Oshkosh Peculiar

All is not well in the world of beer. American beer sales are trending steadily downward, and craft breweries are failing at an unprecedented rate. Yet there’s little evidence of such withering here. Last year, Oshkosh's three breweries – Bare Bones, Fifth Ward, and Fox River – each saw their sales volume increase.

“Maybe it’s just that we’re a couple of years behind the trend,” says Ian Wenger, co-owner of Fifth Ward Brewing. Wenger may be half joking, but the concern is genuine. When it comes to beer, Oshkosh has a history of being slow to adopt national trends. If the local homebrewing scene is any indication, though, this may be one trend that skips the city altogether.

Homebrewing has been looked upon as a bellwether for the craft beer industry. In fact, the struggle that now besets craft brewers was preceded by a sharp downturn in homebrewing. Membership in the American Homebrewers Association has fallen by 35 percent since 2018, and the organization has canceled its annual conference for 2024. Over the past three years, however, the Society of Oshkosh Brewers homebrewing club has increased its membership by 35 percent. The club now has 69 members.

Scott Westpfahl during a recent meeting of the SOBs at Fifth Ward Brewing. Photo by Staci Saunders.

Scott Westpfahl has been president of the Society of Oshkosh Brewers (the SOBs) since 2021. He has no doubts about what makes the Oshkosh club different. “We have a lot of people here who are truly invested in the club,” Westpfahl says. “It’s a very active membership. It makes all the difference. And we’re so tied into the community. The SOBs are engaged with every brewery, cidery, meadery, and distillery in the region.”

At Fifth Ward, brewery co-owner Zach Clark takes a similar view. “I go around to a lot of other towns on sales calls, and one thing you notice here is that the enthusiasm hasn’t died down the way it has in some places. We see it in our taproom. People want to go out and do things and be active. I mean, we have a pretty advanced crowd coming in here. They’ve evolved along with us. You don’t see that everywhere.”

Clark says it probably helped that the craft beer scene in Oshkosh didn’t grow as quickly as it did some larger cities. “It happened more gradually here, and I think that’s meant that we’ve never had the oversaturation that you see in other places where there might be too many breweries, and people kind of losing interest because it's just too much to keep up with. I think people around here have remained engaged with what’s going on.”

The engagement is an expression of social life in a city where tavern culture has been foundational. Wenger sees a shift taking place. “I know that some of our taproom regulars are people who used to spend more time in bars, but maybe they just wanted a different sort of atmosphere. We see a lot of the same faces, and they might be with their families and they're getting together, and they can all feel comfortable here. I don’t know if that kind of thing is happening in the bars so much anymore.”

The Fifth Ward's taproom in Oshkosh. Photo by Staci Saunders.

Fifth Ward is looking to build upon its taproom success. Clark and Wenger are currently exploring the possibility of opening a second taproom in the area. After doubling the capacity of its brewery over the past two years, Fifth Ward became the largest producer of beer in Oshkosh last year selling 1,480 barrels.

“We could already make twice as much beer here as we do now, so we absolutely have the capacity to supply another taproom,” Clark says. “The question we’re thinking about is how far do we want to go in that direction? We’re trying to figure out where the equilibrium is.”

For the Oshkosh homebrewers the future appears as promising, but far less complex. “I mean, for us it’s all about having fun,” Westpfahl says. “And right now we have such a great group that’s really invested in the overall experience of being an SOB. We’re in a good place.”

The Society of Oshkosh Brewers invites the community to get a taste of the SOB experience on Saturday, May 4, when the club will hold its annual Big Brew from 9am until 1pm at The Cellar homebrew shop at 465 N. Washburn Street. The event is open to the public and will feature brewing demonstrations.

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

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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!

Fifth Ward... Six Years.

Fifth Ward Brewing in Oshkosh is celebrating its Sixth Anniversary this week. And every year around this time I snap a picture of the brewery’s founders, Ian Wenger and Zach Clark, in front of their tap handles. Here we go again with another round of Fifth Ward.

Ian Wenger (left) and Zach Clark on opening night at the Fifth Ward Taproom, November 12, 2017.

November 7, 2018.

November 4, 2019.

November 10, 2020.

October 28, 2021.

2022

November 9, 2023.

