[music playing] Hibiscus-- Hibiscus IPA.

It's delicious.

What is craft beer is a complex, convoluted, complicated question.

Good beer.

I think it's just kind of a sense of community It means that people actually try to put effort into their beer.

MAN: I think if you asked every 4,000th person in here, they'd have a different answer for it.

Not these big breweries that are trying to mass produce.

It's just different.

This is an event that we all look forward to coming to and this is where we want to bring our best beers, experimental stuff you can't get anywhere else.

CRAFT BREWER 1: A lot of us are brewing good beer and I think it's important to crow about it.

Duluth Beer City and here we are now.

MAN: The best opportunity for a consumer to have a brewer trying to brew a better beer with a guy down the line.

That's awesome.

COLLECTOR: They're carrying on a tradition that's been going on over a century.

Beer still brewed pretty much the same way with the ingredients, the quality of the beers being produced, yeah, I mean I think there's a direct link.

[music playing] ANNOUNCER: Production funding for Brew North is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

[music playing] HISTORIAN 1: Before we started basically, there was no refrigeration and so a lot it was local and you saw a lot of breweries either be by water or access to ice or caves where they could store their beer at a constant temperature.

HISTORIAN 2: Sidney Luce was one of our early pioneers, later our third mayor.

After 1857 we had a big financial panic.

The copper speculators that were here took off.

But there were several folks hanging around, including four bachelors.

One of them was a cooper, a barrel maker.

And he'd pick up some brewing skills along the way.

Few others were carpenters.

And Luce gave them a piece of his property and they built a little brewery and started brewing beer in 1859 as a way to have a little commerce going in what was quickly becoming a ghost town.

After the war, things are looking pretty good in Duluth.

And he decides he's going to be too busy.

So Nicholas Decker, who is another pioneer, comes to Duluth and buys Luce's interest in the brewery, and runs the brewery for the next 10 years.

And then in 1875 in January, Mr. Decker dies of consumption.

The following year, Michael Fink brings his family to Duluth from Stillwater, where he was working for a brewer.

And he leases the brewery from Decker's widow Mary and starts the M. Fink and Company Brewery out of the same facility there.

About 1881 Mr. Fink realizes that his brewery is not large enough to keep up with the potential capacity of his customer base.

So in 1881, he builds a brick brewery down at 600 East Superior Street, which is still today the center of the fixtures complex.

[music playing] Am I just a brewery rat?

I have to check this out.

My grandmother was born over Fitgers Brewery.

They had quarters above the building for employees.

This is all in the mid 1880s.

You can see that in some of the photographs, especially those that are of various events that they had where they had parades and they had all the fancy horse wagons and things there.

And you'll see people looking out, and some little children, too.

1881, Fink's at his new brewery, and he's doing pretty well.

But he's a busy guy.

He's also a city alderman.

He has other responsibilities.

He's got a large family.

And he does not have enough time to take care of this business himself.

So he hires August Fitger.

HISTORIAN 3: August Fitger was typical of the German brewers who came to the United States, worked his way through the brewing centers, like Milwaukee.

And then arrived with a lot of training.

So he was a practical brewer that could step in and make the quick adaptations of the recipes to deal with the grain that was available, and even the water chemistry.

Fitger arrives in '82 and within six or seven months or so, buys a half interest in the brewery.

Within a few years, Mr. Anneke comes to Duluth, joins Mr. Fitger as his business partner and Mike Fink, by 1885, is out of the brewery business in Duluth.

[music playing] HISTORIAN 3: Fitger started as a very small brewery and just kept adding on as the demand and their new equipment required it.

HISTORIAN 2: They're bottling by 1885.

In 1891 they have the first ice machine in Duluth.

Before then, and after, ice was harvested from Lake Superior.

So you really have some business minded folks.

And you can see that the growth throughout the, particularly the 1890s, I think they built 10, maybe 12, buildings in different, added on, and more growth and a bigger bottling house eventually and a new office and stables.

OK, well the original brewery was in this space here.

That had burned down, the original brewery just after 1900s.

From here they went west and built the stock house and then the brew house and then later the office and the bottling house.

[music playing] HISTORIAN 2: The innovation at Fitgers never ended.

They were always looking for better ways to brew their beer, to filter their beer, to bottle and package their beer.

So they were always a very innovative company, right from the start.

HISTORIAN 3: In the pre-Prohibition time, beer was still very local and there were enough taverns that could provide markets for even a fairly small brewery.

Most of the beer was drunk in the tavern at that point, and even if it was consumed at home, it was brought home from the tavern, often in the pail called a growler.

So in that kind of environment, Fitgers is going to be able to still survive through its taverns and through its shipping business.

HISTORIAN 2: What many, many breweries across the nation did back in the days, they would actually build or purchase saloons and hotels.

HISTORIAN 1: They would come and buy the bar, buy the bar license and set somebody up to run it.

And with the understanding they would carry, Fitgers beer would be the primary or exclusive beer.

Fitgers had them in Superior.

Fitgers had them, once the Iron Range opened up.

All over the Iron Range in Western Minnesota as far west as the Dakotas.

And so Fitger's reach, by the turn of the century, was pretty impressive.

HISTORIAN 1: They had the Fitger Hotel in Bovey.

So they had real estate holdings.

Basically it was in the Duluth area and then northern Minnesota.

HISTORIAN 2: One of the reasons making beer, brewing beer, was considered a really smart business to get into, is because in the late 19th and early 20th century, you had the spread of tuberculosis, consumption, and typhoid.

And a lot of that came from the drinking water.

So beer that's brewed, that's superheated and cooked before you drink it, removes the impurities.

In fact, it was well, I think well past 1900 that Duluth firemen were not allowed to drink Duluth water at work.

They had to have beer.

Because they didn't want the firemen getting sick.

[music playing] HISTORIAN 1: The original brewery saloon was in this, the old building.

And then eventually that was, when the Pickwick was built they moved it down to the present location.

And then that was sold early 1900s to Joe Wisocki.

Everything was picked up in this whole building and sent over.

COLLECTOR: It was built by Fitger to remind him of the beer halls in Germany, his home country.

And I mean you clearly see that.

The wood on the ceiling.

The Germans seemed to like that with their beer halls, all that oak woodwork.

It has that feel.

And you just don't find that at any other place in Duluth.

No place has the feel like the Pickwick.

FITGER HEIR: George Hunter, which is our George Hunter Stout, he was a brewer pre-Prohibition era up in Tower, Minnesota.

He owned and operated the Iron Range Brewing Association for right around 20 years.

So yeah, it's literally and figuratively in my blood.

HISTORIAN 3: Iron Range Brewing Company was one of those ones where, with all those thirsty miners up there, it seemed like it should be a great moneymaking proposition.

But they found that their costs were pretty high, too, because they were not anywhere near the grain.

FITGER HEIR: He was also a teacher.

He was an engineer.

