|
|
PART 2
HOST/RANDY MASON
KANSAS CITY WAS TRULY A BOOMING TOWN.
BUT EVEN IN PROSPERITY, SOMETHING SINISTER LOOMED ON THE
HORIZON. SOMETHING THAT WOULD IMPACT BOTH BEER MAKERS AND
BEER DRINKERS ALIKE.
HOST
AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY, THINGS
WERE HUMMING RIGHT ALONG IN THE BREWING INDUSTRY. SOME OF
THE LARGER BREWERS WERE EXPANDING INTO REGIONAL AND NATIONAL
MARKETS, GIVING LOCAL BREWERS A RUN FOR THEIR BEER MONEY.
BUT SOMETHING ELSE WAS BREWING WHICH THREATENED ALL THEIR
LIVELIHOODS.
CARRY NATION AND HER TEMPERANCE BAND
WERE ON TOUR, TRASHING SALOONS, DECRYING THAT DEMON RUM
ALL TO A TUNE THAT BREWERS HATED TO HEAR. NOT SURPRISINGLY,
CARRY’S HOME STATE, KANSAS, WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO
ADOPT STATEWIDE PROHIBITION IN 1881.
Higgins: it didn’t totally shut it down because you
could bring beer in from another state, you could go get
beer at your pharmacy. Maybe under the term "hot bitters"
or "German Tea."
Higgins: You can pass a law, it just doesn’t mean everyone
is going to follow it. Atchison Brewery stayed open in open
deviance of the law and all they had to do was pay a token
fine once in awhile and give the sheriff free drinks
HOST
THEIR LOSS WAS KANSAS CITY’S GAIN.
DURING THAT TIME, A STRETCH ON 9TH STREET BETWEEN GENESSEE
AND STATE LINE CLAIMED THE TITLE OF "WETTEST BLOCK
IN THE WORLD". SO NAMED BECAUSE OF THE 24 BUILDINGS
ON THE BLOCK, 23 WERE EITHER SALOONS OR LIQUOR STORES. AND
ALL WERE KEPT BUSY BY THE WORKERS FROM THE KANSAS WEST BOTTOMS
WHO WOULD CROSS THE BORDER AT QUITTING TIME FOR LIBATIONS.
STATE BY STATE, THE TEMPERANCE BEAT CAUGHT ON, AND THE SOBRIETY
SOCIETY BEGAN TO TARGET CERTAIN ETHNIC GROUPS WHOSE TRADITIONS
CENTERED AROUND BEER.
O’Neill: After mass on Sunday, the families would gather
in pubs for lunch and for a pint – and that’s
where the socialization was done.
Keel :There was a regular beer garden culture in every town
and city in the United States that had a significant German
population, and that came into conflict with the anti-drinking
forces who felt that Sunday was the Sabbath, and should
not be a day when liquor was consumed.
Holian: at that point the focus shifted away from trying
to dissuade to outright legislation to ban alcohol and generally
drive the drink culture underground….the final push
came with WWI… with an outbreak of very widespread
strong anti-German hysteria, and there isn’t any better
word for it other than hysteria
Keel :The Germans became barbarians. They were the Huns…Everything
that had anything to do with the German culture was viewed
extremely negatively. The music of Beethoven became the
wail of the caveman…
Holian…All that was predominantly German in the United
States went under ground and never recovered and not coincidentally
the brewing industry also suffered
HOST
SO IN 1919, PROHIBITION, OTHERWISE
KNOWN AS "THE GREAT EXPERIMENT," WAS SIGNED INTO
LAW.
FOR THE SIXTEEN MISSOURI BREWERIES, EMPLOYING OVER SIX THOUSAND
PEOPLE IT WAS A NIGHTMARE COME TRUE. IN ORDER TO STAY IN
BUSINESS, THEY HAD TO GET CREATIVE.
Sullivan: Some of the breweries were able to survive P because
they started manufacturing non beer products….
Maxwell: The extremes of the stories
are bizarre. AB …cured hams and processed meats. Of
course, everybody tried making various kinds of sodas and
root beers and ginger ales, anything that you could put
into bottles. They experimented with all sorts of chocolate
or tea or coffee based drinks.
