Lion’s Tail and the New-Model Brewery

In the spring of 2015, Alex Wenzel was busy planning the brewery he would open later that year in Neenah. At the time, there had never been a brewery in Winnebago County like the one Wenzel had in mind. Unlike the recently established breweries in the area, Wenzel's wouldn't be attached to a restaurant. There'd be no flagship brand or fixed set of beers. There would be no reliance on outside distribution or retail sales. If you wanted Wenzel's beer, you were going to have to come to his brewery.

Alex Wenzel in the taproom at Lion's Tail Brewing.

"I'd seen this taproom model work in other places and loved it," Wenzel says. "You go and you try different beers and that's it, that's what it's about. We knew we'd have to have really good beer and always be offering different experiences because we wouldn't have a restaurant as a draw. And it couldn't be a stable of four to six beers that we always have. We'd need to do twelve to twenty new beers every year to continue to be interesting and give people reasons to come back."

When Lion's Tail Brewing opened in November 2015, Wenzel was still trying to figure out how he'd make it all work. "The plan was to continually create new beers," he says, "but did I have any idea what that would mean? No chance."

Wenzel made it up as he went along. During the brewery's first full year, he made 19 different beers. "We had a few that stayed on all year, he says, "but the rest continually changed." It was a scattershot list of familiar styles. There was a Pilsner, a dark lager, a fruited wheat beer, a couple of IPAs and pale ales, a stout...  It looked like the kind of thing a homebrewer might do. That was no coincidence.

"I started homebrewing three or four years before we opened," he says. "During that whole time, I was trying new things and constantly experimenting. I figured that course would continue once the brewery opened. I wanted to maintain the spirit of a homebrewer as a professional."

But now instead of five-gallons at a time, he was brewing 310-gallon batches. The inevitable mistakes would be far more costly. Wenzel had readied himself for it. "It is scary, but I'm not afraid to send beer to the waste treatment plant if I have to and we've done a fair amount of that," he says. "If you don't get what you want and you're not proud of it, then it can't go on tap."

Wenzel in the brewhouse at Lion's Tail.

To mitigate the risk, he began relying on smaller, pilot batches to work up his new beers. "I got a little, 10-gallon system that I try to get the recipes dialed in on before I throw it on the 10-barrel," Wenzel says. Not all of them make it. "I usually don't tell people about the really horrible failures," he says and laughs. "There's some fun stuff I've tried, but a lot of beer has gone down the drain."

He'll often brew a recipe as many as five times on the smaller system, tweaking it as he goes, before it's ready for his 10-barrel brewhouse. "The most extreme example was Juice Cloud, our New England IPA," Wenzel says. "That one took 13 different batches from when I started."

The effort paid. Juice Cloud has become one of those rare beers that alters the trajectory of a brewery. Today, it's hard to envision Lion's Tail without Juice Cloud. To a certain extent, it defines the brewery.

A glass of Juice Cloud on the bar in the taproom at Lion’s Tail.

Juice Cloud was first released in August 2017 for the inaugural Wisconsin IPA Fest in Milwaukee. It was the only New England Style IPA entered that year. "I think we turned some heads down there with it," Wenzel says. "Hardly anybody in Wisconsin was making New Englands yet." At the time, the style was polarizing. The beer's dense haze and low bitterness set it apart from what had come to be expected from an IPA. "The judges didn't like it," Wenzel says. "It didn't even make it out of the first round." But festival attendees loved it. Juice Cloud won the award for being the first keg to kick.

A month later, Juice Cloud went on tap at Lion's Tail. It soon became the brewery's best selling beer. "That was a noticeable bump," Wenzel says. "We ended up getting blurbs in OnMilwaukee magazine and some other beer blogs and then we won a People's Choice Award with it at Hops and Props last year. Its really helped put us on the map in the state beer scene."

The success of Juice Cloud led Wenzel to make a series of hazy IPAs using an array of American hops and sometimes adjuncts like lactose or vanilla. Each new release seemed to generate a buzz. At the end of 2017, Lion's Tail was still the only brewery in Winnebago County to have released a New England Style IPA. The style helped set Lion’s Tail apart and became an essential feature of the brewery’s identity.