So he was a multi-talented guy.

So I would like to think that he did it because he liked to do it, but who knows.

FITGER FAMILY: OK, this building was a cooler.

The brewery was right alongside the back side of it.

And they made Tower Beer and they filled this building up with ice and they kept the beer in here to keep it from going bad, and to keep it cool.

HISTORIAN 3: Any number of investors seem to think that they would be the ones to turn the business around.

So it became a stock corporation, but the ownership kept changing.

And while it survived for several decades, it was never really a big moneymaking proposition, but it paid some bills in the neighborhood.

[music playing] HISTORIAN 3: Duluth Brewing and Malting was one of that next generation where they had a big plan in place and they needed to start relatively big if they had any hope of competing against the shipping brewers.

[music playing] COLLECTOR: When you look at pictures of the structure, I mean, it certainly is imposing.

And I mean I think they were trying to make a statement that this is going to be a big brewery.

When it first opened the capacity, I believe, was about 40,000 barrels.

You know initially, not that big, but it did grow.

They were able to hire architects from Chicago and build in a classic Romanesque revival style that really gave the impression of being a classic German structure-- And one that was tall and impressive in an era where people often decided how valuable a product was based on how impressive the factory was.

[music playing] It was started by Reiner Hoch and Charles Meeske.

Hoch decided to come to Duluth and start another brewery, sensing that there was opportunity here.

HISTORIAN 4: Was pretty well laid out, quite a big area.

I mean two sides of the street.

You had the brewery house and malting house all done in one big huge building with the railroad tracks coming up behind it.

They used for service and bring grain in or hauling out kegs of beer.

HISTORIAN 1: Where the freeway is, you can see the old office and then the bottling house is connected to it.

That was the first building it come to.

In a lot of cases, the breweries would use the factory scene either on large lithographs, which were to be placed in the taverns.

It would appear on their letterhead.

They would print up postcards.

And most of the time you'd have a couple of interesting features.

One of them would be that any vehicles would be very small to make the brewery itself look enormous.

And the other thing, in all of the cityscapes and factory scenes of the Gilded Age was that the smokestacks were constantly belching big clouds of black smoke.

Which today, we would consider a problem, but in that era it was a sign of prosperity, employment and wealth coming into the city.

I believe they did some [inaudible] which was a brand from the Marquette plant.

Maybe even the Castlebrew, they might have produced.

But the Rex and the Moose were the primary labels.

And that's what turns up we find as collectors, point of sale, and those were the brands that they had.

Right up until prohibition hit.

[music playing] HISTORIAN 5: This is amazing.

This is a piece of Americana.

These tanks are well.

Isn't that something?

Well, over 100 years.

These are fermentation tanks.

These, they got to be 20 barrel.

The story we're familiar with, about people, is that it was the result of a socialist movement.

Supposedly, a bunch of saloon keepers came together to form their own brewery so that they could buy beer that wasn't made by those capitalists over at Fitgers.

That's the myth we've always had.

That it was kind of a socialist political bent to it.

And what we're discovering through recent research is that doesn't appear to be true.

HISTORIAN 3: The Peoples of Duluth similar to Peoples in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and to some others, were breweries that were largely subscribed to by local saloon keepers who were tired of the very high rates being charged by out of town brewers or sometimes even the other major brewers in town.

And they thought they could make a better beer, they could make a cheaper beer, and in fact that they could share in the profits of making their beer.

HISTORIAN 2: In 1906, a gentleman named FC Toll comes to town selling shares in a brewery he wants to build.

$100 apiece.

Wants to raise $300,000 to build this brewery.

About six or seven months later he runs an ad in the Duluth News Tribune saying that the project has been canceled, and he left town.

He didn't take off with the money though.

Some of the principal investors, a gentleman named Sandstedt and Gleeson and Pat Doran decided, we've still got a good chunk of money here.

Why don't we go ahead and do this ourselves?

COLLECTOR: You know, when you look at pictures of it, I certainly wouldn't call that an architectural masterpiece, that place.

I mean very utilitarian and it was built to do what it did.

But it was a small concern.

And right from the get-go that's going to make things more difficult when you're operating on a much smaller scale.

HISTORIAN 2: When People's opened up they were capable of producing 25,000 barrels of beer a year.

And they probably hired about 10 to 15 people.

And a great many of its shareholders were indeed west Duluth and west end saloon keepers and hotel owners and other people that dealt in the liquor trade.

And every spring they announced in the paper that they were giving out dividends to their shareholders.

They, unlike Duluth Brewing and Malt and Fitgers, pretty much stayed at home.

They didn't expand.

They didn't build saloons.

They didn't build hotels.

Most of their beer was sold by the keg to saloons.

They did a little bottling, but not nearly as much as the other two Duluth brewers.

So they were pretty much your hometown brewery.

So that was how our third major brewery started in Duluth.

Up and running by about 1909 when they finally hit the streets with their first beer.

[music playing] HISTORIAN 6: I think there was just a need for beer over the range.

And when you look at the range, you see that the towns are only a few miles apart.

So if you get a big brewery that was going to be producing beer, then you had a lot of customers.

Not only in Virginia, but all over range [inaudible].

[music playing] HISTORIAN 2: Virginia's plan was to generally serve the Iron Range.

They certainly weren't going to be looking for a national market of any kind.

They were going to be working on simply the Range.

Maybe a little bit in Duluth, and probably shipping to the west to the extent that the railroads would allow them.

[music playing] HISTORIAN 7: Town had just burnt for the second time right after the turn of the century.

And everything was mandated to be brick.

And the mining industry was just taking off.

And, of course, the logging industry was really prolific at that time.

All the loggers were drinking beer at every place that they could find it, I'm sure.

And so rather than bring it up from Duluth or Minneapolis or wherever it had to be, they saw an opportunity and built it.

It was 1905 and became operational in 1906.

HISTORIAN 6: They had these wagon-loads going all the time to all of these outlying towns that had many-- you took Eveleth.

Eveleth probably had a good 20 or 30 different ethnic groups total, which meant that they had that many saloons.

And that would have been true in Gilbert.

And it would have been true in Buhl and Mount Iron and so on.

So you had all of these ethnic groups at that time.

And so they had their preference of our different kinds of beer.

[music playing] HISTORIAN 3: It was mostly outside investors who thought that the Iron Range had such a heavy beer drinking population that there must be a demand for another brewery there.

And so that was part of that era where breweries started as corporations, rather little family craft businesses.

So Virginia also was able to hire Chicago brewery architects.

And they built a brewery very similar to several others around the country.

[music playing] HISTORIAN 3: Its current structure is very interesting, because since they were open for such a short time, they really didn't need to expand their building.

So it looks very much like it would have when first designed.

HISTORIAN 7: This is just a little cupola.

It's just a little, probably for, in the hot air part right above the tanks and everything, let air out and then light in.

Well, this was actually the pub.