Sullivan: Here locally both Goetz and
M made near beer and soft drinks.
Maxwell: near beer was a de-alcoholization
process of regular beer..
Maxwell: So you could take a near beer…And
they would literally leave room for about 1 oz. …And
you would buy you’re gallon of alcohol at the local
druggist…and mix it with your beer… a process
that was called "Needling". And one of the things
that really enabled the Goetz brewery to survive Prohibition,
was that their beer needled the best.
Sullivan …one of the most dramatic outcomes and outcroppings
from Prohibition was the growth of the crime scenes and
the mob and Mafia …Because immediately nothing was
more profitable than bootlegging.
O’neil …The Irish simply reverted to speakeasies…so
it was often times considered wink, wink to operate an illegal
saloon or to transport whisky and beer. I have nothing to
prove it, but my guess… Irish behind the wheel.
HOST
BY THE TIME OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION,
PUBLIC SENTIMENT HAD CLEARLY SWUNG AGAINST PROHIBITION.
PEOPLE WANTED CRIMINAL ELEMENTS OUT OF THE BUSINESS AND
LEGITIMATE BREWERS AND DISTILLERS BACK IN. SO IN APRIL OF
1933, FONDLY RECALLED AS "NEW BEER’S DAY,"
CONGRESS REPEALED THE 18TH AMENDMENT. THAT NIGHT, AMERICA
CONSUMED ONE MILLION BARRELS OF BEER.
REPEAL DID NOT NECESSARILY MEAN BUSINESS AS USUAL. IN THE
EXCITEMENT, NEW BREWERIES OPENED ONLY TO INSTANTLY FAIL.
OLD BREWERIES STRUGGLED TO SURVIVE.
Maxwell: Well the technology in making these things in the
rest of the world, kept right on going during this period
of time. The means of delivery evolved. It went from horse
drawn wagon to motorized trucks…The technology of brewing
beer and the mass merchandising of beer changed completely.
HOST
THE SURVIVING BREWERIES ALSO HAD NEW
RULES TO DEAL WITH – TIED HOUSES WERE OUTLAWED. AND
THE DISTRIBUTION NETWORK NOW WAS MANAGED BY INDEPENDENT
WHOLESALERS. THOSE WITH CLOUT WERE AWARDED CONTRACTS TO
CARRY BRANDS IN SPECIFIC TERRITORIES. OTHERS WORKED THEIR
WAY UP FROM THE GROUND FLOOR, LIKE BOB SULLIVAN’S GRANDFATHER,
EDWARD, WHO BECAME A DISTRIBUTOR FOR FALSTAFF.
Sullivan … he borrowed the money to get started in
the business from my grandmother. And I understand he paid
her back to the penny, it was about 25,000 dollars. And
so in 1948 Sullivan Beverage Company was founded. …My
father and his two brothers, my two uncles, were also in
the business and then I became the third generation Sullivan,
but the fourth generation in my family to enter the beer
business in KCMO.
HOST
THE BUSINESS ALSO TRICKLED DOWN THROUGH
GENERATIONS OF OTHER FAMILIES. WHILE THE SULLIVANS DISTRIBUTED
FALSTAFF, JOE BASSO AND EVENTUALLY HIS SONS, SOLD SCHLITZ
FROM A WAREHOUSE NEAR UNION STATION.
Basso: 22nd & Baltimore, 1022 Baltimore, where Lydia’s
is today. In fact, my office is where her kitchen is….
When I walked into that building at 22nd & Baltimore
I came home that night and told my wife, "I’m
going to own that place someday". She just laughed
and said, what are you going to buy it with buttons? …
it took me 23 years, but I did it.
Sullivan: In the last 23 years I’ve been out of it
for 3 years only. And the three years I was out of it, I
couldn’t wait to get back into it. So obviously to
say it’s in my blood.
Basso: so today the Sullivans and Bassos are in the business
again. It’s a Hatfield and McCoy kind of attitude,
and in that lies a great story, one that enriches the beer
business in KC.