Fifth Ward Takes the Next Step

Zach Clark of Fifth Ward Brewing Company is telling a story you don’t often hear these days from craft brewers. "I’m pretty confident that with how this phase of our growth is going that we could hit 2,000 barrels this year," Clark says. That would be a doubling of Fifth Ward’s 2022 production. In a market segment beset with uncertainty and sluggish growth, Fifth Ward is becoming an outlier.

Zach Clark (left) and Ian Wenger of Fifth Ward Brewing in Oshkosh.

The bullishness at Fifth Ward isn’t merely speculative. The brewery, which has self-distributed its beer since opening in 2017, recently signed distribution agreements with Triangle Distribution of Green Bay, and the Oshkosh-based Lee Beverage of Wisconsin. The partnerships will result in Fifth Ward’s beer being sold in half of the counties in Wisconsin by the end of summer. “This is the step that’s going to get us to the next level,” Clark says.

Taking that step required a few years of groundwork. Fifth Ward’s approach doesn't fit the model that most beer distributors find attractive. Instead of having three or four core brands going into the broader market, the brewery has built its foundation on a constantly changing selection of beers, releasing upwards of 50 different beers a year.

“That’s what kept us from going with a distributor,” says Ian Wenger, who along with Clark is a co-owner of Fifth Ward. “The distributors were telling us we’d have to narrow it down to a handful of beers. But that’s not how we built this. With Lee Beverage, they’d see us around town, going out into the market and talking to retailers and bar owners, so they sort of realized what we were about.”

“And as they started asking around, customers were telling them they wanted to get the new stuff,” Clark adds. “We're pushing the boundaries of distribution for sure, but a lot of this is customer driven.”

The beers those customers appear most interested in fall under the umbrella of Fifth Ward’s Frootenanny series, which accounts for about 30 percent of the brewery’s sales. The base for a Frootenanny is a light and tart ale that gets flavored with different combinations of fruits and other adjuncts to produce a unique beer. These were novel concoctions when Fifth Ward began selling them in 2018. The novelty may have worn off, but the customer appeal has only grown.

“The other day I was up in Green Bay at one of those little bars that has just a few taplines of light beer, and the buyer there told me she wanted to get a Frootenanny on tap,” Wenger says. “It’s finding its way into places like that now.”

The problem for Fifth Ward has been keeping up with the demand. Each beer the brewery produces takes approximately three weeks from brew day to packaging. Last summer, with their brewhouse pushed to its limit, Clark and Wenger found themselves running out of beer. Clark is adamant when he says “This summer we are not going to run out of beer.”

A $300,000 expansion of the brewery that began last year has quadrupled Fifth Ward's capacity. “When everything is in place, we’ll be able to get 4,000 barrels of beer out of here,” Clark says. The upgrade includes three, 35-barrel tanks that can both ferment and carbonate beer, a 30-barrel conditioning and packaging tank, and a new cooling system that helps shorten brewdays. In the wings are two 16-barrel fermentation tanks acquired through the dissolution of the Ale Asylum Brewery in Madison.

Fifth Ward is now the largest brewery in Oshkosh in terms of capacity. If Clark’s projections are correct the brewery will become the largest in Oshkosh in terms of production in 2023. The brewery and taproom has 10 employees in addition to Clark and Wenger. Clark says the next step is to hire a full-time salesperson and begin looking towards the Madison and Milwaukee markets.

“It’s always going to be a challenge,” Clark says. “It’s always going to be a lot of work. But I still think this is just the start.”

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

Two Brewers. Six Years. Six Pictures.

Fifth Ward Brewing in Oshkosh held its grand opening on November 12, 2017. I went there that evening to grab a beer and congratulate my friends Ian Wenger and Zach Clark who had been working hard for the past three years trying to get a brewery started.

I asked them to stand in front of their beer taps for a picture. It turned into something we’ve done once a year, (nearly) every year since. Here, finally, is the latest installment.

There’s a great book by Patti Smith entitled Just Kids that came to mind when I looked through these pictures again today. Just Kids…

Ian Wenger (left) and Zach Clark; November 12, 2017.

November 7, 2018.

November 4, 2019.

November 10, 2020.

October 28, 2021.

