Great Lakes Brewing News Archive

Leinenkugel's Celebrates 130 Years of Growth

Originally Published: 10/97

By Bob "Now go have a beer" Paolino

With the continued growth of craft brewing in North America, more and more cities can take pride in local craft breweries. The craft breweries are new, ranging in age from mere months to fifteen years. A century ago, before the post-Prohibition consolidation of the brewing industry, many cities had their own breweries�indeed, even some of the smallest towns had three or four breweries.

For 130 years Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, has been the proud home of the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company. The brewery was born in 1867, in a booming Western Wisconsin lumbering town just after the Civil War. Unlike most breweries of that era, Leinenkugel's has survived Prohibition, two World Wars, the consolidation and blandification of the brewing industry, strict federal and state regulation and taxation of alcohol-containing beverages, and by all appearances, a merger with the world's second largest industrial brewer.

In 1997, Leinenkugel's celebrates its 130th anniversary having made for itself a place in an increasingly competitive marketplace both by continuing to satisfy its loyal long-time customers, and by appealing to beer-drinkers who find much lacking in the big North American industrial lagers but who may be put off by the price tag or the more assertive flavours of the beers of many of today's small brewers.

A Family Operation

Through those 130 years, Leinenkugel's has remained a family operation. The family history in brewing predates the establishment of the Chippewa Falls brewery. Jacob Leinenkugel was the son of a Sauk City brewer, Matthias Leinenkugel, who emigrated from Germany to Wisconsin in 1845. Jacob moved north, first to Eau Claire where his brother Joseph and uncle had been brewing since the 1850s, and then to Chippewa Falls, where he saw a town of thirsty sawmill workers as the perfect opportunity to start a brewery along with John Miller of Sauk City. The brewery was originally named the Spring Brewery, and was changed to the Leinenkugel Spring Brewery in 1883.

The current brewery president, Thomas "Jake" Leinenkugel, is the fifth generation to run the company. He began in the business by promoting Leinenkugel's when he was a student at University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked summers in the brewery. He cut short his university education when he joined the Marines in 1976 (he later completed his undergraduate degree at Pepperdine). By 1982, however, he resigned from the military and began in the sales department, first in Chippewa Falls and later in Minneapolis. "Jake" became vice president of marketing and sales in 1986, remained in management when Miller bought the company in 1988, and became president in 1989. Since then, he has overseen the acquisition of a second brewery and has been a very visible spokesman in company advertising.

Big Changes

The biggest changes for the company have come in the last six decades. Leinenkugel's survived Prohibition by bottling soda water, after a brief unsuccessful experiment with "near beer." As Prohibition ended, they hired a brewmaster out of Chicago's Siebel Institute, quickly restaffed the brewery, and created the "Chippewa Pride" brand to reflect the region.

If the 1970s were the "light" decade (a "Leinenkugel's Light," was introduced in 1972), it was in the mid-1980s that Leinenkugel's began to see the market potential for more flavourful specialty beers. In the 1980s Leinenkugel's promoted its bock by inviting customers to "stand a pencil in it." In 1986 it introduced a seasonal, Leinenkugel Limited, which was renamed ten years later as Northwoods Lager for year-round distribution.

In the last decade, the regional brewery has taken advantage of its almost "cult" status, and has thrived by expanding into markets outside the Midwest and by offering the beer-drinker a variety of choices. Leinenkugel's now has six year-round products and five seasonal brews.

Although the early-1988 sale to Miller has played a big role in Leinenkugel's successfully finding a market niche between the big industrial lagers and the full-flavoured brews of the small brewers, that was by no means certain in 1988, late in a decade of corporate takeovers that ruined other companies. Indeed, when Miller first came in, their middle management seemed ready to try to take over day-to-day operation of the brewery, according to Jake Leinenkugel. But Miller's top management came around to put a stop to the disruption and allowed Leinenkugel the authority he needed to make the company successful, Jake said.

