Breweriana Show in Oshkosh

On Sunday, October 4, beginning at noon, Fifth Ward Brewing Company in Oshkosh will host a brewery collectibles trade show. The free event will feature beer-related memorabilia that spans more than a century of American brewing history. It's been almost 40 years since the last time a show like this was held in Oshkosh. The man who's working to organize it wasn't even alive then.

Jared Sanchez.

Jared Sanchez is 32, and despite having a full-time job, a wife, and a young daughter, he manages to make time for his obsession: collecting items related to American brewing history. Or as hobbyists like Sanchez call it, breweriana.

"My interest in brewing history began when my college roommate, Zach Clark, started brewing beer in our college house basement with Ian Wenger," Sanchez says. Clark and Wenger went on to establish Fifth Ward Brewing. Meanwhile, Sanchez was studying up on Oshkosh brewing history and searching for remnants of the city's old breweries. But his pursuits grew more focused after a 2014 chance encounter with fellow collector Ron Akin.

Akin is co-author of the book The Breweries of Oshkosh and has amassed the preeminent collection of Oshkosh-related brewery memorabilia. "I had bought a Tonka Truck off of eBay and I had no idea that the seller was Ron Akin," Sanchez says. "When I arrived to pick up my purchase we talked for a few minutes and he asked if I collected anything else. I told him I collected Chief Oshkosh Beer items and his face lit up. He asked me if I wanted to see his collection. The moment I saw his basement, my life was never the same."

Now, Sanchez wants to pay the inspiration forward. "I wanted to set up this show as a way to promote the hobby and bring collectors together in the area and spark some local interest in the brewing history of Oshkosh," he says. "I wanted to put something together where we could all gather and enjoy time together and share our interests."

Many of the items displayed will have ties to Oshkosh, but Sanchez says the scope of the show will be broad. "People can expect to see items from breweries all across the state and country," he says. “There will be items from before Prohibition all the way up to more current things."

At least 15 vendors will be on hand to display their items. Sanchez encourages those who might be interested in showing their collections to contact him at 920-410-7073. His goal is to generate enough interest to ensure that it won’t be another 40 years before the next breweriana show happens here. “I hope to host this event annually,” Sanchez says. “I want to keep the hobby alive so that brewing history is never forgotten.”

Doppelbock at Fifth Ward

Fifth Ward released its Doppelbock last weekend and it is definitely worth a go. A big, chewy bock with a deep malt flavor. The three-hour boil they put to this thing creates an incredible richness. My favorite beer to date from Fifth Ward. 

New Top Dog: Oshkosh's First Collaboration Beer

Oshkosh's first brewery was launched 171 years ago. Since then, we've had 21 legal breweries and at least a dozen illegal breweries. And in all that time, there's never been an instance of two Oshkosh breweries collaborating on a beer. Until now.

New Top Dog Golden Ale.

On August 27, the brewers from Bare Bones and Fifth Ward got together to brew New Top Dog, a honey golden ale, that will be released at each brewery's taproom on Saturday, September 12.

  

From left to right: Ian Wenger and Zach Clark of Fifth Ward
with Jody Cleveland of Bare Bones during the New Top Dog brew.

New Top Dog is an English-style golden ale made with additions of honey and spelt. "We wanted to make something super approachable," says Zach Clark of Fifth Ward. "We used local honey from a producer in Neenah that has hives all around this area. We included some spelt in the grain bill to give it a nice kind of nutty aroma that should go well with the biscuity flavor we get from the English malt we're using."

"Super approachable" is a good way to put it. New Top Dog is an easy-drinking ale with an interesting fruity character and a clean, grainy finish. It's quaffable in the extreme. This is a young beer with flavors that are bright and fresh, which is exactly what you want in a light ale. The sooner you can get to this beer the more you're likely to enjoy it. In a lot of ways, this beer exemplifies what local brewing is all about.

New Top Dog was brewed and kegged at Fifth Ward. There were 42 cases of it canned yesterday afternoon at Bare Bones. You'll be able to pick up sixers of it at each brewery beginning Saturday. The beer will also be available at Wagner Market in Oshkosh in the near future.