This was the bar section of the brewery.

And, of course, back in the day they could drink beer on their breaks and everything.

So supposedly, right behind the bar there was a place for them to go and draw their beer and it was called the hole in the wall.

We also knew that the miners would come through and fill their lunch pails.

After they carried them to work they'd fill them with beer and go home with the beer, too.

Dual purpose lunch buckets.

HISTORIAN 6: And then, of course, the saloon was a place where the single men, before they had families, could congregate.

And they would rush there after to weekend and they'd rush back on Monday morning and get their work clothes and go to work again.

And spending the weekend in the saloon.

Well, when they got married, then their wives started getting in there and trying to stop them from doing that.

And then the churches got into it, too.

HISTORIAN 7: So the moving company took all the brewing equipment out when they first came in here.

They took it and sold it.

This stuff is just the very last remnants of anything that might even be good to give to goodwill.

I put together photographs of people's lives and I don't know who they are or anything.

Like what would, who was that?

What was that group for?

Was that temperance or church?

It would be interesting to find out.

Virginia had a temperance.

Eveleth had two temperance groups.

You can look, you can go right through the Range and you find temperance groups.

Every one was organized to try to control demon rum.

They had a glee clubs, they had theater groups, they had gymnastic groups, they had libraries, they had all kinds of things to try to draw them into that and away from the saloon.

One of the problems they had was that the regions around them were going dry very quickly.

And the former Indian lands in northern Minnesota were declared dry by congressional action in 1914, which meant a large potential market was now gone.

And this caused the demise of the Brainerd Brewing Company and the Bemidji Brewing Company, as well.

And so anything Virginia was going to sell outside of its immediate market was going to have to be shipped a long way at great expense.

[music playing] The interesting thing about living in Duluth and Superior as we approached prohibition, is that both communities in St. Louis County all went dry at different times.

First Superior, I believe in 1915, went dry.

And then the following year Duluth went dry.

But at the same time, Superior voted itself wet again.

So you can always cross a bridge.

St. Louis County I believe was 1917, went dry.

And then Superior went back to being dry.

So the only place you could get alcohol in the community was Oliver, down by the steel plant in Wisconsin.

So there was a lot of, quite a bit of traffic between Oliver and Superior and Oliver and Duluth.

As each one of these dates approaches, the evening before prohibition comes into place, there are funerals for John Barleycorn.

And just about everybody in town it seems has a snootful and stocking up.

They're stopping cars on the way back from Oliver that're just breaking down because they're so overloaded with liquor.

We went out with a bang several times before 1920 actually stopped the flow of alcohol.

A lot of breweries thought that prohibition would not go through because that was a government source of taxes.

But it went through and then they started income tax.

Nobody believed they were gonna outlaw alcohol, so they didn't go vote unless they were forced.

And it passed.

[music playing] Breweries had to do a lot of different things to try and survive through Prohibition.

COLLECTOR: Fitgers wanted to purchase the Lovit label.

And the way the contract was written, the attorney missed a flaw in this and it gave Fitgers the rights to all Duluth Brewing and Malting Company labels.

So they lost Rex, they lost the Moose and Fitgers produced, Fitgers Rex beer, that came from Duluth Brewing and Malting.

I've even got labels with Duluth Brewing and Malting scratched out and Fitgers put on the bottom.

So, yeah, so that attorney had a talking to after that.

As we turn prohibition and these companies try to reinvent themselves, the names they use.

COLLECTOR: I believe the government said you couldn't have the name brewing in your name any more.

And if you look at pictures of Fitgers, the letters on the bottling house where it says Fitger Brewing Company, the ones during prohibition, Brewing is gone.

So it was just the Fitger Company.

And perhaps the most interesting case is Duluth Brewing and Malting, which renamed themselves The Sobriety Company, which was going much farther than most breweries did.

HISTORIAN 2: They'd already sold off their pop label, Lovit, to Fitgers.

And so instead of that, they doubled down on the malt production.

They made cereal-based beverages, near-beers.

They made malt extract, which you could buy in store and then brew your own beer with.

The malt really came into play at that time, the 1920s, to keep them going.

It wasn't a success.

I mean, you know, when you lose your primary product.

Look at all the breweries it killed in the United States.

That was the one, single biggest factor to the decline of brewing in this country.

Finally by 1929, they closed.

That was the end of Duluth Brewing and Malting Company.

HISTORIAN 2: When Prohibition started, Fitgers was doing a number of things.

They bought out a candy company and started making candy.

They were packaging cigars for other companies.

And they were selling soda pop and other things.

And they started to make what we might call today, mixers.

HISTORIAN 8: Silver Spray.

A very tart apple-base.

It's the color of beer, but it's pop.

HISTORIAN 2: It was the best mixer in the crowd, as they advertised it.

They also advertised as it's not ginger ale.

It'll make pretty much anything tastes good.

HISTORIAN 1: Basically what it was was an additive to moonshine.

So a person would make some moonshine and use a little Silver Spring, put the moonshine in it and you had a drink.

HISTORIAN 8: Fitgers shipped it nationwide during Prohibition to mix with not the best tasting home brew.

[music playing] The records show that they never made any profit.

They lost money every year during Prohibition.

They tried to cut as few employees as possible.

They tried to keep salaries where they were.

They couldn't, of course.

And so they were barely hanging on.

FITGER FAMILY: Right after Prohibition they sold all of the equipment and the story that I was told was it was hauled to Fort Francis and sold to a beer company up there.

They then made Tower Pop and then they, after Prohibition, someone came in, bought the building.

They had the windows blasted in and the bar built and they opened up a 3.2 establishment in this building.

The bar is made out of iron ore from the underground mine.

There's quartz, there's crystals, there's fools gold.

Story was, the miners took the rock out in their lunch pails.

Don't know if that's true either, but it's what my dad said.

HISTORIAN 2: When Prohibition started there were only a few people actually working for Peoples.

Just enough to bottle the soda pop.

And they picked up a couple of national brands by the end of the decade.

One of them, RC Cola.

The other one was 7-Up.

Interesting, and what was advertised at the time, is that the up in 7-Up was lithium, which we use for mental health patients today.

It was actually sold as the lithiated soda.

And it was good for curing all sorts of ailments.

HISTORIAN 6: I think the brewery served a large area.

You would look at the wagons filled with beer kegs and so on.

It served a lot of people, but as we went into Prohibition, then the brewery tried to find a new use.

And so they began to start doing a pop, which was called Orange Crush.

And they did a nonalcoholic beer called Bingo.

And then they sold dairy products and ice cream, and also agricultural types of things.

So they were trying to find a new he was for them and keep the people employed as they once had been.

And then when Prohibition was over, they tried to go back to it.

And when they went to check on the technology, they found out that they had become obsolete.

And so there was no hope again to make that into a viable brewery as it once had been.

[music playing] HISTORIAN 3: Virginia did not make it out of Prohibition like so many of the other breweries.

