A History of Brewers in Portsmouth, Ohio with an Emphasis on the Portsmouth Brewing Company Part One: the 19Th Century

By William Cullen

A History of Brewers in Portsmouth, Ohio with an Emphasis on the Portsmouth Brewing Company Part One: The 19th Century is a chronological look at the early development of producing beer in Portsmouth, Ohio, a community located at the confluence of the Ohio and Scioto Rivers by enterprising German immigrants. The book covers the period from its early days in the 1840s through a volatile temperance movement in the 1870s right up to the demise of the man who had instilled the Portsmouth Brewing Company into the history of Ohio.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524559878

William Cullen

William M. Cullen is a Portsmouth, Ohio native who currently lives in nearby Ashland, Kentucky. Mr. Cullen earned an MBA from Marshall University, located in nearby Huntington, W.Va. In his spare time, Mr. Cullen is known to enjoy traveling this great tri-state region of our country, learning about its unique history.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by William Cullen.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016919128

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5245-5988-5

Softcover   978-1-5245-5989-2

eBook   978-1-5245-5987-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

‘The Riverboat-man’ symbol is a copyrighted symbol of the

Portsmouth Brewing Company.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/15/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

753084

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Prologue A Brief History of Brewing Beer

The Nineteenth Century Beginning and Growth

Appendix I Chronology of the 19th Century Brewery Owners

Appendix II Types of Beers

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, and foremost, I wish to acknowledge that this is not a complete comprehensive history of brewing beer in Portsmouth, or of The Portsmouth Brewing Company. The reason for that is because I did not have access to any personal family or business records from those who had once owned and operated breweries in Portsmouth, Ohio, especially in the early years (1840’s – 1870’s); nor were there any business records available concerning the brewing industry in Portsmouth in the archives at Portsmouth Public Library. Most of what I have here is from The Portsmouth Times (est. in 1858) and The Portsmouth Daily Times via newspaperarchieve.com.

And what accounts there were came far and few between, especially in the early years, meaning what you will read is a chronology of the brewing business in Portsmouth with lapses from one account to another, sometimes skipping over several months or years, creating a disjointed account about the history of brewing beer in Portsmouth. However, it is my hope you will find an appreciation for what I was able to piece together about this important industry, which I believe is one of the cornerstones in the history of Portsmouth.

Being a Portsmouth native I grew up having seen that particular iconic red-brick building down on (West) Second Street, which, today, houses The Portsmouth Brewing Company, wondering why it looked so different from other buildings in Portsmouth, and what was its history. Little did I know of its history other than what my father (Robert Bob Cullen, 1927-2004, PHS Class of ’47) had told me back in the early 1970’s, that it once used to house a brewery a long time ago, before Prohibition; and that it had been a used car dealership back in the days when my father was growing up in Portsmouth. Other than that, that was all I knew of it until I visited the brewery one day back in April, 2015, having learned that it was a brew-pub (a not-so modern concept); and while there, enjoying my pub-grub and a Peerless Pale Ale, I found that I was quite pleased that it was a brewery once again and that I wanted to know more about its history. Thus, I began my research, using a two-phase approach.

First phase consisted of using just the names of the primary brewery’s owners – Thomas Muhlhauser, Frank Kleffner, August Maier, Conrad Gerlach, Julius Esselborn, Charles Brafford, Portsmouth National Bank, Benjamin Meisel, Charles Deboudy, Steven Mault… etc. - while the second phase consisted of using the names of the various businesses - The Portsmouth Brewery, The Portsmouth Brewing Company (the initial time it was used and today’s usage), The Portsmouth Brewing & Ice Company, Brewery Arcade… etc. - associated with the building where there were literally thousands of accounts to look at; and as I went along this work turned out to be more than just the history of The Portsmouth Brewing Company - it turned into a history of brewers in Portsmouth with an emphasis on The Portsmouth Brewing Company.

And as with any business, it is really about the people who ran it.

Therefore, I do hope that you find the history of brewing beer in Portsmouth as interesting as I have had.

Throughout this work you will see historical monetary figures, such as a keg of beer costing $1.75 in 1897. I updated these figures to 2015 using a conservative annual inflation rate of 2.75%. Therefore, that keg today would cost approximately $43.00.

First, and foremost, I wish to acknowledge and thank the truly wonderful librarians in the Henry A. Lorberg Local History Room at the Portsmouth Public Library in Portsmouth, Ohio for their valued assistance on creating this historical account of brewers in Portsmouth. Their kindness, their generosity, their tips - but mostly their patience - will forever be most appreciated.

