other out of town breweries shipped their products to Wausau. A group of investors noticed the large number of people purchasing beer from out of town breweries, saw an opportunity, and began to plan Wausau’s third brewery
The Wausau Brewing Company was chartered in February, 1913. Nicholas Veeser, the man credited for starting the Wausau Brewing Company, visited a newly built brewery in Pennsylvania and came back to Wausau with the idea of building a modern plant. He convinced many Wausau’s business and political leaders to construct the city’s third brewery on Wausau’s west side. The proposed new brewery seemed to be an assured thing due to the relaxed beer production from Mathie and Ruder breweries. Henry Ellenbecker, called for meeting on February 24, 1913, and fifty-four prospective stockholders attended. A Committee was formed and the brewery stock was sold throughout Wausau.
he stockholders decided to incorporate the brewery with a capital stock of $125,000, the shares being $100 each. $100,000 of the capital stock was placed for sale and $25,000 was reserved as treasury stock with the brewery construction planned for the early spring.
It did not take long to raise the necessary capital, as the company commenced business on March 10, 1913. Fred W. Krause was elected President; August F. Marquardt, Vice President; John Schirpke, Treasurer; and John King, Secretary and Assistant Treasurer. The original stockholders where community leaders and had ties with City, County and State government that would help the project develop. Some stockholders also used their business connections to help build the brewery.
Among the original stockholders were:
Fred Krause had the blue prints for the new brewery drawn up by the Wausau Iron Works, and the company also provided the structural steel used in the buildings framework. Krause was also the general contractor for the project.
John Ford handled the legal work involved with the new company, and John Wolf’s real estate firm located and secured the property the brewery was to be built on.
Nicholas Veeser became the brewery’s first brewmaster. and held the position until 1916 when W. August Steinmann took over the position.
A building permit was issued by City Assessor G. A. Steltz on April 19, 1913, and the company began constructing its new brewery.
The modern style fireproof brick and steel plant was designed with all the beer cellars located above ground. The designed also allowed the company to produce 12,000 barrels annually, the first beer being brewed on May 1, 1914.
The brewery brewed Clover Belt and Settler’s Brau beers for four years prior to Prohibition. During those years, finances were tight and power struggles developed. Marquardt and Krause challenged one another constantly for the company’s presidential position. John Schirpke, the company’s treasurer, was replaced by John Jaeger by 1916. Brewmaster Nicholas Veeser was also replaced by W. August Steinmann in 1916. John King, the company’s original secretary, was replaced by John Jaeger by 1918. The company changed its corporate articles on June 23, 1919, and the brewer would try to survive Prohibition by selling produce in addition to manufacturing near beer.
Prohibition put an end to the two Wausau breweries (Mathie and Ruder merged in 1917). The Wausau Brewing Company was the only city brewery to stay in business during Prohibition by making near beer. August Marquardt stepped down as President in 1919 and was again succeeded by Fred W. Krause. The Wausau Brewing Company changes its name to Wausau Produce and Storage on March 5, 1923 and was given a L-117 permit number.
On August 3, 1925, the company changed it name again to Chief Wausau Company and listed its capital stock at $75,000. The Chief Wausau Company tried to stay in business with its near beer but rarely showed a profit on paper.
Rumors of mob involvement in the brewery began to float around Wausau and mobsters were seen at Wausau’s largest hotels. Chicago mob boss, and Al Capone rival, Joe Saltis, was known to frequent the northern part of the state and also visit the Wausau area. It was during one of his visits to northern Wisconsin that three railroad carloads of beer were shipped from a small rail siding east of Wausau known as Kelly. On August 10, 1926, the carloads of beer were discovered in Chicago. The loads consigned to R.S. Smith and the Williams Construction Company, were immediately seized by federal Prohibition agents. The shipment affidavits only showed that each boxcar was to be filled with lumber and lath. Instead, each car contained eighty-three full barrels and a few half barrels of real beer.
J. C. Messerknecht, the railroad agent at Kelly, was questioned by Prohibition agents, and could not remember anything unusual about the shipments. Each of the cars were loaded on the Kelly-Schofield branch, but he could not remember any previous shipments being made by the individuals involved.