It was going to be very expensive to retrofit most breweries.

And the market had changed, as well.

National brands, well advertised, were what people aspired to rather than having the pride that the beer was made down the street by people who were sitting at the next table.

[music playing] [music playing] The first shipment went out at midnight to two harbors, right?

And the trucks were lined up along Superior Street and 7th Avenue waiting to be loaded.

And they say an oompah band played "Happy Days are Here Again," and it was a great show.

I think it was in the Pickwick.

The place was packed.

I think it was the minute after midnight.

Franklin Roosevelt became elected in '32.

One of his platform was beer will produce revenue and it will produce jobs.

It was the stimulus bill of its day.

There were estimates done by the brewing industry that there were hundreds of thousands, if not multiple millions, of jobs that were in some way dependent on the return of beer.

And while those statistics were no doubt self-serving, it was probably pretty close.

Fitger's was on top of things technologically, marketing, distribution.

They were a well-oiled machine, and they kept going.

People's was up and running, and Duluth Brewing and Malting were scrambling to get back up again at that time.

They were the last back into the show because they were the one that actually completely shut down.

Carl Meeske realized that repeal was coming and it's time to get the plant up and running again.

And I'm sure he thought, what would Dad-- my father-- have wanted and done?

And so I have a prospectus looking for investors and describing the whole brewery and purchasing new equipment.

And the brewery went through an extensive rehabilitation in anticipation of repeal.

Now, Fitger's and People's had the beer on the market before Duluth Brewing and Malting, but for everything I've been told, it was worth the wait.

[music playing] They teased my dad because he-- it was a-- a German beer, but it was a brewmaster was a Norwegian.

Yeah, I think that's right.

He was quite well known as a good brewmaster.

[music playing] He came up through the brewery from about the early '30s and became a worker, and then he became-- they call it first cellarman, where he's kind of the boss of all the cellars in the brew halls.

And then they could see that he was pretty good at it, so they thought he'd be a good brewmaster, which he was.

And he was a smart guy.

Just had an uncanny mind, just smart, you know, smart at everything it seemed like.

[music playing] It was right in the middle of a neighborhood.

There were houses literally right next door to the brewery, almost literally on the brewery grounds.

So that had to be interesting to have a concern like this operating, and you're living in a house literally right next door to it.

Well, that big copper kettle-- that's where it all began.

One of our jobs was cleaning out the big vats when everything was emptied out.

And you had to use a solution and crawl in a little hole.

And, boy, that baby better be clean.

Because they wanted it perfect, and it was.

You know, there were a lot of tough jobs, but I think the worst part when we started up the malt hauls.

My dad started that up.

I used to be the one that used to load the box cars with the malt.

And when you were done filling, you'd have about-- there was only about this much between the green and the roof.

And they were dusty.

But the static, the electricity from this grain moving through the pipes-- if you got your head up a little too close, I mean, that flame would shoot right down.

So I would always take the scoop and keep on doing that to keep that from happening.

But, boy, you really had to go.

I mean, it was a tough-- it was a tough job.

There was a huge drum to get to so that you could actually start drying it.

And you had to crawl in there and clean them out.

And you just could just barely get in, and you gotta go all the way in and come back and pull this stuff with you, all the stuff that gets in the grain, gets into things.

And that was probably the toughest, because you were afraid that somebody's gonna close the door on you, and there you are.

You know, when they rehabbed the plant, too, the capacity went way up.

So rather than that 40,000, they were brewing right at the very beginning there, he was able to get the capacity up.

And the public took to it.

I mean, you can ask anyone who was around at that time and mention Royal 58.

Then clearly they had the word out there that this is what they were producing.

And the public took to it.

I remember clearly my brother and I were down there hanging around in the summertime, so asked the truck drivers and stuff if they needed any help and stuff.

They were responsible for offloading and loading their trucks, so they picked the kids to do the work for them while they went and sat in the taproom.

Local trucks, that was-- usually paid about a buck to unload all the empties and then load it up with full ones.

And then get lucky, you get a semi.

And it was a lot of work, but it was, you know, $2.

You didn't get picked for working, you'll play baseball or something.

[chuckling] [music playing] Six, seven, eight, nine, ten-- that's a lot of beer.

That's incredible amount of beer.

[music playing] People's retool in the 1930s-- 1933-- I think it's a gentleman named Hanson who takes over the operation.

They and Duluth Brewing and Malt both buy new equipment, invest and retool and expand their line of work.

Afterwards, they had three different brands of beer.

Stag they started out with-- Stag as in deer-- and Regal Supreme, which was their-- pretty much their flagship local brand, with the Sieur du Lhut logo.

(SINGING ON RADIO) Oh, bring the boys a bottle of beer, a bottle of beer, a bottle of beer.

Oh, bring the boys a bottle of beer.

But be sure it's Regal Supreme.

SPOKESMAN (ON RADIO): You are sure with Regal Supreme, sure you have the finest beer.

Regal Supreme is made in Duluth by the People's Brewing Company.

Try some today.

SPOKESWOMAN (ON RADIO): And be sure it's Regal Supreme.

Sieur du Lhut figures prominently in their advertising, the Regal Supreme beer label.

He's the trademark, kind of like Split Rock Lighthouse is on all the Fitger bottles.

And then they ran an ad campaign in newspapers, you know, do you know these facts about Sieur du Lhut?

It was drawn almost like a Ripley's Believe it or Not.

And they had a depiction of the scene and then the text that accompanied it and went along with it.

It's clever.

It really is, when you think about it.

But it didn't work.

This is a picture of a celebration of 50 years of the Brewery Workers Union.

So this is like a 50-year anniversary celebration, I would guess.

My grandfather worked basically his whole life at Regal Supreme, at People's Brewing Company.

He worked there before the Prohibition, and then once the Prohibition was over with, he went back there again.

And he retired in 1955.

Outside of Prohibition, a brewery job is a good job to have.

If you weren't claustrophobic, it was an OK job, but you had to crawl through that little door and go in that tank with one light bulb.

And you had to scrub the tank.

And they were scrubbed.

Those tanks were clean when the next batch of beer went in them.

[music playing] Post Prohibition, they decided to brew a malt liquor.

Olde English 600, Olde English 800 are the names of this.

And surprisingly enough, this became a big beer in the Pacific Northwest.

He went out on a limb and tried something different and produced a beer that at least some people liked.

Remember the name-- Olde English 600.

Yes, sir, remember that name.

You'll never ever forget the taste-- wow!

I can remember in the summertime loading a boxcar load of that at a time and sending it all to Oregon.

It really wasn't very popular beer locally.

[music playing] They shipped out the Olde English 600 malt liquor out to Portland, Oregon.

They had a brewery out there that ended up buying that label after People's closed.

But-- so when you see Olde English 800 on the shelf of your favorite liquor store, well, that was born right here in Duluth, Minnesota.

