Oshkosh Classics: The Story of Our City’s Beer in 12 Recipes

Here's the story of our beer culture told through recipes that span 175 years of brewing in Oshkosh.

Oshkosh Classics is a 32-page, magazine-sized booklet with full-color illustrations throughout. Beer recipes are the core of the booklet, but anyone with an interest in Oshkosh brewing history or the city’s social history will find it interesting. The story goes beyond beer. It’s about community.

Oshkosh Classics has been a long time coming. I began searching for recipes from old Oshkosh breweries about a dozen years ago. My sole intention was to replicate what were then lost Oshkosh beers. As I found recipes, I scaled them to homebrew batch size and got brewing. I wasn’t too surprised to find that some of the old recipes produced great beers. After all, people in Oshkosh once loved these beers.

Rolling another barrel of Gambrinus Brewery Beer into an Oshkosh saloon in the early 1890s. A recipe for the brewery’s black lager is included in Oshkosh Classics.

As it often is with homebrewers, I had a strong impulse to share what I was doing. It was easy finding people who understood my obsession. I’ve been a member of the Society of Oshkosh Brewers homebrew club since 2010. This kind of thing is what the SOBs are all about.

In the spring of 2023, I suggested to the club’s board that we collect these recipes into a booklet. And off we went. I spent most of this past winter writing and designing the booklet, and thanks to SOB Rob Bearwald, we were able to have it professionally bound and printed on quality paper. Our humble, little beer book turned out better than any of us could have expected.

Some SOBs checking out their copies of Oshkosh Classics. Photos courtesy of Staci Saunders.

The SOBs’ release party for Oshkosh Classics will be at Bare Bones Brewery on Saturday, April 20, beginning at noon. In addition to the booklet release, SOB members will be sharing free samples of homebrew made from recipes included in the booklet.

Here’s a bonus: that same day, Bare Bones Brewery will release Peoples Bock made from the original recipe used at Peoples Brewing of Oshkosh in the 1950s and 1960s. Peoples Bock will be available on draft and in collectible cans.

There are only 300 copies of Oshkosh Classics, and I doubt that more will be printed. The SOBs are a non-profit organization and printing something like this is quite expensive. But the club wanted to keep the price of the booklet as low as possible. So, individual copies of Oshkosh Classics will be sold for $5 when purchased directly from a club member.

If you can’t make the release party at Bare Bones, here are a couple of other options…

Saturday, April 27

I’ll have copies of Oshkosh Classics for sale at the B'Gosh It's Good Breweriana Show from noon until 4pm.

Saturday, May 4

The SOBs will host their annual Big Brew behind the The Cellar brew shop at 465 N. Washburn from 9am until noon. This is always a fun, public event with lots of brewing, and food from the Ginger German food truck. This year, we’ll have a stack of Oshkosh Classics with us.

All of us SOBs hope to see you at one of these events. Prost!

175 Years of Beer in Oshkosh

The Oshkosh 175 celebration begins Thursday, April 4th at Fifth Ward Brewing with the release of 175 Bock.

All three Oshkosh breweries will release a bock beer this year to commemorate the 175th anniversary of brewing here. Each of the collectible cans for these beers will carry the “Oshkosh 175” emblem. This is the first time brewers in Oshkosh have collaborated on a series of beers that celebrate our city’s brewing heritage.

Each of the three beers in the series will be a different style of Bock. The Fifth Ward’s Bock is a traditional German Bock, dark and rich with a lush caramel note and just enough hop contribution to keep it from being too sweet. It's a surprisingly drinkable beer considering that it brings a solid 6.2% ABV. This is an excellent example of the style.

Now, here’s something I’ve been saving for the right occasion, and I think this is it... Back in 2017, Ian Wenger and Zach Clark were working to get their brewery launched. Fifth Ward would open later that year, in November. In the meantime, Zach and Ian continued to homebrew. In April of 2017, the three of us got together to drink some of their homemade Bock beer. For reasons I no longer recall, I shot some video while we quaffed Bock.

Here are the three of us from April 2017, six months before the opening of Fifth Ward, getting a taste of what was to come. Prost, guys!

Talkin' Omro Saloon Wars

I’ll be talking this Thursday, April 4, about the Omro Saloon Wars of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Omro saloon scene was like something out of the Wild West. Unfortunately, this is a history that was left for dead. It’s time we bring it back to life.

The talk begins at 6:30 at the Carter Memorial Library in Omro. Hope to see you there!

Oshkosh Brewers Celebrate 175 Years of Brewing in the City

In the summer of 1849, a German immigrant named Jacob Konrad established a brewery just south of Ceape Avenue on the shore of Lake Winnebago. Konrad’s brewery was the first in Oshkosh. The brewing culture he initiated here is still going strong 175 years later.

Brewers in Oshkosh are celebrating their heritage this year with beer releases and events that tap into the city’s history as a center for beer making. 

April 4: Fifth Ward's 175 Bock

The series begins at Fifth Ward Brewing on Thursday, April 4, with the start of Oshkosh Craft Beer Week. Fifth Ward will commemorate the anniversary with the release of 175 Bock, a strong German-style lager.

April 20: The SOB's Book Release at Bare Bones
On Saturday, April 20, the Society of Oshkosh Brewers homebrew club will be at Bare Bones Brewery for the release of Oshkosh Classics, the club’s first recipe book. The collection includes twelve recipes that illustrate the history of Oshkosh’s beer and brewing culture. The SOBs will share free samples of homebrewed beer made from recipes included in the book. In addition to the book release, Bare Bones Brewery will release Peoples Bock, made from the original recipe used at Peoples Brewing of Oshkosh in the 1950s and 1960s.