Miller has also invested in Shipyard and Celis breweries, and appears to have allowed those two breweries to maintain the integrity of their product as well, although the parent company initially made some distribution foul-ups with Celis that caused some areas to lose Celis products for a time�a rather odd outcome for an agreement intended to expand distribution. Because the bulk of Leinenkugel's distribution before the takeover was limited to only four states, Miller's role has been to expand distribution without any loss to the "home" territory. Indeed, many readers of Bill Metzger's other publication, Southwest Brewing News, can find Leinenkugel's products on the shelves there thanks to the geographic expansion of the market.

More recently, the expansion of the market has been in product variety as well as availability. In the last five years, Leinenkugel's has introduced a number of new brands and acquired a second brewery. Leinenkugel's Red Lager and Winter Lager were introduced in 1993. The big explosion of brands came in 1995 and 1996.

Tale of Two Breweries

This fall marks another Leinenkugel anniversary: the second anniversary of the Tenth Street Brewery, which the company acquired in September 1995. The Milwaukee brewery had been a state-of-the-art facility built by Heileman in 1985, but closed in 1990. Various microbrewers had looked at the facility but decided against buying it. One reason may have been that the brewery was designed for keg beer only, with no bottling line. Leinenkugel managed to fit a bottling line into the kegging room.

Leinenkugel eventually intends to make the Tenth Street Brewery its ale and specialty brewery, but it is presently used largely to keep up with the demand for Honey Weiss, Original, and Red. During a late springtime visit to the brewery, nearly half of the fermenters were occupied by Honey Weiss.

The shift to using the brewery for ales and specialty products has begun, though. The Auburn Ale, Leinenkugel's only ale product, had been brewed in Chippewa Falls, but production has moved to Milwaukee because the Chippewa Falls brewery is simply better suited to be a lager brewery, and it proved difficult to attain the desired character of the Auburn Ale in the older facility.

The Milwaukee brewery is more modern, but quite a bit smaller in physical size than the Chippewa Falls brewery. Fitting the bottling line into the kegging room was quite a task, and storage space for both ingredients and finished product is extremely limited. The Tenth Street Brewery has two malt silos and one corn silo, with most of the grain in 700-1,000 Briess "supersacks." Warehouse space for packaged beer is limited to a big "garage" area, less than the space in some micros.

Granted, for all the marketing talk regional brewers and contract brewers make about "small batch" brewing, a beer enthusiast used to visiting microbreweries may not consider an 85 barrel brewhouse to be particularly small and may be struck by the sight of the expanse of gleaming stainless steel in the fermentation room�fifteen 210 barrel unitanks, each of which holds two of those 85-barrel brews. But in Chippewa Falls, the batch size is roughly twice that of the Milwaukee brewery, and Chippewa Falls' annual production of about 250,000 barrels is far greater than the 60,000 barrels they hope to produce in Milwaukee.

Jake Leinenkugel commented that he wants to experiment with more ales, and the smaller batch size and greater capability to maintain different yeasts makes the Tenth Street Brewery ideal for those future beers.

Another difference between the two breweries is in the amount of corn used at each. Although the brewery's advertising often mentions the different types of malts used in the beers, it doesn't typically mention the corn. Leinenkugel does not make all-malt beers, and uses corn even in the specialty brews. Chippewa Falls assistant brewmaster Tim Murphy, formerly with Miller, makes no apology for the use of corn and suggests that the focus on all-malt beers may be more marketing hype than a necessary characteristic of a good beer. Certainly in the Original lager, corn is an important element of the flavour profile, and long-time customers in the region have come to expect that character. In some respects, according to Jake Leinenkugel, the use of corn is "a big psychological thing" in the local market. It also seems, he continued, that the process at the Chippewa Falls brewery is well-suited to corn as part of the grist. Beers brewed in Chippewa Falls contain 8%-20%, depending on the variety; in contrast, very little corn is used in the Milwaukee brewery.