So we gave the world Olde English malt liquor.

[chuckling] [music playing] ADVERTISING SPOKESMAN 1: Now, why is it that beers from other parts of the country don't taste as fresh and sparkling as Fitger's?

ADVERTISING SPOKESMAN 2: Well, it's the water we have up here.

You know, they take the water for Fitger's right out of the lake.

And you know how cold and clear that is.

Well, yeah, it was definitely viewed as a local beer.

And they had their-- one of their slogans was, "Naturally brewed, naturally better," and that was, I think, a real nice logo.

They were pretty creative, I think, in a lot of their advertising.

ADVERTISEMENT ACTOR 1: Ain't nothing like laying out here along a stream, doing a little fishing, a couple of bottles of Fitger's when you get thirsty.

ADVERTISEMENT ACTOR 2: Yeah, the great North Shore.

One of the things that made Fitger's ads so classic, so memorable, is they really embraced the spirit of the North Woods.

They used a lot of forest scenes.

They used a lot of lake scenes.

And they really positioned themselves as that beer that you picked up when you were going up to hunt and fish in northern Minnesota.

And they always had like Fitger fishing contests and stuff, where, through their advertising, person could get a certificate or whatever.

And so-- so they did a lot of that.

Oh, they made good beer, yeah, yeah.

The people liked it, you know.

At one time, you know, we drank our local beer.

ADVERTISEMENT ACTOR: Thanks for the Fitger's, the beer with the flavor of the Great North Shore.

It was great.

Signed, Thirsty.

I used the haul the kegs right from racking room right into the basement at Pickwick, Quite fresh, good Fitger's.

[music playing] I started working there part time for two summers back in 1966 and 1967.

I worked most of the time in the bottling department.

And I done a few various other jobs, too.

Because at that time, a train came up in the back.

And that's where it came to, a dead end.

And they had brought in cans and bottles and all that, and we unloaded that.

And we brought it in, and we put it into the soaking machine down there, you know, where you feed bottles in and you went upstairs and it went through the packing machine in a process and all that.

This is in the bottling department.

It's a hotel now.

[chuckling] I remember as a kid going down with my father, and of course, had going for them in the period after World War II was they had recognizable brand names.

And they had something of a following.

You know, it was People's Brewery, so I suppose that would be in the articles of incorporation and everything else.

But yet the people in the community drank Regal Supreme beer.

So that's, I'm sure, how they remember it.

We were bottling beer in the summertime.

You might say bottling at capacity.

They would produce about 3,500 cases of beer a day when they were bottling at capacity.

And they would make one brew a day.

[music playing] Competition from the big breweries, trying to carve out market share up here, there's just no way a small brewery like that could compete.

And, you know, they couldn't afford a lot of advertising, either.

[music playing] When People's reached the 1950s, post-war consolidation was at its high point.

Across the country, larger brewers were buying up smaller brewers.

And this was affecting Fitger's and Duluth Brewing and Malt as well.

But People's was having a tough time surviving in Duluth, right, against their local competitors and all the national beers coming in through distribution.

People's went through several name changes.

I mean, they were marketing it as People's Beer, The People's Choice Beer.

They ended up producing Stag beer.

None of the label changes really seemed to make much difference as far as the volume.

It was a steady 35,000, 40,000 barrels but rapidly declining after the war.

I think by the time they finally closed up in '57, early 1957, you know, they were down to just a trickle.

Duluth actually holds an interesting place in Minnesota's brewing history, because it was the last of the major cities to actually have three breweries.

St. Paul had three breweries for a time after Prohibition.

But Yoerg's closed down in 1951.

Minneapolis never had three breweries after Prohibition.

So Duluth was for a while the leading brewery city in the state.

The People's building stood intact until 1975.

And portions of it were torn down.

And today, Brock White Company and Servpro occupy parts of the facility.

I believe Servpro is in the bottling house, if I'm not mistaken.

This is a part of history I-- I didn't ever realize was here until you brought us in here.

Thank you very much, Kevin, for doing this.

Yes.

Thank you.

[music playing] No one really thought about the fact that it was the Duluth Brewing and Malting Company.

It was Royal.

And like so many cases, you know, it was just all about Royal Bohemian, Royal 57, Royal 58.

You'd have a Royal and not worry about the corporate name.

The slogans are, "Treat Yourself Royally" or "Make a Date with 58," were the ones they-- and then for Karlsbrau, "Make Mine Karlsbrau," old time here.

Bob formulated a beer, as he told me, at 5.7% alcohol, so Royal 57.

Everybody thinks that Heinz 57 made him change, but Dad says, no, that wasn't the case.

I think he just didn't want to infringe on them, anyway.

They didn't want their product to be confused with Heinz.

People were saying, give me one of those ketchup beers.

And I don't blame them.

If I was a brewmaster, I wouldn't want people saying that about my products.

So hence, OK, let's change it to Royal 58.

Because if 57 meant 5.7 alcohol, so then he went the Royal 58 and then changed that alcohol to 5.8.

So he went-- when he did something, he did it.

You know, went it says 58, that's what the beer is gonna be, 0.58.

And I don't think many people knew that.

No.

So that's the way it ended up Royal 58.

[music playing] And he had a lot to do with the Karlsbrau when they came out with that.

I think that was mainly his-- That was his guy, yeah.

That was his formula.

And that did real well.

Carl had a contest, or the brewery had a contest, name our new beer.

And Karlsbrau, you know, Carl's beer-- not a surprise he chose that name.

So-- and they produced that right up until they closed.

[music playing] I think it was 1960 when the state highway department notified the brewery that the plant was going to be sitting smack-dab right where I-35 would go through.

Yeah, it was the freeway that wanted it.

I can remember working way up there and looking out, and I could see the-- you could kind of tell what was gonna go in.

It's too bad.

The state was gonna have its way.

And it's too bad they couldn't have shifted I-35 a little more towards the harbor there and maybe just take the malting plant.

But the railroad-- apparently that was more important.

When I look at I-35, the bank, right where the taproom should be, I often wonder, you know, did they just knock it in?

You know, is it still sitting underneath there?

But as far as the breweries go, that one was the nicest one, hands down.

ANNOUNCER: Remember today, tomorrow, and in the days and months to come, that this giant promotion effort for Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer is your advertising.

Our extensive newspaper advertising will do a more forceful selling job for you than ever before.

It will blanket seven and a half out of every 10 homes.

In the years after World War II, the Milwaukee-St. Louis breweries, as well as the Twin Cities ones, were not only able to ship more efficiently, but they were also able to afford television advertising, which is beginning to shape the demand for the brands, and people are identifying with popular brands rather than necessarily the best tastes.

So all of a sudden, Miller's and Pabst and Bud, of course, the big guys, are like, huh, we can really put beer on.

We need a market.

Oh, there's television.

ADVERTISEMENT ACTOR: Open a Budweiser and pour yourself the most inviting glass of beer you've ever tasted.

