Old Derby Rides Again

It’s been 70 years since the last pour of Peoples Old Derby Ale. But on Saturday, January 8th, this lost Oshkosh ale returns. At noon, Bare Bones Brewery will tap into a barrel of Old Derby Ale as part of the brewery’s Heritage Series of historic Oshkosh beers.

The Old Derby Story
This is a beer with a motley backstory. Old Derby Ale began life at the Ripon Brewing Company. It was hatched in the chaotic days that followed the end of National Prohibition in 1933.

The Ripon Brewery on Jefferson St. in Ripon. The brewery was demolished in the early 2000s.

The close of the dry years led to a brief period of adventurous beer-making. The market was new again. It was a chance for brewers to deviate from the standard menu of pale lager that had prevailed before the onset of Prohibition in 1920. The little lager brewery in Ripon set out to do something different. It was going to brew ale.

Old Derby Ale came hurtling out of the wreckage of Prohibition at 12% ABV. It may have been the strongest beer brewed in Wisconsin up to that time. Old Derby slammed into Oshkosh in the spring of 1934. They were selling mugs of it for a dime at the Tip Top Tavern on Main Street.

452 N. Main Street, Oshkosh. Former home to the Tip Top Tavern.

The companion to Old Derby Ale was Old Derby Porter. It was also a rare bird. A number of porters had been brewed in Wisconsin before Prohibition, but the style had been almost completely abandoned by 1920.

Ripon Brewing pushed hard to find an audience for its outré ales. The brewery distributed its Old Derby set as far west as Colorado. But the beers never caught on. In 1937, Ripon Brewing Company failed.

That same year, the Old Derby brand was purchased by Peoples Brewing of Oshkosh. The Porter was left for dead. But Old Derby Ale went back into production. This wasn't the Old Derby of old, though. This one was about 5.5% ABV. The Peoples version of Old Derby was akin to the pale ales that had long been popular on the east coast.

Old Derby was the only ale brewed in Oshkosh in the post-prohibition period. It was slightly stronger and somewhat hoppier than the pale lagers that were the everyday fare here. It was also more expensive. A case of Peoples Beer, the brewery's standard lager, sold for $2.39 in 1949 (or about $26 in today's money). A case of Old Derby Ale went for $2.95 ($32 today).

Old Derby was aimed at aficionados. The sort of folks who were into things like Pabst Old Tankard Ale and Kingsbury Ale out of Manitowoc. It was a niche product. And it remained so until 1951 when Old Derby Ale was discontinued. With that, ale brewing became a dead letter here for more than 40 years. It wasn't until 1995, when Fox River Brewing opened, that ale would again gain a foothold in Oshkosh.

Old Derby Ale at Bare Bones
Bare Bones head brewer Jody Cleveland and I ran into a problem when attempting to replicate this beer: the original recipe had been lost. But all was not lost.

We were able to backward engineer a recipe using extant information we had about the beer, along with material usage and production methods employed at Peoples. We came up with a formula that I'm confident produces a beer comparable to the Old Derby Ale that was brewed at Peoples in the 1940s.

The Bare Bones version of Old Derby Ale is a golden-hued beer that's 5.5% ABV and 40 IBUs. It was brewed from a grist composed primarily of American ale malt, with corn and light-caramel malt rounding out the grain bill. This is a single-hop beer brewed with American-grown cluster. The hopping regimen included a five-day dry hop (or double hopping as they called it when Old Derby was made at Peoples). This is a period piece in liquid form.

The beer was brewed on the Bare Bones pilot system, so just a single barrel of it will be available. Old Derby Ale begins pouring when Bare Bones opens at noon on Saturday, January 8th. Get it while you can.