The Oshkosh Brewing Company, 1911

Here's a picture from a time when the Oshkosh beer scene was on the cusp of epic change. The photo below is believed to have been taken in the autumn of 1911. The photographer is standing on the west side of Doty Street just south of 16th Ave. The camera points east towards the new brewery of the Oshkosh Brewing Company.

The car in the foreground is a symbol of the change afoot. Automobiles were becoming increasingly common in Oshkosh. The horse and buggy now shared space with motorized vehicles. The horse-drawn "beer rolls" were being replaced by trucks. The old Oshkosh was giving way. A new city was being born.

Just beyond the car is a courtyard packed with tanks waiting to be installed in the new brewery of the Oshkosh Brewing Company (OBC). They were glass-enameled steel tanks made by the Pfaudler Company of Rochester, NY. Here's a closer look.

There were 38 of those tanks in all. Each of them had a 250-barrel (7,750-gallon) capacity. They were used as conditioning tanks for OBC's lager beer. They were the first of their kind in Oshkosh. Before this, the city’s breweries aged their beer in wooden barrels. It had been that way for more than 60 years. The Pfaudler tanks were state of the art and considered a significant step forward. They helped to produce a more consistent and refined product. Or, as some would say, a beer with less character.

From the American Handy-Book of the Brewing, Malting and Auxiliary Trades, 1901.

Beyond the field of tanks is the old Horn and Schwalm brewery. It was built in 1879 and became part of the Oshkosh Brewing Company in 1894. In 1911, the former Horn and Schwalm plant was in the process of being converted into a bottling house. When it was new, it had been considered the most advanced brewery in this part of the state with annual capacity of 40,000 barrels. Here's how it looked in its prime in the 1880s when it was Oshkosh’s largest brewery and malting facility.

And here's the brewery that replaced it. It was designed by Chicago architect Richard Griesser. In May 1912, a year after construction had started, the new brewery of the Oshkosh Brewing Company was up and running. It had the capacity to produce 90,000 barrels of beer a year.

With the exception of its annual bock beer, OBC's new brewery would produce nothing but pale lager in the years that followed 1912. Oshkosh’s other breweries – Rahr Brewing, and the soon to be launched Peoples Brewing – followed suit. Modernization put an end to the older styles of beer that were made here. It also took a toll on variety. When OBC began in 1894, the brewery offered six different beers. Among them were a Vienna lager, and a dark Kulmbacher-style beer. Not long after, the brewery added a Berliner Weisse to its line-up. But all of that was gone by 1912. At the new brewery, they made just three year-round beers. Each of them was pale and light.

Big breweries thrive on uniformity. Everything at OBC was dialed in and buttoned down. Quality improved year after year. By the 1950s, OBC's Chief Oshkosh was like most other beers in America: pale, light, and unremarkable. And when breweries larger yet began vigorously competing for the Oshkosh market, OBC could offer little to distinguish itself. There was no other way. The brewery failed in 1971. Its fate had been sealed in glass-enameled steel tanks.

The site of the Oshkosh Brewing Company. The top photo is circa 1915. The photo below it was recently taken.