Cold, golden Budweiser with that good taste for good times.

So go ahead.

What a medium, right?

And who watched it?

The Baby Boomers.

ADVERTISEMENT ACTOR: (SINGING) Where there's life-- More than one brewery used these images on television, the nice-looking woman and beautiful home and people look at that, well, I guess it wouldn't be bad to bring a six-pack home.

ADVERTISEMENT ACTOR: Beer-- sparkling, golden, pure, refreshing.

After Prohibition, much of the consumption has moved to bottled and canned product.

And while Fitger's was able to make bottled and canned beer and, in fact, was one of the very first breweries to adopt the beer can, they really had economies of scale that favored the bigger brewers.

They were really getting squeezed on multiple sides.

And because of that, Fitger's was not able to sell as much, meaning they didn't have as much cash flow to replace equipment.

And while they had something of an advertising budget, they really couldn't compete on television.

ADVERTISEMENT ACTOR: This is Fitger's, the beer with more taste to it, flavor that comes through on the second sip, the third, and the fourth.

In fact, it comes through right to the bottom of the glass.

And here's why.

Fitger's is not a beer factory.

It's a brewery, where they still practice the fine art of natural brewing.

It takes time and the human touch to brew this more hearty, robust beer.

But it's worth it.

You try it for yourself, and you'll see that Fitger's has more taste to it, right to the bottom of the glass.

I'm working here on 1920s machinery in 1966.

[music playing] A lot of the beer equipment manufacturers were not really interested in supplying an all-new small outfit for anyone.

They were primarily looking to supply the big brewers.

Well, probably their manual dexterity and strength.

We piled cases nine high, 24 longnecks.

That's a reach for me, but I had to throw the top one in and cap it.

And then feeding soaker-- I ain't kidding.

Three men standing in a row in front of this huge, behemoth machine, and it's like a honeycomb.

And the fourth guy, he does the glass.

He opens up the cases that come in.

Almost everything was returnable.

[music playing] They just have to keep kind of piecing it together, and you get quality control problems if you're bottling and your canning equipment is old.

Because oxygen might get in the beer and wreck the batch.

And, you know, why buy Fitger's, Regal, Royal, or Rex, when Miller tastes good every time, and maybe Regal, Royal, and Rex don't.

The brewery never really modernized.

I remember they never did get a forklift.

We had pride, but we were slow.

We couldn't produce efficiently.

And our beer tasted old-world, more of a tavern beer.

I loved it, and we all did.

But the Baby Boomers?

Let's get a Pabst, sir, Old Milwaukee.

What got to in the '70s with advertising was national advertising.

And that's pretty tough for a regional to compete with.

In the final days, they would bottle beer once or twice a week, so they'd hire temporary work-- workers.

So I was hired to go down there and pull cases off a conveyor belt and stack them.

And all of their trucks were loaded one case at a time by hand.

The conveyor belt ran from in the brewery, probably ran about 30 feet or so.

The last week, there was two days-- Tuesday was on canning and Thursday was bottling.

And yeah, and then after their shift was over on Thursday, they walked out, and if you would have walked in there 10 years after, it's like they just walked out yesterday.

[music playing] [music playing] Not yet.

What happened here is home brewing, you know, was really a big thing.

And there were some really, really strong clubs, and really good brewers in those clubs that, you know, started having fantasies about going pro.

And that's where Lake Superior emerged from.

If home brewing hadn't been legalized and taken off as a hobby, I don't think the craft beer industry would have evolved as it has.

When prohibition was repealed, the government legalized wine making, but somehow left beer making out of the legislation.

Until the legislation was passed by California Senator Alan Cranston and signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, there really wasn't a legal and open way of doing the home brewing.

And as a consequence, it was pretty rudimentary in a lot of cases, very experimental, and there wasn't a way of getting it particularly systematized.

There wasn't a lot of ingredients, wasn't a lot of people home brewing, at least in the state of Minnesota.

And most of the ingredients were malt extracts used for baking, and we would go to the Whole Foods co-op and get hops So we brewed our first batch in '82, and it was just good enough to get us to brew another one.

As we were learning how to brew with different ingredients, the more ingredients-- and the hobby itself was growing-- so they became more available.

And then finally, we got together and, with like minded people, said we're going to meet and talk about home brewing, and we started the local club-- the Ale Stars, Northern Ale Stars.

And so there was just this wonderful camaraderie.

And you'd get together at least once a month, usually at someone's home, to swap homebrews.

And you got smarter because of that.

Obviously, these people that were better than you were, but all everybody ever did was help.

And there were horrible beers to drink-- some of them were mine-- and we just got better.

You know, at first it was very limited, because you had to know somebody who was a home brewer to get any of theirs.

But as that expanded, people's definitions of beer expanded, and they were interested in creating something new, because everyone's making a stout now.

What can we try that's different?

And so that spirit of creativity, I think, also informs both the consumers and the new brewers.

[music playing] I really enjoy making beer.

You know, we do it very traditionally.

The process for us is still a lot of hand stuff.

There's very few buttons that we push.

One thing that's gotten harder for me for brewing is bifocals.

Now I have to have my head in odd places so I can see.

I was the first paid craft brewer in northern Minnesota.

Lake Superior Brewing was really important for brewing in northern Minnesota, because they were the first one that brought back a lot of these styles that we, today, think of as the craft beer styles.

They did a great job with using names that started to, again, evoke northern Minnesota-- to bring in Kayak Kolsch or to name another one Seven Bridges-- to really use the heritage.

And Lake Superior was able to stand the test of time with that.

[music playing] NARRATOR: Welcome to the brewing quarters of the Lake Superior Brewing Company.

Bob Dromeshauser is president of the company and its head brewer.

He is also part of the cleaning crew, the quality control team, and its chief pipe fitter.

We had a pump.

That's about the fanciest thing we had was a pump and a couple of hoses.

And pumped it into the other tank, and-- When we opened, we really only had a couple of things that were designed for brewing.

We had a few lengths of brewing hose and we had some kegs, used kegs that we had bought from Leinenkugel's, actually.

And that was the only equipment that was designed for brewing.

All the rest of it was designed for some other beverage.

We used milk tanks, or other stainless steel tanks, to do things.

When we would get together on Sunday and brew, the three of us could actually stand in one place and hand things to each other.

We didn't have to walk around, because it was such tight quarters.

This is as hand crafted as hand crafted can get.

Well, we had a single wall, round, stainless steel tank that we used as our brew kettle to boil in.

And in order to boil, we had a 500,000 BTU gas burner underneath it.

So it was an open flame gas burner.

When we lit the thing, it sounded like a jet engine roaring.

And we actually had to-- we were next door to a coffee shop.

And for a while, you actually had to go through the coffee shop to enter our space.

And that burner would use so much oxygen that we actually had to prop the doors open to make sure we had enough makeup air coming in there.