Difficulties were encountered at the middle of Prohibition that forced the company in receivership. James T. Fernock purchased the Chief Wausau Company property late in 1926 for $35,000 at a sheriff’s sale. The buildings remained idle until Fernock saw Prohibition losing its grip and reopened the company as the West End Malt Company on March 21, 1932.
Wausau and all of central Wisconsin waited for Wausau’s breweries to return. The first beer to be served in Wausau after repeal came from Chief Oshkosh, almost a three hour drive east of the city. The city’s businesses were caught in the country’s economic depression, and looked for ways to work with the new upstart brewing industry. A few of Wausau’s lumber finishing concerns began to manufacture wooden beer cases for breweries around the state.
While Elliott Ness was battling Chicago’s Al Capone during Prohibition, the Chief of Prohibition Agents, Edward C. Yellowley, was struggling with Joe Saltis. While Al Capone had his beer produced within the city limits, Saltis had his beer produced outside the city (mostly in Illinois and Wisconsin) and had it shipped in Chicago via railroad.
During Prohibition, a number of breweries throughout the Midwest had been raided under E.C. Yellowley’s orders. The $100-$500 fine for brewing illegal beer was mere petty cash compared to Yellowley’s bill for back taxes on beer. If Yellowley could prove the brewery was producing illegal beer for more than one year, the tax bill was garnished with a one-year mandatory prison sentence for the owner. E.C. Yellowley could never get enough evidence to prove the beer seized from Kelly, Wisconsin, was from the Wausau brewery, but he got his revenge on Joe Saltis after Repeal.
E.C. Yellowley was promoted as Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms’s Chicago District Permit Supervisor after Prohibition. He was responsible for issuing brewing permits to all the breweries in the Great Lakes Region. Saltis wanted to continue in the brewing business, but Yellowley didn’t forget him and refused to give him a brewing permit. Yellowley also persuaded all the other District offices in the United States to follow the same orders. A rumor surfaced that Saltis was attempting to enter the lawful beer industry in Wausau. Yellowley declared, "There’s not a chance for Joe Saltis to get a brewery permit. Neither will any brewery that Saltis is backing gets a permit. Furthermore, if I discover that Saltis is the backer of any brewery that already has a permit that permit will be promptly revoked."
E.C. Yellowley was known for his strict application procedures. He was known to reject a brewery’s application unless it was typed legibly and error free. Smudges on letters and words weren’t good enough for him as he rejected several applications each day. "Every application for a permit is thoroughly checked" said Yellowley. "We find out who the Officers and Stockholders of the applicant brewery are, what their reputation is in the community and other pertinent matters of a nature that would bar Joe Saltis from getting a permit."
Wausau was just a short drive from Saltis’ resort near Winter, Wisconsin, where he had became a "Country Gentleman" after Repeal. He bought the resort using money from his prostitution and liquor rackets he ran during Prohibition.
At the dawn of Repeal, James Fernock saw his future in returning real beer to Wausau. Fernock, Otto and Louise Fehlhaber, invested money and time into their West End Malt Company getting it ready to brew beer. They filed papers on March 18, 1933 to change the company’s name back to the Wausau Brewing Company, with a capital stock of $10,000. Fernock had a difficult time convincing E.C. Yellowley that Joe Saltis was not involved in the Wausau brewery. Only after Fernock was able to prove that he was an owner of the company, and the Fehlhabers were not acting as front men for Saltis, were they granted a 3.2 brewing permit. Yellowley warned Fernock if he ever hears rumors in the future connecting Saltis with the Wausau brewery, he would start criminal action.
On April 24, 1933, the Wausau Brewing Company received its first fifty bales of hops. Twenty persons were employed by Fernock who operated the brewery twenty-four hours a day. Extensive improvements were made and a total of $20,000 was spent for new equipment, grain, cases, and bottles. Kegs were purchased from Madison, labels and boxes from Wausau packaging companies.
The Wausau Brewing Company started marketing its new beer "Adel Brau" on May 31, 1933. Plans were made to increase the number of men working in the bottling department by ten. A railway sidetrack was needed on the south side of the brewery, a new bottling department building was needed to facilitate larger quantities of bottled beer. The sidetrack also extended alongside the brewery building for loading barrels and on which all raw materials to the plant was handled.