March 23, 2023

The SOBs Move to Fifth Ward

Fifth Ward Brewing is the new home of the Society of Oshkosh Brewers. The club will begin having its monthly meeting at Fifth Ward starting tomorrow night at 7 pm. If you’re a homebrewer, homebrew curious, or just into good beer, stop in and check it out (wine, cider, and mead folks are also welcome). The SOBs move to Fifth Ward has been a long time coming. When the club formed in 1991, Oshkosh was without a brewery and finding good beer here could be a challenge. Part of the original SOB mission was to agitate and educate with the goal of improving the beer scene in Oshkosh. Now we have three breweries, each of them with ties to the SOBs. Fifth Ward was launched in 2017 by SOB alumni Ian Wenger and Zach Clark. It's fitting that this place would become the club’s home base.

Two Brewers. Four Years. Five Pictures.

I don't remember how this started. I know there was no long-term plan. But here we are... 

About this time every year since 2017, I've been taking a picture of Ian Wenger and Zach Clark of Fifth Ward in front of the tap handles at their brewery. It's become a habit that coincides with Fifth Ward's annual anniversary party, which happens again this weekend. So we've added another round. Here's our little trip down memory loss lane.

This first one comes from Fifth Ward's opening night four years ago.

Ian Wenger (left) and Zach Clark; November 12, 2017.

November 7, 2018.

November 4, 2019.

November 10, 2020.

October 28, 2021.

Those Barrels at Fifth Ward

Fifth Ward Brewing Company will celebrate its fourth anniversary on Saturday, November 13 at the brewery's South Main Street taproom. The annual event has grown into a showcase for Fifth Ward's barrel-aging program. This year will bring that into focus with the brewery releasing five barrel-aged beers over the anniversary weekend. They are among the most complex beers ever produced by an Oshkosh brewery.

"We got into barrel aging three years ago," says Zach Clark, who co-owns Fifth Ward with Ian Wenger, where they share the brewing duties. "We're at a point now where it's coming together in a really good way."

Zach Clark of Fifth Ward during a tour at the brewery.

In the world of craft beer, three years is an eternity. But there's no way to rush this sort of thing. The concept sounds simple. A finished beer is racked into a used spirits barrel where it matures and takes on qualities of the barrel and the liquor that had resided there. The actual execution, though, is much more involved.

It all starts with a recipe, or in this case several recipes. "It's never just brewing one batch of beer, putting it into a barrel, then coming back 12 months later and saying here's a barrel-aged beer," Wenger says. "We'll brew three or four completely different recipes, each with a specific quality in mind. One might be dryer and another sweeter. Another might be stronger with more bitterness."

"It's about trying to get the right balance," Clark chimes in. "We're always keeping in mind what we want the finished product to be. In the end, when we get to the blending, we have to have those different flavors to work with to get what we're looking for."

The recipes may be the least of it, though. These are process-driven beers. And it's a process unique to itself. The deviations begin upstream with the wort - the sugary liquid coaxed out of a mash of malted barley and water. For most beer, the wort is boiled for 60 to 90 minutes.

"With these beers, we'll go with a 13 or 14-hour boil," Clark says. "We're trying to thicken the wort, so we boil it down until it’s reduced to the volume we want."

"And you really need that super-long boil to caramelize some of those sugars," Wenger adds. "You need that for color, too. We want that dark-brown, cappuccino-like foam."

Fermenting a wort so thick with malt sugar is no less of a challenge. "With that kind of viscosity you need to pump in a lot of oxygen so the yeast can survive and stay healthy," Clark says. "Otherwise it will just quit on you. We literally have to pump oxygen into the tank during the fermentation to keep it going."

At the end of fermentation, the beers are dark behemoths that can be as strong as 14-percent alcohol by volume. Into the wooden barrels it goes. Over the past year, Clark and Wenger have been working with approximately 40 oak barrels. Their first use was in the production of spirits such as bourbon, rye whiskey, or tequila. About a third of those filled this year at Fifth Ward have been holding bourbon for the past 10 years. Each barrel is topped up with 53 gallons of beer. Then the waiting begins.

The back half of the brewery is the barrel cellar. Stacked four high, the barrels rest in an environment where the Wisconsin weather will add another layer of complexity. "In the summer the barrels up on top will get to be over 85 degrees," Wenger says. "And in winter it will get much colder back there than it does in the front of the building. They go through quite a range of temperatures."

Time is another influence. A full year of aging isn't unusual. "The youngest we've ever pulled was at five months, but that's not ideal," Clark says. "That's not enough time to create the flavors we're looking for."