[music playing] NARRATOR: Instead of sophisticated thermostats and precision tools, Bob uses a regular dairy thermometer on a stick to check his temperatures.

BOB DROMESHAUSER: We're looking at 132.

It was tight space, and we could brew once a week.

We only did six barrels, which is about 180 gallons.

And you'd roll the kegs in there.

And so say you'd have 10 kegs, you know.

That's it.

We did a batch of beer.

We got 10 kegs.

[music playing] BOB DROMESHAUSER: I think the reason that Lake Superior Brewing Company opens up and fit here is just a happy coincidence of available space and the type of building that would house it well.

The first time we brewed, we stood there and looked and said, you know, we think the walls are smiling.

They're smelling they're being produced again, and that's a good thing.

It was just one of those things that made the beer gods happy, to see brewing coming back.

We're going to add our bittering hops at this point, so they will be boiling for an hour.

When we moved out to the West End where they are now, on West Superior Street, then he got the equipment with the refrigerators, [inaudible], and, you know, you could really regulate.

I mean, you really want to ferment at particular temperatures and chill it.

And then by then, we had a chiller, and so we could cool the beer down as fast as we could.

And it became real, like almost a real brewery, I guess.

[music playing] We also brought a brew kettle then, the same one that they're using right now.

And that changed everything, because that was walled and automated, and we could whirlpool.

We weren't standing up there going like this.

And we actually had big boy pumps and things like that, and tanks.

And that's what you needed.

Now we're doing 500 gallons in a single batch, and we do multiple batches, of course, during the course of the year.

So it's a lot different process now than it was back then.

In 1999 we started bottling products.

And now we have four year-round products that we are bottling and five seasonals that we bottle.

The process is simple.

The ingredients is simple and straightforward-- water, malt, hops, and yeast-- and that's what we put together.

And so far, we've collected 14 medals in the world beer championship.

So I guess we're doing OK.

The very next year, Fitger's came out with the Brewhouse and made wonderful beers.

Then there was that brewpub experience versus the brewery, and that really kicked it into gear.

I think Fitger's Brewhouse was really important to the development of Duluth becoming Beer City, because the brewers at Fitger's did such a good job of creating a variety of styles, of creating great beer, introducing people on the North Shore to nitrogen taps, to cask beer, to barrel aged beers.

And Fitger's really became a destination for people from all over the country.

I know it was for me.

Fitger's Brewhouse was really kind of a cool story.

You know, the now pretty infamous young entrepreneurial partners Tim Nelson and Rod Raymond, fresh out of college, were looking to start something-- had a few different ideas.

But the true story, and it's been told a lot, is that they were out in Colorado on a ski trip.

They were both, you know, high level competitive skiers cross-country.

They went to Boulder and went to The Oasis.

Probably, they probably went to Mountain Sun.

They went to a couple of places and they were really kind of blown away.

And they came back home with the idea of, first and foremost, starting a place where you can get a good burger and have a lot of different beers to choose from.

And they did that.

They opened in '95.

Segue into my brother Mike had mentioned, Mike Hoops-- he's the head brewer at Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis, and he's pretty well-known.

But he was the-- he was tending bar for them, and he was a very, very experienced home brewer.

And he pitched the guys on considering the idea of putting a small system in.

And one thing led to another, and they ended up buying a small system from Glenwood Springs Brewery in Glenwood Canyon, Colorado.

Rented a U-Haul, went out there, dismantled it themselves, brought it back here, built it themselves, and started brewing beer in late '96, and went on tap in '97.

As a brewpub, they're able to brew so many fun styles.

And Duluth, as a culture, really connected with the Brewhouse for that reason.

It's got a calm, almost hippie vibe, and it's just a great place-- just like a tap room has that meeting place-- and has been for Duluth for a long time.

They made the really brave move of not pouring any, you know, macro beers at their bar, which got them a lot of guff.

Now they made a light beer of their own, but they had a lot of people just storm out, or refuse, or harass the servers, and they kind of kept their wits about them.

And they were really trying to be polite, and just say here, try this.

If you like it, great.

If you don't, you know, not for you.

And that went on for a long time.

The beers were always good.

And also what that did, when Lake Superior was in business, you'd only make so many beers.

You couldn't just make other beers all the time.

We're a brewpub.

I think, today, we're going to make anything that comes to my head.

We're going to make this beer with ginger and oranges, you know, whatever.

So that was the best part.

Fitger's comes in, and then the Brewhouse comes in, and they start making all these different-- education.

What's that?

It's a Scotch ale.

Here, try some.

The education process, the hosting home brew gatherings, the giving speeches and talks-- You know, by the time I came in '99, it was ready to go.

My brother and Tim and Rod did a lot of heavy, heavy work-- and the Lake Superior guys.

For Fitger's Brewhouse to come in like they did, somebody had a place to go.

Slowly, it started being that when you go up to Duluth, or go to the North Shore, you have to stop and get a growler of Fitger's beer.

And that happened organically, almost by accident.

You know, like I said, our production numbers were rising every year.

And I surrounded myself with unbelievable brewers, which allowed us to really, really be successful.

And then I like to make kind of interesting recipes and not really follow the typical rules.

That's why I wanted to work at a brewpub.

And that gave me a, probably, a, I don't know, a little bit of a reputation-- fair or not-- you know, being a little bit difficult.

But it was fun to brew that way.

[music playing] I think I was flipping through a magazine.

And it might even be as simple as a Cabela's catalog, that they were-- It was around the holidays, and I think they were selling a beer kit.

And I was like, really?

You can make beer at home.

Homebrew goes too quickly.

It's five gallons.

You get a couple of friends over, some family, and the beer goes.

So let's make a little bit more, and maybe sell enough, so this hobby can just sustain itself.

We usually-- OK, so all of our conversations happened while we were cleaning cabins.

We took over the resort in 2005.

You know, we opened the first, the original brewery in 2011.

For about a year, we were just talking about it and what system he would get, and how-- You know, basically, we were just talking it through.

I mean, basically what we still do.

But you know, if he was going to go with a smaller system that was going to be much more labor intensive or the three barrel that was going to cost more money but being more efficient.

And it just talked it over long enough that we figured the more expensive.

It's applied to the Rustic Inn, you know, a few places up and down the shore.

We debated on even selling growlers.

And we'd, like, should we?

Shouldn't we?

And then, like, sure, why not?

And then-- It was a good decision.

It was a good decision, because also, six months later, the Taproom Law came into effect, and that completely changed everything.

The doors opened in August of 2014.

I came in January of 2015.

And those were the days.

I mean, I think there were three people back there.

And now there's 12 in total, I think.

We're approaching 9,000 barrels this year, which is two years in.

To this operation, is a lot.

It just keeps going.

It just does.

Started with four 60-barrel fermenters here when we opened, and now we have 12, and we have the 13th and 14th coming in March.