E.C. Yellowley ordered numerous inspections on the Wausau Brewing Company during the year. To end any mob connection rumors, and to raise the capital needed to continue improving the plant, Fernock recruited two successful businessmen into the Wausau Brewing Company. The men were George D. Wolff and Louis Schoen.
Louis Schoen was the head brewmaster at Heileman and refused to allow any beer to leave the plant before it was aged nine weeks. Schoen had been a brewmaster for G. Heileman Brewing Co., La Crosse, for 40 years. Heileman’s President, Harry Dahl, was trying to speed up production at the La Crosse brewery and shorten the aging process. Schoen refused to change the aging process and was fired early in 1934. George D. Wolff was a talented Chicago businessman with connections throughout the city. In 1932 he and his father, George H Wolff, ran a successful trucking business in Chicago. It was at that time G. Heileman Brewing approached George D. Wolff to act as a beer distributor in northeast Illinois, including Cook, Lake, McHenry Counties, and along the lake shore area of Indiana. The Wolff’s had a railroad siding they utilized from their trucking warehouse. This same siding could be used to unload Heileman’s beer from rail cars. The Wolff family accepted the distributorship from Heileman.
George D. Wolff first met James T. Fernock when Fernock was working for Barnes and Crosby, an advertising firm located in Chicago that specialized in lithographs.
Old Style Distributing, the Wolff’s Chicago beer distributorship, was being shorted beer by Heileman late in 1933, and the Wolff family began to look for other suppliers to help fill their Chicago markets. Heileman could not make enough beer to supply the short markets at that time.
James Fernock was a skilled salesman and in advertising expertise to sell beer. When he learned of Louis Schoen’s dismissal from Heileman he immediately contacted Schoen and offered him a job as Vice President and Brewmaster. The thin, mustached, thick German accented Schoen accepted the job as long as he could brew beer the way he wanted it brewed, Aged Nine Weeks.
It is ironic that Schoen, the man that was partly responsible for Wolff’s shortage of Heileman’s beer in Chicago, was teaming up with Wolff to supply him with the addition beer he needed to supply his Chicago markets.
The two businessmen joined Fernock in the Wausau Brewing Company on July 19, 1934. The capital stock was set at $100,000 Wolff and Fernock each owned 48 percent of the brewery and Schoen the remaining two percent. The Wausau Brewing Company produced Schoen’s Old Lager, Adel Brau and Rib Mountain Lager. It sold its products throughout Central Wisconsin, including a regular shipment as far west as Portland, Oregon. The brewery averaged about 28,000 barrels per year through 1945, however, in the late 1940s production was increased to almost 50,000 barrels per year.
By 1939 an additional $150,000 was spent in improvements. The brew kettle was replaced with one that was 50 percent larger. In 1939 the Wausau Brewing Company built an addition to its bottling house and installed additional bottling equipment. Draft beer represented about 60 percent of the company’s production, the remainder being bottle beer. Bock Beer was always made during the Spring season, beginning on St. Patrick’s Day.
During the 1930s, the brewery was visited many times by representatives of investors contemplating the erection or reconstruction of their own brewery because of the various features of the design the plant. The Wausau Brewing Company was one of two breweries to be remodeled in Wisconsin before the advent of Prohibition, and was among the most modern in the state.
Louis Schoen was responsible for introducing Kreusening at Heileman. When Schoen came to Wausau, so did the recipes and brewing styles he once used at Heileman. Louis Schoen introduced his products in Milwaukee with great success. He once wrote in a letter to beer depots, "Since you have tasted Adel Brau, Rib Mountain Lager and Schoen’s Old Lager, you know the distinctly better flavor that our patient, natural aging brings to these beers. Your palate has told you this beer has body which only a liberal portion of the finest grains and Wisconsin barleys can produce. A small of a glass of any of these beers gives you the clean, true beer aroma. All these characteristics are found in our beers.....because they are Krausened beers, with nothing but pure grain carbonation....because they are aged longer, the natural way."