I would also like to acknowledge my appreciation of the staff at The Minnie Winder Genealogy and Local History Room at the Boyd County Public Library in Ashland, Kentucky. Their assistance and their website – thebookplace.org – were of tremendous help; and I wish to give thanks the staff of the Elizabeth H. Smith Genealogy Room at the Sylvester Memorial Wellston Public Library in Wellston, Ohio for their assistance.

Furthermore, I also wish to acknowledge the writers - known and unknown - from The Portsmouth Times and The Portsmouth Daily Times for their numerous articles that went into the development of this historical work.

I also wish to acknowledge the appreciated assistance of the Scioto County Auditor and Record Offices at the Scioto County Courthouse. Their assistance in looking up old records was most kind and generous.

I want to acknowledge a few of the very informative websites I had used in the forming of this history: Ancestry.com, Familysearch.org, Newspaperarchive.com, Ohiogeneaologyexpress.com, Ohiohistorycentral.org, Rootsweb.ancestry.com, Wikipedia.org, as well as many more for their invaluable information.

I wish to give special acknowledgement to former Brew-master Emily Uldrich - who is an historical person in her own right - for her valued insight into the history of The Portsmouth Brewing Company. Without her insight I would have overlooked so many amazing accounts of this brewery’s wonderful history.

And last, but certainly not least, I wish to thank the Mault family, as well as the management and staff at The Portsmouth Brewing Company, for their valued contribution to this work.

PROLOGUE

A Brief History of Brewing Beer

The process of making beer began, supposedly, by accident. It is believed that an ancient Middle-East farmer had left some grain out one day in a clay container, nearly 11,000 years ago, when it began to rain. Upon returning the next day, having left the soaked grain out in the hot sun nearly all day, he took a sip of the liquid contents, finding it sweet and… quite interesting.

According to Wikipedia.com beer is one of the world’s oldest prepared beverages, possibly dating back to the early Neolithic period (8,500 B.C.E. to 7,600 B.C.E.) when cereal was first farmed; and it is recorded in the written history of ancient Egypt and Iraq. Archaeologists have speculated that beer was instrumental in the formation of early civilizations.

A fermented beverage using rice and fruit was made in China around 7,000 B.C.E. Unlike sake, mold was not used to saccharify (convert to sugar) the rice, instead the rice was probably prepared for fermentation by mastication (grind to a pulp), or malting. Malting is the process of turning grain into malt for brewing purposes.

The earliest known chemical evidence of barley beer dates to 3,500 B.C.E. to 3,100 B.C.E. from the site of Godin Tepe, in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran.

The Ebla tablets, a collection of 1,800 clay tablets that were discovered in 1974 in Ebla, Syria, show that beer was produced in Ebla in 2,500 B.C.E.

Some of the earliest Sumerian writings contain references to beer, including a poem, to the goddess Ninkasi (The Goddess of Alcohol) known as The Hymn to Ninkasi, which served as both a prayer as well as a method of remembering the recipe for beer in a culture with few literate people.

The poem, circa 1,800 B.C.E., is, in effect, a recipe for brewing beer, which was also known as ‘kash’. It can be argued that the art of brewing is broken down and explained in order to be passed down from generation to generation. Furthermore, The Hymn to Ninkasi is the oldest record of a direct correlation between the importance of brewing and the responsibility that women had with regards to supplying both bread and beer to the household. The fact that a female deity was invoked in the poem with regards to the production of brewed beverages illustrated the relationship between brewing and women as a domestic right and responsibility.

The repetitive nature of the poem suggests that it was used as a tool in order to pass down information as a way of learning. The poem explains that grain should be converted into bappir bread (a twice-baked barley bread), or beer bread, before fermentation with grapes, as well as honey, being added to the mix. The resulting gruel (porridge) was drunk unfiltered, hence the need for straws as a way to filter the gruel.

A translation of the poem from the University of Oxford describes combining bread, a source for yeast, with malted and soaked grains and keeping the liquid in a fermentation vessel until finally filtering it into a collecting vessel.

Almost any substance containing sugar can naturally undergo alcoholic fermentation. It is likely that many cultures, on observing that a sweet liquid could be obtained from a source of starch, independently invented beer. Bread and beer increased prosperity to a level that allowed time for development of other technologies and contributed to the building of civilizations.

As for Europe, beer was spread through there by Germanic and Celtic tribes as far back as 3,000 B.C.E.; and it was mainly brewed on a domestic scale (the original home-breweries). The product that the early Europeans drank might not be recognized as beer by most people today. Alongside the basic starch source, the early European beers contained fruits, honey, numerous types of plants, spices and other substances such as narcotic herbs. What they did not contain was hops, as that was a later addition.