It wasn't all hazy. In 2017, Lion's Tail released 20 different beers, six of them were barrel aged, and about half employed flavoring adjuncts in a variety of forms including blackberry tea, blood orange, blueberries, and pineapple. And then there was Number 90 Red, a straight-up Vienna lager that became surprisingly successful. It grew into one of Lion's Tail's best-selling beers despite it going against the grain of what the brewery was becoming best known for.

A 20-barrel fermentor about to be squeezed through a window at Lion's Tail.

In October 2018, Wenzel added a 20-barrel, double-batch fermentor to his brewery. Even with that, he'll soon be running up against the limits of his brewery. His target for 2019 is to produce about 750 barrels of beer, which is near the brewery's total capacity. There's little room left within his current space for further expansion. "We would either have to expand within the building somewhere or maybe have an off-site production facility," Wenzel says. "But I don't want to grow for the sake of growing or to put out numbers. I don't see us making 3,000 barrels a year. I just don't think that will be our model, but who knows. I won't say never."

The great majority of Lion's Tail beer continues to be sold over the bar in the brewery's taproom. But increasingly Wenzel's beer finds its way into area restaurants and craft-beer bars in Milwaukee and Madison. The distribution is handled entirely by Wenzel and Eric Henzel, who became the brewery's general manager in 2017. "I like doing our own distribution," says Wenzel. "You meet the customers and you're out making those relationships. That feels right to me."

He'd still rather be selling the beer over his own bar. "Here, we get to serve our beer how we think it should be served," he says. "The more successful small breweries don't distribute a lot. They sell most of it themselves. It's almost impossible to compete at the retail level and maybe you shouldn't want to. There are so many reasons to try and keep it in-house as much as possible."

Evening in the taproom.

Last year, Lion's Tail again produced another 20 beers that the brewery hadn't offered before. Wenzel doesn't show any signs of creative burnout. "I like working on new things," he says. "As a brewer, it's not as fun being shackled to a certain beer. If we ever got to a point where we had seven or eight beers that we always had to have on tap, that I think would be more of a burnout to me. I mean, just the amount of commercially available malts, hops, and yeast...  Each year there's another five or ten experimental hop varieties that come out. The possibilities are unlimited."

The constant experimentation makes for an evergreen brewery. But now in its fourth year, Lion's Tail isn't the only Winnebago County brewery taking such an approach. Since Lion's Tail opened, five more breweries have been launched within the county and another in nearby Appleton. All of them were started by homebrewers. Most of them adhere to a taproom model similar to Wenzel's. He’s not exactly sure yet what to make of that.

"There's a lot of new local breweries, but it doesn't seem like the customer base has grown a ton," Wenzel says. "When you go to a beer event, you see largely the same population at each of the different places. It has to be growing some. That's the hope with having new competitors that, in the long run, it expands the customer base. We've seen nice steady growth, so things have to be growing somewhat."

Back in 2015, Alex Wenzel had a plan for a new kind of brewery in Winnebago County. That type of brewery has since become the norm here. In a local brewing culture that now spans 170 years, there's never been a transformation come so swiftly. It all happened so quickly that it's difficult to fully appreciate how sweeping the change has been.

Wenzel tapping a firkin at Lion's Tail's third-anniversary party.

A Century Later in Neenah

In 1917, the City of Neenah voted itself dry. A century later, that ghost has been exorcised This weekend people gathered at Lion’s Tail Brewing in Neenah to celebrate the brewery’s second anniversary. Long live beer in Neenah...

The taproom at Lion's Tail Brewing, Saturday, November 18, 2017.

Juice Cloud

Last week, Lion’s Tail Brewing in Neenah released Juice Cloud, a New England Style IPA (NE IPA). It’s the first time a commercial brewery in Winnebago County has produced this style.

This is a golden, densely cloudy beer under creamy white foam. It’s powerfully aromatic. You can smell hops before your nose gets near it. The aroma is a swirl of sweet citrus fruits with grapefruit and some onion coming in at the back end. The flavor of Citra hops drives this beer. Clearly, there’s a lot of it in the dry hopping. I couldn’t help but think of orange juice when I was drinking it.

