The Beers of 1946

1946 was a watershed year for Oshkosh. The previous 26 years had been riddled with hardships: Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II. But now the war was over and the men who had been away were returning home. Tavern life in the city came roaring back.

Nigl's “Chieftin” Tavern at 9th and Ohio in the 1940s.

It wasn’t all back to normal. The federal government had yet to drop the price controls it began enacting in 1942 to curb inflation triggered by the war. Beer sold in taverns was one of the commodities subject to price-fixing.

Oshkosh tavern owners took their marching orders from the federal Office of Price Administration (OPA). The OPA dictated the prices tavern keepers were allowed to charge for bottled beer.

Not surprisingly, Oshkosh tavern owners hated being told what to do by the OPA. The bar keepers resisted (a story for another day) and for good reason. Most of the beer sold in Oshkosh was made at the city's three breweries: The Oshkosh Brewing Company, Peoples Brewing, and Rahr Brewing. The OPA's pricing structure placed the beer from these breweries at the extreme low end. And that meant less revenue for Oshkosh taverns.

Without going too deep into the morass of the OPA, it's clear that the price lists dreamed up by these bureaucrats served the interests of large "shipping" breweries with wide distribution networks. Meanwhile, smaller breweries - like those in Oshkosh - had their beer consigned to low-price ghettos.

For us, there's a silver lining in this mess. The OPA's pricing sheets present a nearly comprehensive list of the beers available in Oshkosh 75 years ago.

The following is from a price list issued by the Green Bay office of the OPA on March 1, 1946. The prices are for a 12-ounce bottled beer sold in taverns for off-premise consumption. In parenthesis are prices adjusted for inflation; an approximation of what it would cost today. OK, let's get to the beer...

Tier 1
15¢ ($1.99) per bottle / 90¢ ($11.94) for a six pack.

Ballantine Ale
Newark, NJ

Just one beer in this bracket and one of just three ales in a list dominated by lager beer. Six-packs weren’t yet common in 1946, but P. Ballantine and Sons was instrumental in changing that. The Newark brewery was the third largest in America at this point and Ballantine Ale was then the most expensive bottled beer sold in Oshkosh.

Tier 2
14¢ ($1.85) per bottle / 85¢ ($11.10) for a six pack.

Budweiser Beer
St. Louis

Miller High Life
Milwaukee

Schlitz Beer
Milwaukee

Here you have those large shipping breweries being allowed to charge top-dollar for their product. Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser) and Schlitz produced over three million barrels of beer in 1946. Miller was closing in on a million barrels. Of course, all three of these brands are now much cheaper. Can you imagine paying $11.10 for a six-pack of High Life?

Tier 3
13.5¢ ($1.79) per bottle / 81¢ ($10.74) for a six pack.
The fraction of a cent was applied when multiple bottles were included in the sale.

Heileman’s Old Style Lager
La Crosse

Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer
Milwaukee

Pabst Blue Ribbon Ale
Milwaukee

Pabst was the largest brewery in America in 1946. In 1947, Pabst lost that title to Schlitz, never to regain it. Today, Pabst is basically a shell company and owns the Heileman’s Old Style brand. Old style has been kicking around Oshkosh since the early 1900s. The brand took off here after Prohibition when Lee Beverage began distributing it. And to this day Lee Beverage distributes Old Style. It wasn't until the 1980s that Old Style lost its "Premium Beer" status around here. You can now get a 30-pack of Old Style in Oshkosh for less than $20.

Tier 4
13¢ ($1.72) per bottle / 78¢ ($10.32) for a six pack.

Hamm’s Beer
St. Paul

Kingsbury Ale
Manitowoc and Sheboygan

Rhinelander Export Beer
Rhinelander

Modern Oshkosh beer drinkers might find it hard to believe that Hamm's, Kingsbury, and Rhinelander were once considered premium beers. Today, Hamm's is often the cheapest beer available in Oshkosh with 30 packs going for just a few bucks more than the (adjusted) cost of a 1946 six-pack. I'm sure Kingsbury and Rhinelander were better beers back in the 1940s. By the time I got to them in the 1980s both were dreadful. That didn't keep me from drinking them.

Tier 5
12.5¢ ($1.66) per bottle / 75¢ ($9.96) for a six pack.

Blatz Pilsner
Milwaukee

Braumeister Pilsner Beer
Milwaukee

Gettelman's Rathskeller
Milwaukee

Kingsbury Pale Beer
Manitowoc and Sheboygan

Silver Fox de Luxe Beer
Chicago

Schoen’s Lager Beer
Wausau

Now we're into the thick of it. Aside from Blatz, which appears to be on life support, all of these brands have died. If I could revive one of them it would be Gettelman. After Prohibition, Gettelman beer grew to be quite popular in Oshkosh. The brand began fading in the 1960s after Miller aquired it. There remain a few lingering traces of Gettelman around town, though. The last time I checked, the sign below was still tacked to the front door at Andy's Pub & Grub on 9th Ave.