Hops is first mentioned in Europe around 822 by a Carolingian Abbot and, then again, in 1067 by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen.

During the Middle Ages, beers tended to be of a very low alcohol content. In Europe, many villages had one or more small breweries with a barley field and a hop garden in close vicinity. Early documents include mention of a hop garden in the will of Charlemagne’s father, Pepin III (714-768 A.D.E.), the King of the Franks. However, the first documented use of hops in beer is from the 9th century, through Hildegard of Bingen, often cited as the earliest documented source. Before this period, brewers used a wide variety of bitter herbs and flowers, including dandelion, burdock root, marigold, horehound (the German name for mountain hops), ground ivy, and heather.

Hops are used extensively in brewing for their antibacterial effect that favors the activity of brewer’s yeast over less desirable microorganisms and for many purported benefits, including balancing the sweetness of the malt with bitterness, contributing a variety of desirable flavors and aromas. Historically, traditional herb combinations for beers were believed to have been abandoned when beers made with hops were noticed to be less prone to spoilage.

In 1516, William IV, Duke of Bavaria, adopted the Reinheitsgebot (purity law), perhaps the oldest food-quality regulation still in use in the 21st century, according to which the only allowed ingredients of beer are water, hops, and barley-malt. Reinheitsgebot was a law that was originally established by Albert, Duke of Bavaria on November 30, 1487, being formalized by Bavarian Duke Wilhelm IV on April 23, 1516, specifying the only three ingredients that could be used in the making of beer. However, in 1993, Reinheitsgebot was updated with the Provisional German Beer Law, which now allows for the addition of certain previously prohibited items - yeast, wheat malt and cane sugar.

Beer produced before the Industrial Revolution continued to be made and sold on a domestic scale, although by the 7th century A. D. E., beer was also being produced and sold by European monasteries, which continued for hundreds of years.

As for the ‘New World’ there is speculation that the Virginian colonists were brewing ale out of corn as early as 1548, surely by 1587, being the very first to brew on this continent; and by 1609, these Virginian colonists were advertising Help Wanted for brewers in London newspapers.

In 1612 two European men, Adrian Block and Hans Christiansen, established the first commercially known brewery in the New World. It was located on the southern tip of New Amsterdam, or modern-day Manhattan Island, down near Wall Street. And just two years later, in 1614, their brewery became the birthplace of the first non-native American in New Amsterdam - Jean Vigne - who grew up to be a brewer himself, establishing his brewery in 1633 on Brower Straat. Jean Vigne is considered to be the first ‘American’ brewer in the New World.

In 1620, the Pilgrims were forced off The Mayflower by the crew since their beer supply was running extremely low, ensuring that they would have enough to get them back to England.

In 1632 the Block and Christiansen brewery went out of business; however, in that same year, and in 1633, New Amsterdam saw two new breweries open. First there was the Dutch West India Company on Brewer’s Street followed by Peter Minuit’s brewery at New Market Field.

Four years later, in 1637, Captain Robert Sedgwick opened the first brewery in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was soon followed by Sergeant Baulston’s brewery opening in neighboring Rhode Island in 1639; and a year after that, in 1640, Henry Sherburne opened his brewery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Pennsylvania saw its first brewery, in Philadelphia, in 1683 when William Frampton opened his brewery on Second Street, below Walnut at Dock Street Creek. It lasted until 1709.

And just a couple of years later, in 1685, Henry Badcock established his brewery - the Edinburgh Brewhouse - in Philadelphia as well. Now, his establishing this brewery is not what is significant; what is significant is that upon his death in 1734 his daughter, Mary (Badcock) Lisle became America’s first recognized female commercial brewer or ‘brewster’ when she took over her father’s brewery, running it until 1751.

In 1738 Georgia became the first southern state to open a brewery, established by Major William Horton, on Jekyll Island. It lasted until the 1750’s.

The 1760’s saw the rise of the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) where the production of beer went from being an artisanal craft, not only here in North America but in Europe as well, to an industrialized, mass-produced product that caused artisanal craftsmanship to drop significantly by the end of the 19th century.

In 1765, the British Army built a brewery at Fort Pitt (modern day Pittsburgh, PA). It was the first brewery west of the Allegheny Mountains; and in that same year a Frenchman named Beauvais built a brewery near what is today Centralia, Illinois. It was the first brewery outside of the original 13 colonies.