This is a beer that upends your expectations. The mouthfeel is soft and creamy, but with so much hop flavor you anticipate a punch of bitterness will follow. It never arrives. For a beer that appears anything but clean, it finishes exceptionally clean. What bitterness there is rapidly dissipates. People who aren't much into IPA might like this quite a bit. If you’re already into hops, Juice Cloud is a must. It’s one of the best examples of an NE IPA, I've had. Hands down the best version I’ve tried from a Wisconsin brewery.

Until now, the NE IPA has barely made a dent around here. But the style has been around for a while. Some trace it back to 2003. That’s when The Alchemist, a Vermont brewery, first brewed Heady Topper; arguably the first iteration of the style. It's developed over time. In the past three years, the style has gone from an obscure novelty to the most talked about American craft beer.

It’s also proven to be controversial. Much has been made of the extreme haze. Some find it off-putting. Others take it as a signifier of raw hop flavor. Others yet would say it’s just an unfiltered IPA. I don’t buy that. These beers are made in a way that sets them apart.

Alex Wenzel is the brewmaster and owner of Lion’s Tail Brewing. He dug deep before releasing his take on the NE IPA.

Alex Wenzel of Lion's Tail Brewing

After several trials, Wenzel found he could produce the flavors, texture, and appearance he wanted. He uses a combination of water adjustment, grist, yeast and dry hopping. Juice Cloud employs a fairly standard malt bill supplemented with starchy adjuncts – flaked oats and wheat. But Wenzel believes the haze has more to do with the hopping regimen.

“The trick to achieving sustainable haze is introducing a sizable charge of hops during active fermentation,” Wenzel says. “The so-called biotransformation is a reaction the yeast have to the hop oils during fermentation, it ruins their ability to flocculate and drop out of solution to dormancy. I did do quite a bit of experimenting with a centrifuge and found that this biotransformation thing is pretty legit. Even when you add bio fining or anionic chemistry like carrageenan, there's still a good portion of the haze that will not drop out of solution.”

It’s not just about haze, though. Juice Cloud’s low bitterness (15 calculated IBUs) is another point of deviation from conventionally hoppy beers. Because nearly all the hops are introduced on the cold side – during and after fermentation – little bitterness is produced. But hop flavor is still captured. At 6.3% ABV, Juice Cloud retains the strength of the modern IPA, but the gentle bitterness makes for a beer that’s easier drinking than the West Coast style IPAs that have been dominant in recent years.

Wenzel is still tinkering with the recipe, but appears happy with what he’s come up with. He should be. Juice Cloud recently did well at the inaugural Wisconsin IPA Fest in Milwaukee. It won the award for being the first keg to kick.

Right now you can get Juice Cloud at the Lion’s Tail taproom in Neenah. And in Oshkosh, it’s currently on the tap lists at Ruby Owl Taproom and Bare Bones Brewery.

The Independent Brewer's Seal

At the end of June, the Brewers Association (BA) introduced the Independent Craft Brewer Seal. The BA's objective is to offer a quick, visual indicator that differentiates independent brewers from international conglomerates such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, Heineken, and MillerCoors.

Independent brewers who adopt the logo can apply it to just about anything: bottles, cans, tap handles, websites... We should see it beginning to appear around here later this summer.

If you care about such things, the information is welcome. Non-independents have grown especially crafty in shielding their identity. Look at any label, tap handle, or ad from Goose Island, Golden Road, 10 Barrel, or Elysian and you'll find no indication that they're, in fact, products of Anheuser-Busch InBev. They'd prefer you didn't know.

Both Oshkosh breweries have signed on to use the seal.

At Fox River Brewing Co., they've begun work to put it in place. "We are starting to implement the new Independent Seal on all new beer related material and any updated pieces," says Jay Supple, of Fox River. "We like the new logo, it’s a great representation for independent brewers, plus lets our customers know we are an independent craft brewer."

Bare Bones Brewery owner Dan Dringolli shares that viewpoint. "We're really good with the emblem," Dringolli says. "We're going to use it. Hopefully, a lot of people will. I think it's good to have some way to separate truly independent breweries from those that pretend to be. It's another way to help educate people about what's going on."

For small breweries such as Bare Bones and Fox River, it may be a while before the logo appears on their bottle labels. Label stock for core brands is typically bought well in advance of production. Running through the labels they have on hand may take months.