Friday, September 10. Canning New Top Dog at Bare Bones.

The idea for the collaboration didn't come from either brewery. It was set in motion by Steve Romme of the Oshkosh Mid-Morning Kiwanis. "Steve asked me what I thought about doing a beer for a fundraiser that would feature dogs," Clark says. "He thought we could also get Bare Bones involved with it. So I got together with Jody (Cleveland, head brewer at Bare Bones) and we put together a recipe"

"This thing came together really fast," says Cleveland. "It all just fell into place."

Part of the proceeds from the beer will benefit the Oshkosh Area Humane Society and the Oshkosh Mid-Morning Kiwanis Club. In conjunction with the release, dog owners can bring their pets to either brewery on September 12 and 13, to have them photographed and entered into a competition to have their dog's picture appear on the label of next's year collaboration. For more on that aspect of the fundraiser click here.

With Oshkosh's lengthy history of beer making it would seem a collaboration like this one would have happened long before now. In any case, we won't have to wait another 171 years for it to happen again. Next year's collaboration between Bare Bones and Fifth Ward is already being discussed. "We're thinking this is going to be an ongoing thing," Clark says.

Notes

For more info on the first Oshkosh brewery, which launched in 1849, click here.

For more on those dozen or so illegal Oshkosh breweries, click here.

The Dortmunder at Fifth Ward

Fifth Ward released a Dortmunder-style lager last week. It's on now at the brewery's taproom.

Fifth Ward's Dort.

Dortmunder is a style of pale lager that's only been brewed in Oshkosh a couple of times. And until now, only at Fox River. The style occupies a thin slice of territory that sits between Pilsner and Helles. It's not as hoppy as a Pils. And it's not as malty as a Helles. Fifth Ward’s Dortmunder manages to deftly thread that needle. But to appreciate this beer fully, it helps to know a little about the story behind it.

Dortmunder Export Lager originated in the late 1800s in and around the city of Dortmund in the north of Germany. Pale lager was just then coming into vogue. In Dortmund, where they'd been brewing ale for centuries, they abandoned the old ways and began producing a pale lager built around the hard water native to the region. It's that last tidbit that helps make Fifth Ward's Dortmunder so interesting.

Fifth Ward brews with Oshkosh water, which has a bicarbonate level on par with the brewing waters used for those original Dortmunder lagers. That hard water shows all through the drinking of this beer. It lends a firmness to both the malt and hop character that immediately presents itself. This beer is just what it should be. If you've had it before, I'd suggest trying it again with the Dortmund backstory in mind. It'll enhance the experience.

This is just the second lager Fifth Ward has produced on its 10-barrel system. Last spring the brewery released a doppelbock brewed on a pilot system. Fifth Ward's Oktoberfest, which was released early in August was the first lager made in the big kettles. And in October, the brewery will release another lager – a doppelbock – that’s going to come off the large system.

And that looks like that'll be the last of Fifth Ward's lager beers for a while. The longer fermentation/conditioning times of these beers has caused the brewery to run into production disruptions and created gaps on their tap list. However, Fifth Ward is looking to increase capacity next year, so perhaps we'll see more lager brewing there after that happens. More to come...

Oshkosh Brewed Oktoberfest

Right now, three Oshkosh breweries have Oktoberfest-style beers on the market. It's the first time that's ever happened. An Oktoberfest beer is an amber, malt-forward type of lager beer that originated in Germany nearly 200 years ago. But the style has a surprisingly short history in Oshkosh. We're now, though, at what looks like the start of an annual tradition among the breweries here.

Patti Dringoli, co-owner of Bare Bones Brewery, pours an Oktoberfest in her brewery's tap room.

Oktoberfest beer, also known as Märzen beer, didn't make its way to Oshkosh until the late 1960s. It first appeared here as an import arriving in late September to coincide with the annual Oktoberfest celebration in Munich. Oshkosh's earlier breweries, though deeply influenced by the German brewing tradition, never included Oktoberfests in their output. It wasn't until Fox River Brewing released its Foxtoberfest Märzen in the fall of 1997 that the style was made locally. Fox River has released its annual Foxtoberfest at about this time each year ever since.