The advancements of hydrometers (determines the specific gravity of liquids), which was invented in 1768 by a Frenchman named Baume, and the advancements of thermometers, which was invented by Galileo back in 1593, helped to change brewing by allowing the brewer more control of the process, thus gaining greater knowledge of the results.

Revolutionary War Measures, by Congress, in 1775 included the rationing of beer or cider to soldiers: one quart - per man - per day; and in 1789 President George Washington presented his ‘Buy American’ policy indicating that he would only drink porter made in America. And in that same year Massachusetts passed an Act encouraging the manufacture and consumption of beer and ale.

Philadelphia, by 1793, was producing more beer than all the other seaports in the country.

And as the 19th century began temperance movements began to emerge as the Congregational Church in Moreau, New York formed a temperance society in 1808.

Come 1810, there were 132 breweries operating in the United States, producing 185,000 barrels of beer. (One barrel equals 31 gallons).

In 1819, a steam engine was installed at the Frances Perot Brewery (est. in 1818) in Philadelphia. It is the first such engine to be used in the production of beer in America.

The increased production and consumption of whiskey in the U.S., by 1820, causes a slump in the consumption of beer.

The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance is formed in Boston in 1826.

1829 saw the opening of what is now America’s oldest brewery, the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania by David G. Yuengling; and as of 2015 it was still going strong.

Also, in 1829, the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance reaches 100,000 members, most of which are women. By 1833, there are five thousand temperance societies in the U.S., with a combined membership exceeding one and a quarter million. In 1836, the United States Temperance Union meets in Saratoga, New York and changes their name to American Temperance Union. They introduce the principal of abstinence or Teetotalism.

In 1840, when the U.S. had a population of 17 million, Philadelphia brewer John Wagner introduces the first lager beer in the United States while Josef Groll brewed the first pilsner in Pilsen, Bohemia in 1843; and by 1844 the (Franz) Fortman and Company (est. in 1836 as the Bavarian Brewery) introduces lager to Cincinnati, Ohio.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Beginning and Growth

The Portsmouth Brewing Company (est. in 1996), which is not to be confused with the Portsmouth Brewery located in Portsmouth, N.H. (est. in 1991), is the current establishment at 224-230 Second Street in Portsmouth, Ohio’s historical Boneyfiddle District, a district established back in the 1870’s.

This brewery has had a long and difficult - though persevering - history with the city of Portsmouth. The business started out simply enough back in the 1840’s as the Portsmouth Brewery (PB) when two enterprising Germans – Thomas Heinrich ‘Henry’ Muhlhauser (1798 – 1858) and (presumably) Jakob Schiele (? – 1845, or 1848) - had wanted to make their own beer and sell it to the local masses. However, soon into their endeavors, Mr. Schiele died, leaving Mr. Muhlhauser to carry on. From there the brewery prospered on, albeit slowly, for many years even while facing some tough challenges that not only included the death of Mr. Muhlhauser in 1858 but the American Civil War (1861-1865) as well as the meddlesome temperance movements of the early 1870’s. Then in the late 1870’s, and early 1880’s, the business faced a series of owners until one man, another German, who came from Cincinnati and gave the brewery the stability it truly needed in order to flourish; and the business continued to thrive, under his son’s guidance, until Prohibition forced him out of business.

Since Prohibition the brewery building passed from one promising business – bottling, ice cream manufacturing - and after having been sold at a Sheriff’s auction - a used car dealership - to another with many in Portsmouth wishing it would come back as a brewery. Even some investors, in the late 1970’s, turned it into a multi-store outlet, calling it ‘The Brewery Arcade’. However, nothing of the brewing kind took hold in the building until the mid-1990’s when two local brothers – Steven and Ira Mault - came forth, deciding to give it their best, desiring to re-establish a brewery once again; and, so far, their dream has been holding steady, producing quality beers ever since.

The iconic red-brick building, built in 1880, has the distinction of being the oldest, though not continuous, brewing facility still standing in Ohio, and the second oldest in the Midwest, if not east of the Mississippi River, to this day, which is quite remarkable considering all of the other brewing facilities that have been built in the eastern half of this country since America’s founding back in the early 1500’s.

Prior to PB being established no other brewery is known to have existed in Portsmouth; however, there were a few liquor distillers (corn-liquor and the like) in Portsmouth before Portsmouth was even officially established in 1815; however, there were no known established breweries located here before PB. Not that there weren’t any, there just aren’t any public records of any other breweries being established in Portsmouth before PB.