The Beers

And what about those beers? Before the sale to Miller, Leinenkugel's had a small advertising budget and word (and taste)-of-mouth to sell their beer. They brewed what is now called Leinenkugel's Original, the descendent of the beers first brewed in 1867 that established the legend, along with the seasonal bock, brewed since 1888.

The Original won an American Premium Light Lager gold medal at the 1987 Great American Beer Festival. Original is the lightest of the 11 Leinenkugel brews, just behind the Honey Weiss and Berry Weiss, in gravity (11.5º Plato) and colour, but still has a fuller flavour and character than its industrial lager competitors. The Bock is described as a traditional German bock beer, but at only 12.75º Plato�the same gravity as five of the other ten varieties�is far too small by German standards for the style, but is consistent with the American Bocks brewed by a number of the country's regional breweries.

The other nine of the 11 Leinenkugel's beers were introduced in the last 11 years. As Midwesterners became increasingly interested in beers with more character, Leinenkugel's Limited was introduced in 1986. Today "Limited" bears the name Northwoods Lager, a beer that is a little bigger (12.75º P) and a touch more bitter (19 IBUs) than Original, with caramel and Munich malts for a little more complexity compared to the flagship brew, and Cascades hops added to the Cluster hops that are standard for all but one of the beers. Limited took the 1993 American Premium Lager gold medal at the GABF.

The Red and Winter lagers were introduced in 1993. The addition of more caramel malt makes Leinenkugel's Red darker than the Northwoods, and Mount Hood hops give it a slightly different hop character. The Winter Lager is one of the brewery's most interesting beers, with a toasty aroma and chocolate malt flavour. It is also the only Leinenkugel's beer that does not use Cluster hops; it is brewed with Cascades and Mount Hood and at 20 IBUs is also the brewery's most bitter lager.

1995 brought two more beers to the lineup. The Honey Weiss, originally a seasonal but now year-round, is an American Wheat lager with a hint of honey. Although only marginally darker than the Original (4.1º Lovibond vs 3.5º L), the Honey Weiss is an interesting illustration of one aspect of the production process in Milwaukee. Leinenkugel's does not pasteurise its beer, but uses a very tight two-stage filtration to extend shelf life. Ten pounds of chocolate malt (out of a total of about 3,000 pounds of grain) are added to this pale-coloured brew to compensate for the colour stripped out by the filtration process. Autumn Gold was the other 1995 entry. This writer first sampled Autumn Gold at an Oktoberfest-theme tasting just after it came out. Although Autumn Gold is not explicitly identified as an Oktoberfest, it turned out to be a much better example of the style than the Oktoberfest of a major American contract brewer.

The other four beers were introduced in 1996. Auburn Ale is the brewery's first ale, their second biggest beer (13.5º P), and at 25 IBUs is also their hoppiest beer. Production of the Auburn Ale has moved to Milwaukee, where they have a better capability to maintain the yeast strain and the proper fermentation temperature.

Jake Leinenkugel remarked that he aims for a clean, well-balanced beer for a market in the middle of the spectrum. Big Butt Doppelbock is where he says he lets things "go crazy." At 15.5º Plato, Big Butt is not big enough to be a true Doppelbock, but it is almost big enough to be a traditional German Bock and, regardless of style, is a wonderfully malt-accented brew with only 12 IBUs to keep that malt sweetness up front.

Berry Weiss is the Honey Weiss without the honey, and with the addition of loganberries, elderberries, and blackberries for an obvious fruity flavour and aroma. Maple Brown, introduced last October, is a year-round full-bodied lager flavoured with maple syrup.

Matthias Leinenkugel never could have imagined that his great-great-great-grandson would be running a brewery that made fruit and maple beers along with the more traditional brews, but Leinenkugel's is well-positioned to continue the traditions of its 130 year history, and to experiment in its new brewery with beers that might appeal to the growing market for specialty beers.