Andrew Roth is the brewmaster at Fox River. When he began there as a lead brewer in 2018, Foxtoberfest was among the first beers he made. Before that, Roth had worked as a brewer in La Crosse where he had an immersion experience with this type of beer. "I lived in La Crosse for a year and Oktoberfest is like a religion there," Roth says. The Oktoberfest he makes at Fox River is from the same recipe the brewery has been using for about a decade. It's become the most important beer in the brewery's seasonal lineup and often sells out by mid-October. Roth can't imagine Foxtoberfest not being in his rotation. "It's not going anywhere," he says. "We'll brew it every year until people don't want Oktoberfest beers anymore." 

Bare Bones Brewery introduced its Oktoberfest in 2018 when Jody Cleveland took over as the head brewer there. "Its one of my favorite styles," Cleveland says. "I look forward to it every year." For Cleveland and Bare Bones, Oktoberfest fits well within the brewery's production scheme. It's brewed using a traditional lager yeast which requires a cold fermentation and a somewhat longer period of maturation. "Because of the different sizes of our fermentation tanks, I can time things out in a way that allows other beers to work around it," Cleveland says. "It actually works out really well for us. I'm able to give it the time it needs to get the right flavor."

This year, Bare Bones became the first Oshkosh brewery to package its Oktoberfest in cans. "I just think the cans help it hold up better," Cleveland says. "You don't have to worry about it getting light-struck or being so susceptible to the elements like bottles are. Cans offer a little better protection."

At Fifth Ward Brewing, this year marks the release of the brewery's first Oktoberfest. It's also the first time the brewery has produced a large batch of lager beer on its 10-barrel system. "We learned a lot," says Ian Wenger, who co-owns and shares brewing duties at Fifth Ward with Zach Clark. "We were tasting it almost daily to track how it developed over that long fermentation and all of a sudden it just got over a hump and became what we wanted it to be." The beer was brewed entirely from German ingredients. "It's definitely authentic in that way," says Clark.

But for Fifth Ward, the production of the beer proved more of a burden than initially anticipated. The cold, slow fermentation tied up the brewery's tanks causing Fifth Ward to run out of several of its other beers. "We're going to need to increase our capacity if we're going to brew this again next year," Clark says. "There's a good chance we'll get some new tanks in here by next summer, so a lot is going to depend on the timing of that."

Though each of the three breweries has produced an Oktoberfest that hues to the traditions of the style, each of the beers has its own distinct flavor profile. For Jody Cleveland, that's part of what makes them interesting. "Seeing what people will do within that limited framework is fascinating to me as a beer drinker and brewer," he says. "I just think it's pretty cool that all three of us have an Oktoberfest out now. They're all fairly different and they're all pretty damned good."

Notes

For more on the history of Oktoberfest beers in Oshkosh, click here.

There's more on the space that Oktoberfest beers occupy in the current scene and how that relates historically here.

Our Bock is Oktoberfest

Where we once had this....


We now have this...

For more than a hundred years, the most anticipated seasonal beer in Oshkosh was bock beer; a malt-driven amber/brown lager that was released just once a year. Today, the most anticipated seasonal beer in Oshkosh is Oktoberfest; a malt-driven amber/brown lager that gets released just once a year.

Cap: On the left is a 1934 depiction of bock beer from Rahr Malting.
On the right is Fox River Brewing's Oktoberfest.

The two beers share more than color in common. The recipes are also similar.

The post-Prohibition bocks from Rahr Brewing of Oshkosh and the Oshkosh Brewing Company used caramel malts. At Peoples Brewing they took a somewhat different approach by adding a heavy dose of Munich malt in their bock beer. The three Oktoberfests made by Oshkosh breweries this year each included Munich malt along with some form of caramel malt in their recipes.