At the end of September, the barrels employed for this year's batch of beers were brought out of the cellar for a tasting to determine the blends that will create the final beers. It's a heady art, akin to a painter mixing colors to create a specific hue. "We want to hit that right balance using the different qualities coming out of the individual barrels," Clark says.

Wenger pulling samples from the barrels.

"They're all components at that point," Wenger says. "You're looking for the best flavor and you have to build it out of those separate parts."

The extensive process produces a remarkably rich and nuanced beer. Big Willy Style – a blended, barrel-aged barley wine that will be released at the anniversary celebration – has booming notes of bourbon, vanilla, burnt sugar, oak, and raisin. At 16-percent alcohol by volume, it's stronger than most wines and has a depth of flavor that seems inexhaustible.

Until recently, that’s not the sort of beer you'd expect to find in a can. But this year, for the first time, Fifth Ward will release these beers in 16-ounce cans. "It's really what our customers are expecting now," says Wenger.

Both Clark and Wenger are intent on growing their barrel-aging program. "We could probably get this up to 200 barrels," says Clark. "But right now we just don't have the tank capacity to fill that many. We're working on that. This is still just the beginning."

Barrel Sampling at Fifth Ward

Saturday, Ian Wenger and Zach Clark of Fifth Ward pulled samples from 38 barrels to get a handle on the different flavors being produced in those casks. It was the first step in coming up with blends that will present the best of those flavors. Some of the beer coming out of these barrels will be ready in time for Fifth Ward’s anniversary celebration in November. I'll have much more on that as the date approaches. In the meantime...

Fifth Ward Breweries

For most Oshkoshers, the name Fifth Ward Brewery means one thing. This place:

Fifth Ward Brewing Company, 1009 S. Main St., Oshkosh.

But this isn’t the only Oshkosh brewery to have carried the Fifth Ward name. That name goes way back. A couple of maps will lead us where it all started.

Oshkosh map collector Matt Hostak recently shared with me his comprehensive archive of 19th century Oshkosh maps. Among the first items I went looking for was an illustration depicting the footprint of the original Fifth Ward Brewery. It didn't take long to find. Here's a map from 1858 showing the earliest representation on record of the Fifth Ward Brewery.

The Fifth Ward Brewery on Lot 18 of block 109; north side of Algoma Blvd., just south of Vine Ave.
From Harrison's Map of 1858.

Lot 18 was purchased by Tobias Fischer and Christian Kaehler in 1857. By early 1858 their brewery was up and running. That same year, Fischer moved to St. Louis leaving the Fifth Ward Brewery to Kaehler.

From the 1872 Oshkosh City Directory.

Here's another map from Hostak's collection. This pinpoints the exact location of Kaehler's expanded brewery. This is from 1872 when the brewery was at its peak.

From the Stranahan Bros. 1872 Map of Oshkosh.

The original Fifth Ward Brewery closed in 1880. Then, some 130 years later, this happened...

Ian Wenger (at the kettle) and Zach Clark (right) making homebrew in 2013.

That basement where Zach Clark and Ian Wenger taught themselves to make beer is at 842 Prospect Avenue. The two of them were drawing up plans to start a brewery before they had even finished their first batch. They decided to call it Fifth Ward Brewing Company; an homage to the old brewery that once stood in their neighborhood.

The image below has a piece from the 1872 map superimposed over a recent satellite view of that area. The red arrow on the right side of the image points to the home where Ian and Zach began homebrewing in 2012.

In 2017 – almost 160 years after Kaehler and Fischer had launched the original Fifth Ward Brewery – Clark and Wenger began making beer at their new Fifth Ward Brewing Company on South Main Street.

September 2017. Zach Clark (left) and Ian Wenger in their new brewery.

During its peak years, in the early 1870s, the original Fifth Ward Brewery produced approximately 500 barrels of beer a year. Today's Fifth Ward Brewing Company is on track this year to surpass that mark for the first time. We have a long and vital tradition of beer making in Oshkosh. It's a living thing!

150 Years Later...

In 1871 there was a saloon (1) run by John Powers at the southwest corner of 10th and Kansas Street (now named South Main). A door down from Powers' saloon was a cooperage (2); where Michael Scheimeyer made wooden barrels.