Therefore, PB was Portsmouth’s first commercially established brewery and has been declared to have been officially established in 1843, being its first full year of being in operation, even though no known records or accounts have been located to verify this particular year, let alone a month and a date. Even though The History of Lower Scioto Valley states that the brewery was ‘actually’ established in 1840, which I believe is a misstatement, because, according to Scioto County Auditor records, the original wooden structure for PB had been built in 1842.

Now, the construction of this structure by Mr. Muhlhauser and Mr. Schiele, I believe, occurred over the summer months on the north side of Second Street, near Madison Street, on property probably leased, according to Scioto County Plat Records - Mortgages and Deeds - from owner Hugh Stewart and his wife.

Furthermore, according to the Scioto County Plat Records, the land that Mr. Muhlhauser and Mr. Schiele had built their brewery on was either Lot #239 or Lot #241, if not both, both being on the north side of Second Street near Madison Street. Lot #239 was owned by William V. Peck who bought a partial from Samuel J. Brown on October 19, 1833. And Mr. Brown had also sold a partial of Lot #239 to Nicholas Shearer on June 9, 1837.

(Please keep in mind lots were bought and sold in fractions, meaning more than one person, at any one time, could own a part of a lot.)

Lot #241 was owned by various people. According to the records on August 15, 1840 Neoma Moore sold what she owned to Hugh Stewart, as did Moses Gregory on August 27, 1840. However, Hugh Stewart had sold a partial to Peter Brodbeck on August 19, 1840. Now, J. V. Robinson had sold a partial of Lot #241 he had bought from Moses Gregory back on May 15, 1836 to Daniel Emrich on December 3, 1841. Then on September 27, 1842 Peter Brodbeck sold a partial to Stephen Brodbeck, presumably a relative.

Once the structure had been built, Mr. Muhlhauser and Mr. Schiele then had to install the brewing equipment - the large brewing vats, their wood and/or coal burning ovens and filters - presumably doing this in early autumn while waiting for their grains to grow and then be harvested. Once harvested and stored, they then began making their brews; and after a few trial and errors (I presume) in order to get their brewing process perfected, Mr. Muhlhauser and Mr. Schiele were more than likely ready to begin selling their beers by Christmas of 1842 to the people of Portsmouth; thereby, declaring themselves officially opened and ready for business come Winter 1843.

~

It is not known whether Mr. Muhlhauser and Mr. Schiele came to Portsmouth together for both men hailed from Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, a state in southwestern Germany that borders with France, Switzerland and the German states of Bavaria, Rhineland, as well as others; or if they met there. However, it seems safe to say that each of these men had prior brewing experience before arriving in Portsmouth; otherwise, why would they have committed themselves, in partnership, to such an endeavor in the first place.

What likely happened is that by late 1840, or early 1841, Mr. Muhlhauser and Mr. Schiele had already arrived in Portsmouth, presumably via Cincinnati, and began developing their ideas of establishing a brewery, having realized that Portsmouth was becoming a great business center due to its heavy canal and river traffic. They quite probably spent the better part of 1841 acquiring the necessary capital – savings and lines of credit - in order to fund their business venture. Then, by spring 1842, after acquiring enough capital to secure a lease on the land and the equipment they needed, they began the arduous task of building their brewery.

And under that modest wood-frame structure Mr. Muhlhauser and Mr. Schiele had a cellar dug sixteen feet deep, with no mention of a tunnel ever being built to the river, building it out of solid stone that had been left over from the construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal (1825-1832) whereby it could serve not only as their brew-house but as their storage facility, desiring to keep their beer at a constant and cool 70 degrees. It has been said that they most likely started out by making only English-style brews such as ales, steam ales, porters and stouts. (See Appendix II: Types of Beers.)

It was truly with the opening of the Ohio and Erie Canal that helped to develop this region for it allowed more goods, as well as people, to be brought in from the east making Portsmouth a major port and destination along the Ohio River.

It is believed that Mr. Muhlhauser and Mr. Schiele had started their brewery by using regionally grown grains with most coming, quite possibly, from Mr. Muhlhauser’s farm, which had been located in nearby Sciotoville, Ohio. These grains were then added to water taken directly from the Ohio River. The water had to be hand carried to the building in two-and-half gallon wooden buckets. In fact, this is how the brewery continued to get its water for nearly twenty-seven years, until 1870 when Portsmouth finally established its first public water works system.

Luckily, Mr. Muhlhauser and Mr. Schiele knew enough to boil the water first before mixing in the grains, knowing the boiling water would open the grains up for fermentation versus killing off any bacteria that would have been found in the water.