Not surprisingly, the resulting flavors also share some things in common. In 1961, the Oshkosh Brewing Company described its bock as having a "toasted" flavor with the taste being "quite a bit sweeter" than its standard beer. Some 50 years later, when Fox River Brewing released its Oktoberfest, the brewery’s description mentioned that "The taste is full of a bready sweet maltiness."

The strength of the older bocks and the current Oshkosh Oktoberfests are also in the same ballpark. Wilhelm Kohlhoff, a brewer at Peoples Brewing in Oshkosh during the 1950s and '60s said that Peoples Bock was in the 5.5 to 6% ABV range. That's right in line with Fox River's Foxtoberfest at 6.2% ABV; and Fifth Ward's Oktoberfest at 5.8% ABV. Bare Bones Oktoberfest at 5% ABV isn't too far off that mark, either.

That leaves one major difference between these two types of beer: the release date. Oshkosh-brewed bock was considered a spring beer, released near the end of winter. Oktoberfests, of course, are thought of as the prototypical beer of fall released at the end of summer. But just like the older bocks, the Oktoberfests have succumbed to seasonal creep.

Prior to the 1880s, Bock beer in Oshkosh would usually hit the market in April. But in the 1890s, the creep began with bock beers arriving earlier every year. By the 1910s, Oshkosh breweries were releasing bock beers as early February. Each of the brewers was trying to beat the other to the punch.

From the February 25, 1910 Oshkosh Daily Northwestern.

The same sort of creep has happened with Oktoberfests. In the 1960s, when the first Oktoberfest beers started appearing in Oshkosh, they wouldn't start pouring until mid-September. This year there were Oktoberfest beers on sale in Oshkosh in July. And all three of the Oshkosh Oktoberfests were pouring by early August. The reasons for the creep are much the same. "We're basically forced to brew these beers early," says Andrew Roth, brewmaster at Fox River. “I would prefer we could release it at the proper historical time, but if we do that we won't sell any because the market will have already been saturated by it. It's unfortunate, but there's nothing to be done about it."

I'm part of the problem. I love Oktoberfest and I start grabbing it as soon as it's available. And for me the sooner, the better. Prost!

Notes

For more on the history of bock beer in Oshkosh, click here.

For more on the history of Oktoberfest beers in Oshkosh, click here.

Oshkosh Saloons of 1902: Schlitz Hall

Schlitz Hall, Southwest Corner of Washington and State.
Fred Schild and Henry Wunderlich, Proprietors.

We’ve arrived at the ninth and final stop of the 1902 Oshkosh Saloon Crawl. I'm sure by now you've noticed a number of recurring themes along the way. For example, the Germanic heritage of so many of the people who ran these places. Fred Schild and Henry Wunderlich were steeped in that culture.

Schild was born in Germany in 1844. He came to America when he was 28 and soon after arrived in Oshkosh. Wunderlich was the son of German immigrants. He was born in Jefferson in 1859. In the mid-1880s, Wunderlich moved to Oshkosh and got a job tending bar at a saloon Schild was running on the south side of town.

In 1892, Schild and Wunderlich left the south side and launched Schlitz Hall at the corner of Washington and State. The building was owned by August Uihlein, chairman of the board and secretary of Schlitz Brewing. Like a lot of the saloons tied to Schlitz, Schild and Wunderlich had their place done up in a palm-garden motif. This saloon was unlike most others in Oshkosh. It was roomy and airy. It was a clean, well-lighted place.

The Schlitz Beer Hall; page 130 Oshkosh Up to Date, 1902.

The only beer they’d serve you there was beer made by Schlitz Brewing. At the time, that included a host of specialties. Things like Schlitz Porter, Schlitz Extra-Stout, Schlitz Budweiser, and the Schlitz version of a Vienna lager. But the featured beer was Schlitz Atlas Brau, an “old-time lager” drawn directly “from the wood” (a wooden barrel). This was a premium beer aimed at connoisseurs. Schild and Wunderlich were the only saloon keepers in Oshkosh allowed to serve it. Here's the two of them in an ad from 1903.

From the 1903 Oshkosh City Directory.