Lion's Tail Brewing of Neenah doesn't plan to use the logo.  "I don't see a lot of value in this thing," says Alex Wenzel of Lion's Tail. "I don't think it tells my customer anything that they didn't already know."

He has a point. Local drinkers of craft beer are already aware that Winnebago County's breweries are independent. Those who don't know that probably don't care. For larger independents such as New Glarus, the distinction would likely hold more value.

There are a couple of potential pitfalls to this thing. Use of the label is free, but as Wenzel pointed out, the BA is leaving the door open to adding a fee for its use in the future. That would be a mistake and stifle its use. The last thing a small brewer needs is another fee attached to its operation.

An unintended outcome might be the sort of "badge wars" you see among food products claiming to be organic or cruelty-free. There would be nothing stopping AB InBev from creating its own badge to muddle the issue. AB InBev appears intent on creating just this sort of confusion.

And that's reason enough for independent breweries to stake out a position. If ownership weren't important, you'd see the AB InBev, Heineken, MillerCoors and the other conglomerates putting their names on the beers they produce. That they don't, speaks volumes about their intent. They like to keep you in the dark.

Number 90 Red - Vienna Lager at Lion's Tail

Lion's Tail in Neenah recently released Number 90 Red, a Vienna lager. It's style of beer rarely brewed around here. Or anywhere else, really. That wasn't always the case. We’ll get into that in a minute. First, let's get to the Lion's Tail beer.

Number 90 Red

Number 90 Red has a clean, light-toffee aroma leading to a toasty malt flavor. The hops are just for balance. They add a slight dryness to the finish. This beer is a shade darker than a classic Vienna lager, but who gives a shit. This is very good beer. Have it back to back with Lion’s Tail Mile of Munich Dunkel and you’ll get a sense of what it was like to drink beer in Vienna in the 1840s.

Now then... Vienna lager was the brainchild of Anton Dreher of Vienna, Austria.  He first brewed this style in 1841. It was lighter in body and paler in color than the dark lagers then predominant in Austria. Dreher's beer grew wildly popular.

A decade after the introduction of Dreher's beer, there were German brewers heading to Oshkosh. They brought their love of Vienna lager with them. In the late 1800s, Vienna lager was a favorite style among Oshkosh brewers. But brewers here preferred the Germanic nomenclature. They called theirs "Wiener" beer.

At the Glatz Brewery, they were so fond of their Wiener beer they included it on their letterhead in the 1890s

Below is an 1888 ad from the Gambrinus Brewery. Somebody botched the spelling of Wiener.

 Even the very first ad for the Oshkosh Brewing Company made mention of Wiener beer. This is from the Wisconsin Telegraph, May 18, 1894.

With the turn of the century, Vienna lager faded away. Even in Vienna. But in Oshkosh, people never quite lost their taste for it. Peoples Beer, at least until the 1960s, was deeply influenced by the earlier Vienna lagers brewed here.

Number 90 Red at Lion's Tail bears a closer resemblance to those older lagers.  It's a treasure of a beer. Get it while you can...

Summertime Beers from Bare Bones & Lion's Tail

We're talking summer beers with Alex Wenzel of Lion's Tail Brewing in Neenah and RJ Nordlund of Bare Bones Brewery in Oshkosh. The two recently teamed up to get beers from Bare Bones and Lion's Tail into cans for the coming summer. Nordlund also discusses his new CD, Ghosts. Check out a video from the album here.

Boundary Waters Canadian-Style Lager from Lion’s Tail Brewing

Alex Wenzel of Lion’s Tail’s talk about his new beer and the inspiration for brewing it.

From Lachmann to Lion's Tail: A History of Brewing in Neenah

The Neenah Brewery remains a relative unknown within the context of Wisconsin brewing history. That would seem an unusual circumstance for any Wisconsin brewery– like this one – that was in operation for more than 50 years. But the Neenah Brewery’s obscurity isn’t altogether surprising.

This was a brewery that did little advertising. The consequence being that collectors haven’t been able to preserve and pass on the brewery’s vision of itself. Often it’s breweriana collectors who become the stewards of a small brewery’s legacy.

Also conspiring against the Neenah Brewery has been the city’s contentious relationship with alcohol. For much of its early history, Neenah was dominated by Protestant Yankees who had little use for the beer drinking customs of the city’s European immigrants.