HOST:
THANKS TO THE DISTRIBUTORS, WE HAVE
MORE BEERS TO CHOOSE FROM. BUT NO DOUBT ABOUT IT, PROHIBITION
TOOK ITS TOLL. OF THE 1700 BREWERIES AT THE TURN OF THE
CENTURY, ONLY 164 SURVIVED. THE HEIM BREWERY WAS A LOCAL
VICTIM, SHUTTING THEIR DOORS FOREVER IN 1919.
WITH THE DEMISE OF HEIM, AND MUEHLEBACH AS THE ONLY LOCAL
COMPETITION, ST. JOE’S MK GOETZ BREWERY SAW KANSAS
CITY AS RIPE FOR THE PICKINGS, AND DECIDED TO RE-ESTABLISH
A DEPOT HERE. BUT BOSS TOM PENDERGAST THOUGHT OTHERWISE…
Maxwell: Pendergast said to them that if you’re going
to sell your beer in our town, you’re going to make
it here. And so, they bought some land at 17th & Indiana.
… It opened in 1936… And it had a very large smokestack
that the word Goetz was inlaid in stone on the side and
everything. And you could see all that from all over town,
which is kind of a famous landmark here in Kansas City…it
had a capacity of 150,000 barrels a year….There was
no bottling of beer there. No canning of beer there…it
was a draft only operation. And it remained that way. …
HOST:
THANKS TO THE DISTRIBUTORS, WE HAVE
MORE BEERS TO CHOOSE FROM. BUT NO DOUBT ABOUT IT, PROHIBITION
TOOK ITS TOLL. OF THE 1700 BREWERIES AT THE TURN OF THE
CENTURY, ONLY 164 SURVIVED. THE HEIM BREWERY WAS A LOCAL
VICTIM, SHUTTING THEIR DOORS FOREVER IN 1919.
WITH THE DEMISE OF HEIM, AND MUEHLEBACH AS THE ONLY LOCAL
COMPETITION, ST. JOE’S MK GOETZ BREWERY SAW KANSAS
CITY AS RIPE FOR THE PICKINGS, AND DECIDED TO RE-ESTABLISH
A DEPOT HERE. BUT BOSS TOM PENDERGAST THOUGHT OTHERWISE…
Maxwell: Pendergast said to them that if you’re going
to sell your beer in our town, you’re going to make
it here. And so, they bought some land at 17th & Indiana.
… It opened in 1936… And it had a very large smokestack
that the word Goetz was inlaid in stone on the side and
everything. And you could see all that from all over town,
which is kind of a famous landmark here in Kansas City…it
had a capacity of 150,000 barrels a year….There was
no bottling of beer there. No canning of beer there…it
was a draft only operation. And it remained that way. …
McCluney: When I first
got there, Muehlebach had 25% of local beer markets. A.B
accounted for 25% of beer. And Falstaff each had 25%, the
rest are made up of what we would call the cats and dogs.
McCluney: we'd go to lunch with some really important people
in KC and invariably the subject would turn to beer. People
just liked to talk about beer it was a nice business to
be in
McCluney: I describe it as gamooglikeit, which means it's
cozy and warm
HOST
MUEHLEBACH WAS ALSO A FRIENDLY PLACE
TO WORK. JUST ASK JOHN KORZINOWSKI, OR AS FRIENDS CALL HIM,
"CHIEF," HE STARTED THERE IN 1939.
Chief : I went to ask for a job and they said 90 cents an
hour the first day was unloading grain.. .they liked my
work and I stayed there for 30 years and 3 months…I
started when I was I couldn’t drink beer…
Chief : I had to go behind the kegs
Too Young to drink. The boss said, If you want to drink
go behind the barrels
HOST
CHIEF SAW A LOT OF CHANGE THROUGHOUT
HIS TENURE IN BEER. THE CAN DRAMATICALLY TRANSFORMED THE
PACKAGE SALE BUSINESS, ACCOUNTING FOR HALF OF ALL BEER SOLD.
FOR THE FIRST TIME, MORE BEER WAS CONSUMED AT HOME THAN
IN TAVERNS. AND WITH THE HELP OF ADVERTISING, CERTAIN BRANDS
WERE GROWING EVEN MORE SUCCESSFUL.