Tier 6
12¢ ($1.59) per bottle / 72¢ ($9.54) for a six pack.

Fauerbach Beer
Madison

North Star Lager Beer
Wausau

Here we go into the bottom half of the list where small, Wisconsin breweries were fighting an uphill battle against industry consolidation and stagnating prices. Then along comes the OPA to enforce that stagnation. North Star Lager was made at Mathie-Ruder Brewing, which closed in 1955. The Fauerbach brewery went out in 1966.

Tier 7
11.5¢ (1.53) per bottle / 69¢ ($9.18) for a six pack.

Meister Brau Beer
Chicago

Just one beer in this tier, the lowly Meister Brau. In 1946, MB was being made by Peter Hand Brewing of Chicago. It was already cutting a path to the budget bin. Miller bought the brand in 1972 and made it into a true cellar dweller. By 1973, Meister Brau was selling for $2.50 a case in Oshkosh. Only the loathsome Buckhorn and Bohemian Club were priced lower.

Tier 8
11¢ (1.46) per bottle / 66¢ ($8.76) for a six pack.

Berlin Export Beer
Berlin, Wis.

Knapstein Beer
New London, Wis.

Lager beer from a couple of small-town, Wisconsin breweries. These weren't cheeky, little boutique breweries squeezing out a few hundred barrels of gimmick-laden "craft" beer per annum. These were production breweries making thousands of barrels of down-home lager each year. Throughout the 1940s you could find breweries like these servicing communities across Wisconsin. Now those towns are flooded with Busch Light. How sad.

Tier 9
10.5¢ ($1.39) per bottle / 63¢ ($8.34) for a six pack.

Fox de Luxe Beer
Chicago

Haas Extra Pale Pilsner
Houghton, Michigan

Hochgreve’s Beer
Green Bay

Jung Pilsner Beer
Random Lake

The stinker in this group is Fox de Luxe. This iteration of de Puxe came out of the Peter Hand Brewery in Chicago. It was an early example of a large brewery dumping cheap beer into smaller markets. Schlitz would later perfect this strategy with Old Milwaukee. The beer that looks the most interesting to me in this set is the Jung beer brewed in Random Lake. The brewery described it as an amber, fully-aged "Old Country Lager." Most breweries at this time were boasting about how pale their beer was. Not Jung! None of that watery, feeble bullshit for them.

Photo courtesy of Tom Traxler.

Tier 10
10¢ ($1.32) per bottle / 60¢ ($7.92) for a six pack.

Adler Brau Beer
Appleton

Chief Oshkosh Beer
Oshkosh

Oconto Pilsener Beer
Oconto

Peoples Beer
Oshkosh

Rahr’s Old Imperial Beer
Green Bay

Red Ribbon Beer
Wausau

Here come the Oshkosh beers bringing up the rear. You may have noticed that Rahr Brewing of Oshkosh is missing. That may have something to do with Rahr's limited distribution during this time. This list applied to nearly all of Northeast Wisconsin. Rahr’s beer was, for the most part, confined to Oshkosh. Perhaps Rahr didn't rise to the level of OPA scrutiny. The 10¢ limit set on bottles of Chief Oshkosh and Peoples was pathetic. The price had been at that level for nearly a decade. Then comes the federal government mandating that price limit while the cost of making that beer had risen substantially. It's a wonder these breweries survived.

Tier 11
9.5¢ ($1.26) per bottle / 57¢ ($7.56) for a six pack.

Mellow Brew Beer
Kaukauna

Point Special Beer
Stevens Point

The bottom of the barrel, so to speak. Point Special is the perfect example of just how thick headed these pricing schemes tended to be. Point was almost certainly a superior beer to Schlitz even as far back as 1946. Yet the value of Point was capped at 47 percent below that of Schlitz. What a sick making application of policy. Point is the only small, Wisconsin brewery on this list that’s still with us. The Electric City Brewing Company of Kaukauna, maker of Mellow Brew Beer, closed in 1947. That same year, the highly controversial OPA was abolished.

The rest of the small breweries in this list were driven out by the 1970s. The large breweries then turned to cannibalizing one another. By the 1980s, the American brewing industry had become an oligopoly with the six largest breweries producing 92 percent of the beer made in America. That market domination is no better today despite the emergence of craft beer and the more recent proliferation of extremely small breweries.

Just about everything else here has been turned on its head. The premium beers of 1946 have been reduced to budget-beer status. While the beer made by Oshkosh's new and smaller breweries is sold at a premium price. But the taverns in Oshkosh no longer favor the locally brewed beer. The city's three breweries (Bare Bones, Fifth Ward, and Fox River) probably make less than 5% of the beer sold in Oshkosh taverns. The connection has been lost. It’s a whole other world.

Bare Bones Brewery, 2017.

The barroom at the Oshkosh Elk’s Club in the 1940s.