Here’s an outside shot of Schlitz Hall in all its glory. The domed cupola is directly above the corner entrance to the saloon at the southwest corner of Washington and State streets.

And to think we gave up that for a parking lot…. 

The Exclusive Company parking lot at the corner of Washington and State streets.

Well folks, that damned parking lot is where our 1902 Oshkosh Saloon Crawl ends. I thoroughly enjoyed putting this together. And I hope you enjoyed it, too.

To go back to the beginning of the crawl, click here.
To see all of the stops along the crawl, click here.

Notes
The Schild and Wunderlich place was not the first or only Schlitz saloon here. At the turn of the century Schlitz was gunning hard for Oshkosh. To learn more about that, click here.

I mentioned the variety of beer styles that were produced by Schlitz during this period. This ad from 1891 gives you a sense of the diversity of Schlitz’ offerings.

Oshkosh Saloons of 1902: The Little Cozy Sample Room

The Little Cozy Sample Room, 216 N. Main Street.
George Miller and Bert Gough, Proprietors.

George Miller and Bert Gough were first-generation Americans born to parents who had come here from Germany. Both were seasoned saloon men by the time they opened the Little Cozy in 1901. I suspect this may be them standing behind the bar.

The Little Cozy Sample Room; page 90 Oshkosh Up to Date, 1902.

This wasn’t just another nickel beer joint. This was a high-end beer bar serving premium beers made in Oshkosh, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and London. By this point in our crawl you may have noticed that you're not seeing tap handles jutting up from behind the bar in any of these places. They had a different sort of setup in 1902.

In the picture above, look between the man in the hat and the hatless man in the dark suit. You’ll see what looks like three faucets. That’s exactly what they are, but these faucets poured beer. They’re attached to an icebox. Block ice was loaded into the top of the cabinet. Cold air would drift down keeping the beer below nice and cool.

Let’s get a better look at one of these beer cabinets. The picture below is from a catalog put out by the Robert Brand and Sons Co. of Oshkosh. Brand was one of the Midwest’s main producers of these contraptions.

The back end of the Little Cozy was occupied by the card room. Have a look...

I’m guessing those potted plants were fake. Or short-lived. This would not have been a room conducive to the habitation of greenery. Imagine this place deep into a Saturday night. The booze is flowing. The cards are flying. The spittoons are filling up and the cigar smoke is so thick you can't see the portraits of the women on the walls. That place must have smelled just lovely by the time Sunday morning rolled around.

Well, it smells better now. What was the Little Cozy is now Screwballs Sports Club. And now the beer taps are front and center.

 

Screwballs Sports Club, 216 N. Main St.

Screwballs Sports Club.

The crawl continues….
The final stop on the 1902 Saloon Crawl is Schlitz Hall at the corner of Washington and State.
To return to the start of the crawl, click here.
For links to all of the stops on the crawl click here.

Notes
I have something of a minor obsession with the Little Cozy. If you want to know more, I’ve written about this place before here and here.

Oshkosh Saloons of 1902: The White Seal

The White Seal Buffet, 300 Block of N. Main Street.

Peter Stein and John Larie, Proprietors.

Peter Stein and John Larie were born in Wisconsin. Both were the issue of parents who had migrated from Germany. For first-generation Americans of German descent, owning a saloon was the embodiment of the American dream. Stein and Larie dreamed big. Check out this place...

The White Seal Buffet; page 22 Oshkosh Up to Date, 1902.

You don't see many old saloons decked out in white. The White Seal was all about projecting an atmosphere of elegance. It was variously described as "Wisconsin's most beautiful buffet" and "The finest bar west of Chicago." Towards the rear of the building was the club room. It was just as prim as the barroom. Let's have a look.

In case you're wondering, La Preferencia was a Cuban cigar. You could buy one of those in Oshkosh in 1902 for a dime. Below the cigar sign is the restroom. That's how luxurious this place was – they had an indoor bathroom. Plenty of Oshkosh saloons didn’t. And just outside the bathroom door is the sink. There are still a number of taverns in Oshkosh that have exactly this sort of arrangement.