Holian: And the ultimate revolution was television. In the
1950s… advertising on national TV shows, as well as
radio, made a huge difference in national brewers outlook
in their ability to market beer successfully not just in
their home markets but across the nation.
HOST
ANOTHER WAY TO GAIN NATIONAL ATTENTION
WAS BY SPONSORING SPORTING TEAMS. IN FACT, THE KANSAS CITY
BLUES PLAYED AT MUEHLEBACH FIELD. BUT SPORTS MARKETING WAS
NOTHING NEW…
Sullivan: The first professional baseball team in KC were
the Cowboys …They were only around 1885, 86. During
86, we know that the Heims were a sponsor and supporter
of that team…Then you have the Muehlebach's who were
fanatical baseball people. I wouldn’t even begin to
know how many different teams they sponsored. … The
Muehlebach's probably more so than anyone else in the city
were responsible for the KC Athletics moving up here. Unfortunately
they sold the brewery, a year before they got here.
Maxwell: mass advertising was turning brewing into a totally
different industry. And it was becoming increasingly competitive
and if you weren’t making millions of barrels of beer
a year, you were in trouble. And the Muehlebach brewery
was in trouble.
McCluney: We were, for example, shipping a lot of beer to
Texas, and losing money on every case, yet keeping up the
volume
HOST
SO, IN 1956, THE FAMILY-OWNED MUEHLEBACH
BREWERY WAS SOLD TO AN EMERGING NATIONAL POWER FROM MILWAUKEE,
SCHLITZ.
Basso: Now we could say we were a hometown brewery. They
had a great facility in the brown bottle room.
McCluney: Schlitz pioneered the Brown Bottle, so we called
our rooms the Brown Bottle. Police chief Kelly held the
International Organization of Police chiefs, but they didnšt
have a budget. So I told them to come here and we did it
for free. As I recall, I didnšt get too many tickets in
those days.
HOST
THE SWITCH TO SCHLITZ DIDN’T SIT
WELL WITH EVERYONE.
Chief: Muehlebach had better beer. They aged it longer.Schlitz
was more in a hurry they pushed you more - you had to put
more beer out.
HOST
THE WORLD WAS IN A HURRY. AND THE HEY-DAY
FOR LOCAL BREWERIES WAS DRAWING NEAR ITS END. ADVERTISING
AND NEW PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES WERE SIMPLY TOO EXPENSIVE.
GOETZ CLOSED THEIR KANSAS CITY FACILITY IN 1960 TO TRY AND
CONSOLIDATE THEIR ST. JOE OPERATIONS. BUT ULTIMATELY THEY
SUCCUMBED AND SHUT DOWN IN 1976. IT WASN’T LOOKING
TOO GOOD FOR THE KANSAS CITY SCHLITZ PLANT EITHER.
Maxwell:Schlitz was confronted with the decision of whether
to expand the Kansas City brewery…Or to tear it down,
start over or relocate someplace else.
McCluney: instead of KC… Memphis
Maxwell: in 1973, they closed the KC Brewery. And so you
have this interesting phenomena that from 1973 until Boulevard
in 1998, KC didn’t even have a brewery.
HOST
THE NUMBER OF BREWERIES DWINDLED, UNTIL
BY 1983 ONLY SIX ACCOUNTED FOR ALMOST 90% OF THE BEER SOLD
IN THE UNITED STATES. BREWERIES HAD TURNED LARGELY INTO
MARKETING COMPANIES WHOSE BRANDS WERE INDISTINGUISHABLE
FROM THEIR EACH OTHER EXCEPT, FOR THEIR ADS.
Norton: They began focussing on mass appeal and began directly
marketing to a segment of the population that had largely
gone unnoticed – women…but what was sacrificed
was variety and diversity.
McDonald: …names like "dry ice" and "draft
bottles"…bottled beer in a can – all these
things are not things that brewers thought of –they’re
things that marketing people thought of...