Those Yankees and their immediate descendants were also largely responsible for the dissemination of Neenah's early history. It's not coincidence that a brewery conducted by immigrants seldom made it into the record. By the time that prejudice expired, the Neenah Brewery had already been forgotten.

The time is ripe for a fresh look at the history of brewing in Neenah. With the recent launch of Lion's Tail Brewing, the city's beer-making heritage has been renewed. The brewers who created this legacy deserve to be known.

Talk of a Brewery in Neenah
With 1849 came the arrival of breweries to Winnebago County. That year two breweries were launched in Oshkosh and there was talk about this time of one being planned in Neenah. It was said to have been the project of a Welshman named Jones. If said Jones ever did get his brewery up and running in Neenah, it didn’t last. There appears to be no record of this brewery being operational or producing beer for sale.

But Neenah continued to grow. Boosted by an influx of German immigrants, Neenah's population had risen to 1,296 by 1856. It would be only a matter of time before Neenah had its brewery. That time would not be welcomed by all.

Neenah, Circa 1856.

John Robbins Kimberly was among Neenah’s most affluent and influential early settlers. A stern Yankee, Kimberly was asked where he thought a good location for a brewery would be. Kimberly was said to reply, “In Hell, Sir.” His rancor presaged the conflict ahead.

To Kimberly’s chagrin, hell in Neenah would be located on the shore of Little Lake Butte Des Morts on property now addressed as 129 Lake Street. The immigrant who raised that hell was named Jacob Lachmann.

A Brewery Idyll
Born in Württemberg about 1823, Jacob Lachmann was trained as a brewer in his homeland. He was also a man of his time. Lachmann became engaged in the political upheavals that swept through Europe in 1848, leading a company of "Free Troops" in a struggle for constitutional rights. In the backlash that followed the unrest, Lachmann fled his homeland. He arrived in New York by 1849. Lachmann spent several years on the east coast before going to Milwaukee in 1854, then coming to Neenah in 1856.

On May 21, 1856, Lachmann purchased a portion of Lot 4 in Block 30 of Palmer's Map of Neenah and began building his brewery. By the close of the year, the Neenah Brewery was up and running.

Location of the Neenah Brewery highlighted in red.

Lachmann's was a typical set-up for a brewer of lager beer. The proximity to the lake was ideal. It meant accessibility to an enormous supply of winter ice. The harvesting of that ice and its subsequent storage in the brewery’s lager cellar enabled Lachmann to brew his cool fermenting lager beer even when the weather warmed.

The brewery itself was constructed of brick. The building also doubled as a home for Lachmann, his wife Katrina, their four children and the two workers who often shared quarters with the family. The resemblance to the rustic, village breweries of Germany would have been striking.

Local Beer
Winnebago County breweries of this period were local affairs, their patrons living in close proximity to where the beer was made. The materials used in making the beer were also of local origin.

Barley had been raised in abundance in Winnebago County from the time the land had been opened to farming nearly two decades earlier. Lachmann purchased the grain from nearby farmers and from it made his own brewer's malt. Hop farming had begun by the late 1840s. Like other brewers in the region, Lachmann would have had his pick of the local crop.

By 1870, the Neenah Brewery was just one of 11 such breweries operating in the county. But Lachmann's tenure was already coming to an end. There's some indication that Lachmann was in failing health near the end of his run at the brewery. In any case, in 1872 he sold the brewery and went into retirement.

Gathering Storms
On October 28, 1872, Frank Ehrgott took possession of the Neenah Brewery. He was soon joined in the venture by his brother, Adam. Like Lachmann, the Ehrgott Brothers were German immigrants. But the Ehrgotts would face challenges unknown to their predecessor.

The system of railroads advancing through Winnebago County made it easier for breweries to extend their reach into nearby communities. Menasha's two breweries had already been selling their beer in Neenah. Now the larger breweries of Oshkosh were sending beer into town. Just as troubling was the traction gain by the anti-alcohol brigades.

By 1875, Neenah's temperance supporters were a force to be reckoned with. With names such as The Good Templars (130 members), The Crystal Lodge (more than 80 members), and The Sons of Temperance (75 members), they had become a mainstream element within the community of 4,300. Their aim was to outlaw the sale of alcohol. They wanted nothing less than a dry Neenah.