A lot of it is just problem solving.

Like this is historically how it's been done.

How does it work for us?

And we tie that into our processes as we go.

[music playing] We started relatively larger than other breweries were starting at that time, with a 30 barrel brewhouse.

And we quite quickly outgrew that.

It was small enough that you can still be really flexible and you can produce a lot of different types of beer on it.

But it's large enough that you can pump out a good amount of beer.

I have the Venture Pils, our pilsner lager.

In a brewery setting, the tanks are constantly just moving beer from tank to tank.

So if a beer is tying up a tank for 28 days, we could have made two batches of Bent Hop in that tank.

Two times the amount of Bent Hop for one time of the lager being produced.

But that was a commitment we made to the brewery, initially.

We knew we wanted to have this beer.

We love it.

And so we designed and scaled in order to be able to do it.

We had the name Bent Paddle, and we came up with this idea of bending tradition.

So all of the flagships are traditional styles, but we have this little edge, this little bend to each of them that makes them American inventiveness, but also just our own version of that style.

It tells the Pilsner story.

It tells the yeast story.

It tells the lager story.

Those are the elements we wanted to focus in on.

We end up brewing a lot.

You know, we're operating 24 hours a day, four days a week right now.

But, you know, it is holding its own.

What is your opinion on where that would finish.

Went over to a friend's place.

He home brewed.

And I went out the following day and, I think, spent $150 and built my first all grain brew system and brewed the following day and never really looked back.

Well for me, it was a passion for beer.

That's kind of what got me into this whole thing.

So home brewing with some guys back in college.

They were like, hey you want to make some beer?

I was like, you can make beer?

And it was something that was pretty new to me as a music major.

So I went to the Siebel Institute in Chicago and the World Brewing Academy, which was located in Germany, kind of learning the process side behind brewing.

And then kind of went from there.

You know, we're constantly trying to find people that are better at what we do and put them around us.

Yes.

It's kind of the goal.

It was such a whirlwind at the beginning.

It took us a while to decide to do it.

But once we got into it, there just-- Starting a family, moving, you kind of had to put the risk out of your mind for a while and just concentrate on the task and concentrate on doing it.

And failure wasn't an option.

There was a lot of growth that happened a short amount of time.

And we're so happy to be up here.

We opened in May of 2013.

And that first semi-full year, we did 1,500, just over 1,500 barrels.

And this year, we're going to be close to 16,000.

So sometimes, we have to say let's stop and smell the roses for a second, because we're always-- I mean, we're on to the next thing.

And what's great about packaging brewery is you're producing, but you're not tied to your-- you're exporting the beer.

So we can go as far as the beer will take us.

We're not reliant on the local population, necessarily, if we were just a taproom focus or just a brewpub.

And I remember the first time we left the taproom and went home and fell asleep before 11:00.

We were like, we made money while we slept.

How great!

Because it was still operating.

Beer was in the marketplace.

And we felt like we did it, and we were very proud and very excited about that.

The unexpected part was-- and we're so happy for it-- was the growth success.

So we wrote a seven year business plan, and we outgrew it in a year and half.

So-- And so we just kept on building on that plan, using the same trigger points that we had for expansion and keeping the same math and doing just small tweaks here or there.

And it scaled up.

The demographic has-- you know, it's 21-plus.

If someone were to ask you who drinks your beer?

I mean, I can cite examples in our taproom, weekly of that spread-- 21 to 95.

You know, there's really not a tight demographic you can identify.

There's always a lot of room for education.

And it's really fun to see those people for the first time, experience a craft beer that they really enjoy.

You know, that's one of the main things that we do here.

It's fun to see people really enjoying a product that you spend a lot of time and a lot of work making.

We've had this dream for over a decade, and it's finally coming to fruition.

John Loss and I grew up together.

And we kind of always knew that we wanted to do a project like this together.

We've always done crazy things as we grew up.

We started brewing in the basement and giving it to our friends and family and making labels for it.

And then we kind of groomed ourselves to take it to the next level.

Then comes in Mr. TJ Estabrook, and, as a third partner, he brought everything else in the table that we didn't have.

Between the actual physicality of the construction and all the regulatory hurdles you have to jump through and the financial hurdles you have to jump through.

It's a delicate balance to get them all kind of play well together.

And it takes a lot of patience and calm.

On three-- one, two, three.

[applause] In our heads, we always-- we never questioned whether we were going to get to a point like this.

It's fun to see it actually happen, and terrifying.

But I think it was never a doubt in our mind that we would take it as far as we did.

Blacklist Friday!

[cheers] Just like everyone, I started home brewing.

I was a biology major, and they were hand in hand.

And then, started doing internships at Lake Superior and Fitger's, and I couldn't look back.

It's the challenge of taming untamable things, I guess I would say.

You know, between the live microorganisms that you're always working with and it also brings in elements of cooking and baking, which I've always liked to do.

So creating, and to me, that's something that has never-- or could never-- become boring.

Right now, it is gathering what we've learned in the month that we've been open-- refining things, working on the product, working on our atmosphere.

In the back, you know, we were trying to have a little more fun and make it a little more homey and pub-like.

So it's kind of got the shelves that you would expect like a built out element.

You know, I come from like an artistic background, and Midwestern arts tends to have this kind of neurotic behavior to it.

So gluing 20,000 pennies to some board, that fits right in line with that.

It's hard to tell what's next, really.

I try to tell myself, one foot in front the other, which I know, is not uncommon, but it's true.

Because if I think about too far, then you're not sleeping.

So I wake up and tell myself, what can I make today?

How can I make today a little bit better?

And that helps me not become overwhelmed, I think, even though I still end up being overwhelmed.

This is a place to brew beer.

It was, I mean, really built to brew beer.

Water, barley, hops, and yeast, those four things.

And If you're making a wheat beer, you've got to put the wheat in there.

That's craft beer.

And then, whatever you've got up in there.

Here's these four ingredients.

Make something.

History repeats itself.

The technology's gotten so much better for packaging, canning, that you can get these smaller breweries now that can enjoy some of these luxuries only a big plant would be able to have.

I'm glad that we have some of these small brewers coming up.

They're bringing it back.

I hope they really do well.

My dad would be proud, I think.

I think that the people that are brewing the beer now have a real passion for what they're doing.

And those people then had a passion for what they were doing, also.

Even a bad day in the brewery is still a good day, because you're in a brewery.

A lot of these, the brewers now are, they're started is home brewers, and they just had a passion for it and make excellent beers.

We're definitely grateful for Lake Superior Brewing and Fitger's kind of pioneering the way for craft beer in Duluth.

The mentors that I've had, between Dale and Dave Hoops, Frank Kaszuba and others, it's an impressive history line.

It makes me very proud to be part of it.

And I do feel like each and every brewer is carrying on that tradition and making it better, and constantly being passionate about it, and not letting something so interesting and ancient die off.

is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.