June 1: Bare Bones' Helles Bock

On Saturday, June 1, Bare Bones Brewery will release a Helles Bock made from a recipe that amplifies the brewery’s popular Oshkosh Lager. 

Fox River's Pre-Prohibition Bock

Fox River Brewing Company will round out the series with the release of a pre-Prohibition style Bock later this year. Each special release will be available on draft and in a collectible can featuring a commemorative “175” emblem.

It’s especially fitting that the anniversary will be observed by an offering of Bock beers. This subcategory of lager beer was first brewed in Oshkosh in 1858. Over the next century, the robust Bocks became the most commonly produced specialty beer here. The annual spring releases were highly anticipated. Saloons and beer depots posted placards illustrated with a grinning goat in their windows to alert beer fans that the Bock was back. Aficionados on hoarding binges grabbed all they could afford, causing the Bocks to rapidly sell out.

The tradition survived well into the 20th century as Oshkosh’s small breweries grew into larger, more industrial concerns. By the early 1950s, Oshkosh was home to three breweries with a combined production of more than 90,000 barrels of beer annually. An astounding quantity considering that the city’s population was just 41,000 and that most of that beer was consumed locally. Last year, less than 3,500 barrels of beer were brewed in Oshkosh.

Industry consolidation led to the end of our large breweries in 1972 when Peoples Brewing Company closed. The city was without a brewery for the first time in 123 years. In response, a homebrewing movement developed in Oshkosh even though it was a crime to make beer in an unlicensed facility. Oshkosh Congressman William Steiger took care of that by introducing federal legislation legalizing homebrewing. Steiger’s bill was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1978.

Our current breweries are a direct outgrowth of that early homebrewing movement. All three breweries here have brewhouses run by former homebrewers who came out of the local scene. The kinship with the city’s earliest breweries is no less tangible. After Jacob Konrad established his brewery in 1849, he began making hand-crafted, small-batch beer that he sold directly from his brewery to people living nearby. That description applies just as well to our current breweries.

There have been 21 breweries established in Oshkosh since Konrad came to town 175 years ago. That count doesn’t include the score of wildcat breweries that flourished, albeit illegally, in the city during Prohibition from 1920-1933. The beer and brewing culture here has been central to the identity of this place from the start. Oshkosh has always been a beer town. It’s time we celebrate that.

A Beer By Any Other Name

The longest-lived craft beer made in Oshkosh has a fluid identity. It’s a Scottish Ale from Fox River Brewing Company, and it was first served to the public at Fratello's Italian Cafe on Friday, December 15, 1995. On that day, it was called Caber Tossing. In 2014, Caber Tossing became Marble Eye. This February, the name will change again, this time to Highland Fox Scottish Ale.

Drew Roth is the head brewer at Fox River. He knows what’s coming next. “It’s kind of a running joke around the brewery. People will insist that Caber Tossing and Marble Eye were completely different beers with different recipes,” he says. “I can pull out recipe sheets and show them that they’re the same beers. It doesn’t matter. They just tell me I’m wrong.”

Drew Roth

Roth has 29 years of brewing logs backing up his claim. The recipe he is using for Highland Fox adheres, in every important respect, to the recipe that former Fox River head Brewer Al Bundee entered into the logbook for the first batch of Caber Tossing on November 25, 1995. “It’s a different name, but the recipe is not changing in the slightest,” he says.

In the trend-riddled world of craft beer, that kind of longevity is practically unheard of. But then, this beer was an outlier from the start. When Caber Tossing was introduced it became the strongest year-round beer ever produced in Oshkosh. At 6.5% ABV, with its deep amber color and caramelized malt flavor, Fox River’s Scottish Ale was altogether different from the mild, pale lagers that had been dominant here for a century.

Beer connoisseur and brewer Mark Stanek was among the early adopters. He became acquainted with Caber Tossing after moving to Oshkosh from Madison in 1997. “That beer was outstanding,” Stanek says. “It was malty in flavor and aromatics. It was one of the great beers from that time frame and was really well respected.”

In 2001, Caber Tossing took the gold medal in the Scottish-style ale category at the Great American Beer Festival. By 2006, it was the best-selling beer in Fox River’s portfolio. Caber Tossing-cum-Marble Eye held that position until 2014 when BLU Bobber became a year-round beer and the brewery’s runaway bestseller. Ten years later, Marble Eye, soon to be Highland Fox, still holds its own.

“It just continues to be that beer that consistently sells,” Roth says. “We have discussions every year about what beers are going to get pulled to make room for new things, but Marble Eye has never been up for discussion. It just keeps going, and we’re going to keep brewing it.”

That’s a rare declaration to attach to an amber beer these days. Nationwide, the popularity of darker-hued brews has fallen significantly. The decline is illustrated by the recently diminished Fat Tire Amber Ale. Ten years ago, Fat Tire was among the most popular of all craft beers. But deflating sales led to Fat Tire's reformulation last year. Gone is the amber. Fat Tire now wobbles along, drained of its color.

“Wisconsin is kind of a weird market in that way,” Roth says. “A lot of people here still want those darker beers. It might be our climate, or some of the traditions around here, I’m not really sure. Marble Eye is often our second or third best seller on draft even in the summertime.”

It's a beer that has been bucking trends for so long that it has entered the pantheon of Oshkosh classics such as Chief Oshkosh, Peoples Beer, and Rahr’s Elk’s Head. At 29-years old, what is about to become Highland Fox is the youngster of that bunch. Yet it remains an old friend to those who discovered their love of flavorful beer through Caber Tossing. “I know I’m going to hear about it, but I like the new name,” Roth says. “Highland Fox embraces our identity and what the beer is about. We're getting back to our roots on that.”

A slightly different version of this story appears in today's Oshkosh Herald.