The dry forces weren't going unopposed. Neenah's 15 saloons had a vested stake in keeping the beer flowing. The patrons of those saloons, many of whom were part of Neenah's populous community of European immigrants, also had no intention of giving up their traditional repast. Neenah's wets and drys were divided not only by ideology, but by ethnicity as well.

The Brothers Ehrgott
Amid the turmoil, the Ehrgott brothers grew their stake in Neenah. By the late 1880s, the Neenah Brewery was producing  just over 400 barrels of beer annually. It was then one of seven breweries in Winnebago County. To help secure their local market, Frank Ehrgott purchased a saloon located at what is now 128 W. Wisconsin Ave. Built a year earlier, the Ehrgott saloon acted as a tied house to the brewery serving only the Neenah Brewery's beer.

The Ehrgott's Tied House.

With Frank running the saloon, Adam Ehrgott took control of the brewery. He assumed full ownership of the Neenah Brewery in September 1882. He appears to have done well during this period. Between 1884 and 1887, Adam Ehrgott made a number of improvements to the brewery, including construction of a new brewhouse and icehouse to the immediate north of the original brewery. The maps below illustrate the brewery's expansion.

1884

1887

The improvements were nearly obsolete by the time they were complete. Other brewers were already phasing out the sort of upgrades Ehrgott was making. Mechanical refrigeration was rapidly replacing the centuries old method of cooling with harvested ice in stone cellars. The old-world ways were at odds with an industry being fundamentally reshaped by science.

The original Neenah Brewery is on the right. The updated ice house and brewery
built during the Ehrgott era is the large building in the center of the photo.

Rivals Near and Far
One of those nearby breweries taking advantage of new technologies was the Walter Brothers Brewing Company in nearby Menasha. Christian and Martin Walter had purchased what had been the Island Brewery in 1888. The Walter Bros. rapidly built up their brewery and began vigorously pushing their beer into the Neenah market.

By the early 1890s, Adam Ehrgott's small brewery was fighting to survive amidst a rising tide of beer from other places. And it wasn't just beer from Menasha or Oshkosh flowing into Neenah anymore. Among the new rivals was a former brewer named Jacob Mayer.

In the 1870s, Jacob Mayer had been part owner of the Island Brewery in Menasha. After selling his stake in that brewery he eventually settled in Neenah where he opened a bottling plant and beer distribution warehouse at the corner of Union and Sherry streets. In partnership with his son Joseph, the Mayers began distributing beer in Neenah that had been brought in by rail from other parts of the state. The Hartig & Manz Brewery of Watertown was one of the Mayer's early clients making its presence known in Neenah.

The Hartig & Manz float in Neenah's 1893 Fourth of July parade.

A bottle from the Mayer's
bottling works.

By 1892, the Mayers were bringing in beer from Miller Brewing of Milwaukee. Miller took a special liking to Neenah, establishing a tied saloon and hotel named Murer House adjacent to the train depot at 432 Sherry Street. Among the first sights passengers encountered when arriving in Neenah by rail was the handsome, brick tavern festooned with signs for Miller Beer.

As it looks today.

For Adam Ehrgott it had become altogether too much. Almost 20 years after the Ehrgott brothers had begun brewing in Neenah, Adam Ehrgott sold the Neenah Brewery. If he harboured a grudge, it didn't best him. He'd later go to work for one of his Menasha rivals, Walter Brothers Brewing.

Angermeyer
On November 11, 1901, Henry Angermeyer became the new owner of the Neenah Brewery. The German-born brewer had come to America 15 years earlier and was a week shy of his 39th birthday when he took possession of the brewery.

Angermeyer knew what he was getting into. Prior to his arrival, he'd been brewing beer for the Sterling Brewing Company, of Sterling, Illinois. The situation there was similar to what Angermeyer would take on in Neenah. Sterling had one small brewery and it was engaged in the same sort of regional infighting with other breweries that plagued the Neenah Brewery. It was a battle Angermeyer couldn't win.

