Since there has been quite a bit of discussion lately about the status of Chicago as a beer city, I thought I might share some documentation from the glory days of Chicago's brewing industry, when Chicago's most famous brewer, Charles Wacker (as in drive), was one of the city's most prominent businessmen. It is hard to believe that, 108 years ago, there were 5000 Chicagoans working in the brewing industry producing 100 million gallons of beer each year, as well as supplying the rest of the country with malted barley, hops, bottles and brewing equipment.
The following is an excerpt from a book entitled
'CHICAGO - The book of its board of trade and other public bodies'.
It was compiled by George Englehardt and published by the CBOT in 1900 to celebrate the new century. It is now in the public domain.
BREWING BUSINESS.
By virtue of its position and surroundings, its population and advantages as a grain market, Chicago is a natural center of the brewing business. It has accordingly expanded fast in that line,and now ranks among the foremost cities in this industry. There are sixty breweries listed in the city directory here. Of these forty are establishments above the ordinary – that is, having 75,000 barrels annual capacity or more.
The annual sale of beer here is about 3,200,000 barrels, or nearly 100,000,000 gallons, the value of which at brewers’ prices is about $17,000,000. The capital invested in the breweries and malt houses of the city is about $30,000,000; about $4,000,000 of this is in malt houses, which produce perhaps $6,000,000 of product a year. The employees of the breweries and malt houses of the city – brewers, maltsters, yardmen, drivers and clerks – number over five thousand.
At the standard allowance, two bushels of grain and two pounds of hops to the [barrel], the brewers of this city use about 6,400,000 bushels of grain, and 6,396,500 pounds of hops. The farmer and grain dealer appear, in these figures, extensive beneficiaries of this business, and others are supported largely by it. There is the bottler and bottler’s supply man, the brewer’s supply houses, and the manufacturers of machinery and apparatus for brewers. The product of this last-named line here is $1,000,000 a year alone. There are six concerns in it, one of them quite a large one, turning out, besides refrigerating machinery, tubs and tanks, filters, mash machinery, grain driers, etc., largely for the brewers. here, but also for concerns all over the country.
Besides the beer produced here, all the famous brands of other cities are very largely sold, through agencies of the breweries of Milwaukee, St. Louis, etc., maintained here. A large quantity of imported beer, estimated at $1,000,000 worth, is consumed here or distributed throughout the trade field of the city.
Many of the breweries here, especially the newer ones, are models of modern construction. The product generally speaking is, in quality, the best. The revenue tax paid the Government by the brewers here now amounts, since the increased war tax was laid, to some $6,000,000 a year.