Sullivan AB, Miller and Coors make great beer when you think
about how much beer they make - and AB makes over 90 million
bbls of beer a year, and every glass of Bud or every glass
of Bud Light tastes just like the one before, and there’s
millions of millions of glasses, that in itself is a remarkable
feat
Sullivan: …if you talk about what’s happening
in the last 10 years, craft breweries…it is because
people were looking for beer that tasted different.
Joe Effertz: This was not a fad but a revitalization of
the way the beer industry use to be. You could see that
coming if you studied the history, that’s what got
me excited about it.
HOST
SO A NEW BREED OF BREWERS EMERGED MAKING
BEER THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY: SMALLER BATCHES, NO FILTRATION
OR PASTEURIZATION. AND PEOPLE WERE READY FOR THE NEW, OLD-STYLE
BEERS. BUT TO ACTUALLY HAVE A NEW BREWERY HERE IN TOWN,
THAT WASN’T AN EASY IDEA TO GRASP.
John McDonald: It was a different landscape
back the…people would say, "you’re going
to do what? You’re going to build what" They thought
I was crazy. We began building very slowly, my brother was
the plumber, I built everything
HOST
THE CHANGES ALSO INCLUDED COMPETITION
FROM A NEW BREWERY THAT EMERGED IN 1995 ON THE OTHER SIDE
OF THE STATE LINE.
Joe Effertz:…We chose to be on the Kansas side, A-because
of the water and B-because the fact you have the largest
brewery in the world on the Missouri side and you have a
pretty established micro- brewery on the Missouri side.
The day we opened our doors we were the largest brewery
in the state, that doesn’t hurt.
HOST
MICROBREWERIES LIKE BOULEVARD, PONY
EXPRESS AND THE ONCE INDEPENDENTLY-OWNED FLYING MONKEY WERE
JUST ONE PART OF OUR NEW BEER ORDER. BREW PUBS OR RESTAURANTS
THAT BREWED SMALLER BATCHES ON THE PREMISES BEGAN TO APPEAR
AS WELL. FIRST WAS LAWRENCE’S FREE STATE BREWING COMPANY,
FOLLOWED SHORTLY AFTER BY 75TH STREET BREWERY, THE BRAINCHILD
OF ED NELSON AND JAMES TAYLOR.
Ed Nelson:… We thought KC would be a neat place to
begin a brew pub. …our first night we had 45-50 people
lined up the door… we weren’t prepared for the
demand
HOST
AND KC CONSUMERS ARE CELEBRATING THE
CHANCE TO CONSUME BREWS THAT 10 YEARS AGO WREE NO WHERE
TO BE FOUND. THOUGH IT DOES MEAN A TRIP TO THE NEIGHBORING
WATERING HOLE, IT MIGHT JUST BE EDUCATIONAL.
Nelson:… our big concern was we wouldn’t be able
to find a 100 different beers. That was 6 years ago, at
the time we had a real problem finding 50 beers. It took
the local brew pubs to supply us with enough to meet our
goal of 99 and even than it was close. Now with beer as
popular as it is and craft beer as popular as it is we can
probably do 200 handles but that would take a cooler about
as big as Arrowhead Stadium…
LIKE THE MAN SAID, THIS ISN'T A FAD,
ITšS MORE A PHENOMENON. YOU CAN READ ABOUT IN ALL SORTS
OF BOOKS, GO TO SHOWS WHERE PEOPLE UBY AND SELL THEIR MEMORABILIA,
EVEN JOIN HOMEBREWRE'S CLUBS TO SOAK UP MORE TRICKS OF THE
TRADEAND OF COURSE, RESPONSIBLY, YOU CAN ALWAYS SAMPLE
THE STUFF FIRSTHAND. ON THAT NOTE, WE OFFER THIS FINAL TOAST,
FROM THE 1866 OPERA "THE BARTERED BRIDE":
YOU FOAM WITHIN OUR GLASSES, YOU LUSTY
GOLDEN BREW. WHOEVER IMBIBES TAKES FIRE FROM YOU. THE YOUNG
AND OLD SING YOUR PRAISES, HERE'S TO BEER, HERE'S TO CHEER,
HERE'S TO BEER.
|
|