Three years after Angermeyer's arrival, the Neenah Brewery was barely getting by. The Wisconsin Blue Book for 1904 lists Angermeyer as the only person working in the Neenah brewery. It was an impossible task for a brewer trying to produce 500 barrels of lager beer a year in an ice-cooled brewery. Things weren't going to get better, either.

On the evening of August 4, 1905, Angermeyer and another Neenah man named Albert Zehner were rowing a boat loaded heavy with ties across the Neenah Slough. Near the Main Street bridge, the boat took on water and began to sink. Zehner managed to swim to shore. Angermeyer didn't. HIs body was pulled from the water by a search and rescue team. Angermeyer was pronounced dead about 9:45 p.m.

Henry Angermeyer left a wife, three young children, and a brewery nearing dissolution.

1906, the Neenah Brewery, Henry Angermeyer Estate...

The Closing Doerr
In October 1906, Lizzie Angermeyer found a buyer for the brewery her late husband had tried to revive. The new owner was named Oscar Doerr. Yet another German-born brewer would ply his trade at the Neenah Brewery.

Prior to his arrival, Doerr had been brewmaster at the White Eagle Brewery of Chicago. His plans for Neenah were ambitious. Two months after his purchase of the Neenah Brewery, The Western Brewer reported, "Mr. Doerr will make many improvements to the plant and until these are completed his customers will be supplied by the Menasha Brewing Company."

Among the planned improvements was the installation of a bottling line, an aspect of the business the Neenah Brewery had evaded to its own detriment. But turning over your accounts to a local rival while you rehabilitate your brewery was not a recipe for success. Doerr's plan fell flat.

At the close of 1909, the Neenah Brewery was all but finished. The inrush of beer from more efficient breweries put Neenah's brewery at a competitive disadvantage too great to overcome. Doerr admitted his defeat. On January 3, the first business day of 1910, Doerr sold the brewery. He would eventually return to Chicago.

The new owner was Louis Sorenson, an employee of the Bergstrom Stove Company. Sorenson had no prior involvement with breweries, but that was beside the point. It appears the purchase was motivated by the prospective return on resale and not an attempt to breathe new life into the brewery. On April 21, 1911, Sorenson sealed the brewery's fate. He sold it to the Walter Brothers Brewing Company.

Walter Brothers had little need for an outmoded brewery just five miles from its modern plant on Nicolet Blvd. The new owners gutted the Neenah Brewery. The building was converted it into a hotel over a saloon selling Walter Brothers beer. For the first time in more than 50 years, Neenah was without a brewery.

The brewery was gone, but the drinking wars raged on.

Drys and Wets
The Walter Brothers' takeover of the brewery came on the heels of a fresh defeat for Neenah's dry forces. In the April elections of 1911, the drys narrowly missed passing a measure outlawing the sale of alcohol in the city. Undeterred they tried again. Then again. Finally, in 1917, the dry faction achieved its goal. On July 1, 1917, Neenah became the only incorporated city in Winnebago County to vote itself dry. The measure was passed into law by a single vote.

The following year, the wets rallied. Again it came to a vote. Neenah voters repealed the dry law by a 13-vote margin. On July 1, 1918, Neenah's saloons were back in business. The final word on the matter came down less than two years later. The 18th Amendment went into effect on January 17, 1920 marking the onset of National Prohibition.

Not surprisingly, Prohibition brought the return of brewing to Neenah. But the brewers had gone underground... literally.

Milwaukee Sentinel, December 23, 1928.

To Ashes
When Prohibition ended in 1933, the breweries of Menasha and Oshkosh resumed operation. In Neenah, the brewery that had once been was too far gone to redeem.

By that time, the Neenah Brewery was barely a memory. Few could recall that there had been a thriving brewery on Lake Street. The smell of beer still lingered, but now it was stale Schlitz at Jerrys' Lakeside Bar. What survived of the past was extinguished in 1968, when the building was gutted again. This time by fire. After the blaze, the remains were knocked down and buried.

The 1968 fire. Photo courtesy of Douglas Bisel.

The aftermath. Photo courtesy of Douglas Bisel.

129 Lake Street, former grounds of the Neenah Brewery.

Roaring Back
Brewing returned to Neenah On November 20, 2015 when Alex Wenzel opened Lion's Tail Brewing Company in the Equitable Reserve Association Building at 116 S. Commercial Street. Like Jacob Lachmann before him, Wenzel is prototypical of the brewers of his generation.