Alright, let's get to the ugly. At the back of the room, you can see a doorway. That would have been the “ladies’ entrance.” The club room was a place where a woman could take her beer in peace. Because unless she was a prostitute or barmaid, she wouldn't have been welcomed in the front bar. There was a loud squabble in Oshkosh during this time whether women should even be allowed in saloons.

In 1899, the Oshkosh common council had seriously kicked around the idea of banning all women from the city's saloons. During the debate, second ward Alderman Charles Heath spewed, "I don't consider this matter a question of personal liberty in any sense." Thankfully, that breed of dinosaur no longer roams our land.

The White Seal is gone, too. That beautiful bar gave way to a parking lot. It breaks my heart.

From the 1903 Oshkosh City Directory.

The White Seal used to stand here, near the northeast corner of Waugoo and N. Main streets.

The crawl continues….
I’ll post the next stop on the 1902 is the Little Cozy Sample Room at 216 N. Main.
To return to the start of the crawl, click here.
For links to all of the stops on the crawl that are currently available, click here.

Notes
John Larie was among the Oshkosh saloon keepers behind the launch of Peoples Brewing Company. There's more on that here.

Oshkosh Up to Date is a book from 1902 that forms the basis for this series of saloon stories. For some background on Oshkosh Up to Date, click here. To see a digitized version of Oshkosh Up to Date, click here.

Oshkosh Saloons of 1902: The Opera Buffet

Opera Buffet, Opera House Square.
William Bedward, Proprietor.

William Bedward was born in Wales in 1852. He was in his early 20s when he came to Oshkosh and found work as a railroad brakeman. In 1899, or thereabouts, he left that and took over a posh, little saloon that was just a short stroll from the famous Athearn Hotel. Here’s the look of Bedward’s place in 1902.

The Opera Buffet; page 126 Oshkosh Up to Date, 1902.

Check out that U.S. flag with just 45 stars. Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii had yet to become states. More importantly, look to the lower right portion of the picture. You can see the corner of a table and part of a serving tray. Bedward was a proponent of what was called the saloon lunch. That's the start of his “buffet” there. 

At the turn of the century, the saloon lunch was a feature of many Oshkosh bars. Saloon keepers would put up a free buffet, starting at 10 or 11 in the morning, in hopes of luring in folks for a bout of day drinking. This wasn't just pretzels and popcorn. You could make a meal out of this. They’d serve things like roast beef, ham, turkey, venison, limburger cheese, oysters, soup...

The customers loved it. The saloon keepers came to hate it. They croaked about the expense of providing all that free food. But none who offered it dared be the first to quit. At one point, the saloonists even attempted to impose a collective ban on the free saloon lunch in Oshkosh. When word of that got out, the Daily Northwestern reported that "the retailers of wet goods have been pelted by a perfect hailstorm of abuse." The free lunch gradually dwindled away and died entirely in 1920 with the arrival of Prohibition.

Bedward's bar perished just like those free lunches. Opera House Square is now devoid of saloons. It once teemed with them. Here's a photo taken outside the Opera Buffet, circa 1913. The red arrow indicates the site of Bedward's old stand.

The Crawl Continues...

I’ll have the next stop on the 1902 Saloon Crawl posted later this week. 

To return to the start of the crawl, click here.

For links to all of the stops on the crawl that are currently available, click here.

Notes

If you’re curious about the “saloon lunch” I’ll be writing more about it in the not-too-distant future. If you can’t wait, check out the December 5, 1898 edition of the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern. There’s a fun story in there about it. You can get your hands on that via the Oshkosh Public Library.

If you’re curious about Oshkosh’s famous Aethern Hotel, here’s a brief primer.

Bedward’s saloon was part of a cluster of businesses located in Opera House Square. That little, and now grass filled, plot of land has an interesting history. Michael McArthur of the Oshkosh Public Library explored that history in one of his recent Librarian Learns videos. You can see that here. 

Oshkosh Up to Date is a book from 1902 that forms the basis for this series of saloon stories. For some background on Oshkosh Up to Date, click here. To see a digitized version of Oshkosh Up to Date, click here.