Detail from Ruger's 1867 drawing of Oshkosh.

That section is now the home of Fifth Ward Brewing Company.

 

And there are still plenty of wooden barrels there.

It’s Fifth Ward’s Third Anniversary

Time flies. Fifth Ward Brewing has been going strong for three years now. All this week, the brewery will celebrate its third anniversary with the release of a dozen different barrel-aged beers. It's an incredible line-up and I'll get to it in a moment, but first, there's this...

At Fifth Ward's grand opening on November 12, 2017, I took a picture of founders Ian Wenger and Zach Clark behind their bar on opening night.

Ian Wenger (left) and Zach Clark; November 12, 2017.

I took another one just before the brewery's first-anniversary party in 2018.

November 7, 2018.

They lined up again for the brewery's second anniversary in 2019.

November 4, 2019.

Yesterday morning, we added the latest to the series...

November 10, 2020.

I'm hoping we get to do this for years to come. But in the meantime, Fifth Ward is celebrating its third anniversary all this week with the release of a dozen, small-batch, barrel-aged beers. They're packaged in 22oz, waxed top bombers that will be available only at the brewery. Bottles are $15 each with sales beginning at 3 pm. To keep things safe, they've set up a heated tent in the beer garden so you can remain socially distant while queuing up for beer. Here's the rundown...

Tuesday, November 10

MORNING JOB
14.8% ABV | 450 Bottles | No limits.
A double mashed stout made with real, Wisconsin maple syrup, then aged in Bourbon barrels and conditioned on house-roasted coffee from New Moon in Oshkosh.

RAISINET JOB
14.8% ABV | 50 Bottles | One bottle per-person limit.
Double mashed stout brewed with real, Wisconsin maple syrup, then aged in Bourbon barrels and conditioned on raisin puree and liquid cocoa.

Wednesday, November 11

RYE BARREL BUFFALO PLAID
12.7% ABV | 175 Bottles | No Limits.
Maple rye scotch ale aged in rye whiskey barrels.

NUT JOB
13.2% ABV | 50 Bottles | One bottle per-person limit.
Double-mashed oatmeal stout aged in Bourbon and brandy barrels with raw coconut and hazelnuts.

Thursday, November 12

FOUND MARBLES
12.3% ABV | 100 Bottles | Two bottles per-person limit.
American barleywine aged in a wheated whiskey barrel.

TURTLE JOB
14.8% ABV | 50 Bottles | One bottle per-person limit.
Double mashed stout brewed with real, Wisconsin maple syrup then aged in Bourbon barrels, and conditioned on tart and sweet cherries, liquid cocoa, vanilla beans, and pecans.

Friday, November 13

BOURBON OLD FASHIONED FROOTENANNY
9% ABV | 100 Bottles | One bottle per-person limit.
Bourbon-barrel aged kettle-soured blonde with tangerine, sweet and tart Cherries, and NA bitters.

BRANDY BARREL TWO MAN JOB
13.2% ABV | 175 Bottles | Two bottles per-person limit.
Double-mashed oatmeal stout aged in a Brandy Barrel.

Saturday, November 14

CHOCOLATE JOB
13.2%ABV | 500 Bottles | No limits.
Double-mashed oatmeal stout aged in Bourbon and brandy barrels and conditioned on a double dose of cocoa nibs and liquid cocoa.

BANANA FOSTER JOB
14.8% ABV | 50 Bottles | One bottle per-person limit.
Double-mashed oatmeal stout aged in Bourbon and brandy barrels and conditioned bananas, vanilla bean, cinnamon, and walnuts.

VANILLA JOB
13.2% ABV | 50 Bottles | One bottle per-person limit.
Double-mashed oatmeal stout aged in Bourbon and brandy barrels and conditioned on a double dose of Madagascar vanilla beans.

SUPER CHUNK JOB
14.8% ABV | 50 Bottles | One bottle per-person limit.
Double mashed stout brewed with real, Wisconsin maple syrup, then aged in Bourbon barrels with white Chocolate and macadamia nuts.

Also on Saturday, Kitty Corona will be playing in the beer garden from 3-8pm. DD’s BBQ will also be on hand serving up Oshkosh’s finest smoked meats. For more on all of this, check out Fifth Ward's event page on Facebook. Happy Anniversary, guys!

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.