A former homebrewer whose obsession became a profession, Wenzel brews a wide range of beers on a 10-barrel system in a building that was going up just as the Neenah Brewery was going down. The beers Wenzel produces he sells from the taproom he operates in conjunction with the brewery. It's an arrangement the Ehrgott brothers would appreciate.

Alex Wenzel in the Lion's Tail brewhouse.

Among the first beers Wenzel brewed for Lion's Tail was Mile of Munich, a Bavarian-style dark lager. It's a beer that would have tasted familiar to the Neenah pioneers who experienced the pleasure of Lachmann's dark lager 150 years earlier. Wenzel and his brewery have revived an unlikely continuum and are writing the next chapter in a hard-won history that now spans three centuries.

Bar-top Dry Hopping at Lion’s Tail

Here’s an extremely limited beer from Lion’s Tail Brewing in Neenah that offers something entirely new.

Thursday, January 27, Lion’s Tail will release its Custom Pale Ale. This is no ordinary Pale Ale. Each glass of CPA is dry hopped on the bar top using hops of the customer’s choosing. Talk about hand crafted beer.

The short video below spells everything out. This was a pilot batch, so for now CPA will be available only for a limited time. There may be more coming in the near future. If you want to get an early taste of CPA, join the Lion’s Tail Keg Club. Now onto the beer...

Plenty On Tap Around Oshkosh

A quick blip about some goings on around here…

Taplists

They have returned. Over in the column on the left under the Oshkosh Area Tap Lists header you’ll notice the names of 8 local places with good beer on tap. Click any name there to see their most recently updated taplist (a few of them also list bottled beer). I can’t vouch for the up-to-the-minute accuracy of any individual list, so please keep that in mind when referencing them. I can say that the Gardina’s list is woefully out of date. Next time you see Adam Carlson at Gardina's, give him hell for me. Anyway, try them out. I especially like the lists hosted by Taphunter (see Bare Bones, Becket’s, Chester V’s, Dublin’s, TJ’s). Taphunter gives you all the info you’re looking for in a straightforward manner. I wish more places around here were using it.

Events
Also in the left column is the newly updated Oshkosh Area Beer Events schedule. This is going to be a busy January for beer. I’ll try to touch on each of these events as they approach, starting today with the first three on the list.

The 2016 Northeast Wisconsin Open is a homebrew competition sponsored by Lion's Tail Brewing. It's an open competition not based on style categories. The winner will get to help Lion’s Tail brewmaster Alex Wenzel brew a 10-barrel batch of the winning beer in February. That beer will be served in Lion’s Tail taproom beginning in March. The winner also gets to host a private launch party at the brewery with an open tap to serve the winning beer. The entry fee is $0. Cool. There's a link in the left column where you can download the entry form (or do it HERE). If you have issues with the download, send me an email (my address is at the top of the left column) and I'll be happy to email it to you.

Here's another one at Lion's Tail. The brewery will host three, beer-school sessions. Classes begin at 7 p.m. on the Wednesdays of January 13, February 10 and March 9. Tuition is $45 (that's for all three sessions combined) and includes samples and a pint of your choice each week. Topics covered will be: Beer Tasting and Measurables, Flavor Perception and Common Off-Flavors, and Modern Beer History (with sampling). Your instructor will be brewmaster Alex Wenzel. Alex is a fun, knowledgeable guy. He's just the sort of person you'd want to learn these things from. To enroll, shoot an email to: info@lionstailbrewing.com

Then there's this... Fox River Brewing will again host Paint and Pint Night on January 13. For $35 you get beer, canvas, utensils, paint and lots of instruction from art teacher Ronessa Lund. Everything you need to know to get in on this one can be found HERE.

A Beer
I can’t get out of here without suggesting a beer. If you’re into the hops, try making it over to Fox River Brewing for a pint of their One Size Fits All IPA. It's fantastic. Loads of citra and simcoe hop aroma and flavor come screaming up from this beer. Framing all that juicy hop music is the rich flavor of Golden Promise malt. It's 7% ABV, yet exceedingly drinkable. IPA lovers oughta love this.

That's it from me today, Prost!