http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=658060
Grand taste from the past
Gettelman $1000 Beer, pure malt and hops, has been gone for decades, but a single keg of it appears at an encore tonight
By RICK ROMELL
Posted: Sept. 5, 2007
It was the Milwaukee beer with a price on its foamy head.
The label carried the challenge: A grand - big money when the offer began in 1891 - to anyone who could prove Gettelman $1000 Beer contained any substitute for pure malt and hops.
For 80 years, the reward stood unclaimed, until the last batch of Gettelman rolled off the line and would-be chemist-detectives lost their chance to become thousandaires.
That beer truck has long since left the dock, but now, at least, people will have one more opportunity to taste the stuff.
At 7 p.m. today, with appropriate ceremony, the first Gettelman $1000 Beer brewed since 1971 - a single keg produced according to a recipe squirreled away for years in family files - will be tapped.
This is cause for some excitement, particularly among members of the Museum of Beer & Brewing, which is hosting the proceedings at the Miller Inn, 3931 W. State St.
"It's just a wonderful, wonderful smooth beer," said Miller Brewing Co. brewmaster David Ryder, who oversaw production of the Gettelman and is among the very few to have tasted it in the last 35-odd years.
"We're sure that the guests at the Museum of Beer & Brewing are really going to have a treat."
Gettelman never approached the city's beer giants - Miller, Schlitz, Pabst and Blatz - in size. But the regional brewer made its mark as an innovator and, as much as any of its bigger rivals, embodied the German-flavored, lunch-bucket sensibility of Milwaukee's industrial prime.
Tavern walls around town once were painted with "Fritzie," an advertising character with a Tyrolean hat on his head, a Gettelman bottle for a body and, usually, a smile on his face as he eyed a glass of lager.
Some of the billboards said "Get. . . Get. . . Gettelman." Others cut to the heart of things with an even simpler slogan: "Let's have a Beer!"
Notable firsts
According to a history of the A. Gettelman Brewing Co. by family member Nancy Moore Gettelman, the firm was Milwaukee's first brewer to advertise on television, sponsoring wrestling matches at the Eagles Club in 1947.
Two years later, Gettelman introduced non-returnable bottles, cradled in what it called a "Basket O' Beer."
And in 1957, as the Braves rolled toward the World Series, a service group sponsored by Gettelman paid for a canopy to shelter the hillside seats where veterans watched home games at County Stadium for free.
Gettelman's fortunes, though, were going flat, and in 1961 the company was sold to Miller, its next-door neighbor on W. State St. Miller still makes a Gettelman brand, Milwaukee's Best. But the big brewer pulled the cork on Gettelman's signature beer after 10 years.
This evening's gathering is open to the public ($15, but free drinks), and those inclined to dismiss Gettelman as another anonymous American beer may be surprised.
"This is an all-malt brew," Ryder said. "(And) it's got special hopping to it - about 20 bitterness units."
Bitterness is one of the things that makes beer taste like beer, and 20 bitterness units is about twice as much as typical mainstream U.S. beers, said Peter V.K. Reid, editor and publisher of the trade journal Modern Brewery Age.
"That should be a nice beer," he said.
Ryder said people likely would describe Gettelman as having "sort of a European taste." That probably is to say a German taste: Many German beers are still brewed according to that country's nearly 500-year-old beer purity law, which mandates use of barley malt and hops - none of the corn or rice some American beers use.
With its strict malt-and-hops formula, Gettelman should be "maybe a little bit beefier beer, a little more body," Reid said.
The brewing museum, a virtual entity working on establishing a physical presence, will serve up other attractions this evening.
Nancy Gettelman will speak about her book. Fred Gettelman, a great-grandson of the family's brewing patriarch, will show company memorabilia.
And there will be a tribute to Fred's grandfather, Fritz, a smart, tough-minded character who guided the brewery through the '30s and '40s and entertained listeners with his mastery of the old German-influenced, streetcar-bends-the-corner-around Milwaukee grammar.
Besides running A. Gettelman, Fritz found time to invent such things as a steel beer barrel, a widely used snowplow and a steam-brush bottle washer. Displays of some of his inventions will be shown.
The principal business, though, will be the tapping of the keg and the tasting of its contents, which Ryder and other participants are eagerly awaiting, and which might even prompt a Fritz-worthy comment like one Nancy Gettelman highlighted in her book:
"Come, we hoist another yet!"
Grand taste from the past
Gettelman $1000 Beer, pure malt and hops, has been gone for decades, but a single keg of it appears at an encore tonight
By RICK ROMELL
Posted: Sept. 5, 2007
It was the Milwaukee beer with a price on its foamy head.
The label carried the challenge: A grand - big money when the offer began in 1891 - to anyone who could prove Gettelman $1000 Beer contained any substitute for pure malt and hops.
For 80 years, the reward stood unclaimed, until the last batch of Gettelman rolled off the line and would-be chemist-detectives lost their chance to become thousandaires.
That beer truck has long since left the dock, but now, at least, people will have one more opportunity to taste the stuff.
At 7 p.m. today, with appropriate ceremony, the first Gettelman $1000 Beer brewed since 1971 - a single keg produced according to a recipe squirreled away for years in family files - will be tapped.
This is cause for some excitement, particularly among members of the Museum of Beer & Brewing, which is hosting the proceedings at the Miller Inn, 3931 W. State St.
"It's just a wonderful, wonderful smooth beer," said Miller Brewing Co. brewmaster David Ryder, who oversaw production of the Gettelman and is among the very few to have tasted it in the last 35-odd years.
"We're sure that the guests at the Museum of Beer & Brewing are really going to have a treat."
Gettelman never approached the city's beer giants - Miller, Schlitz, Pabst and Blatz - in size. But the regional brewer made its mark as an innovator and, as much as any of its bigger rivals, embodied the German-flavored, lunch-bucket sensibility of Milwaukee's industrial prime.
Tavern walls around town once were painted with "Fritzie," an advertising character with a Tyrolean hat on his head, a Gettelman bottle for a body and, usually, a smile on his face as he eyed a glass of lager.
Some of the billboards said "Get. . . Get. . . Gettelman." Others cut to the heart of things with an even simpler slogan: "Let's have a Beer!"
Notable firsts
According to a history of the A. Gettelman Brewing Co. by family member Nancy Moore Gettelman, the firm was Milwaukee's first brewer to advertise on television, sponsoring wrestling matches at the Eagles Club in 1947.
Two years later, Gettelman introduced non-returnable bottles, cradled in what it called a "Basket O' Beer."
And in 1957, as the Braves rolled toward the World Series, a service group sponsored by Gettelman paid for a canopy to shelter the hillside seats where veterans watched home games at County Stadium for free.
Gettelman's fortunes, though, were going flat, and in 1961 the company was sold to Miller, its next-door neighbor on W. State St. Miller still makes a Gettelman brand, Milwaukee's Best. But the big brewer pulled the cork on Gettelman's signature beer after 10 years.
This evening's gathering is open to the public ($15, but free drinks), and those inclined to dismiss Gettelman as another anonymous American beer may be surprised.
"This is an all-malt brew," Ryder said. "(And) it's got special hopping to it - about 20 bitterness units."
Bitterness is one of the things that makes beer taste like beer, and 20 bitterness units is about twice as much as typical mainstream U.S. beers, said Peter V.K. Reid, editor and publisher of the trade journal Modern Brewery Age.
"That should be a nice beer," he said.
Ryder said people likely would describe Gettelman as having "sort of a European taste." That probably is to say a German taste: Many German beers are still brewed according to that country's nearly 500-year-old beer purity law, which mandates use of barley malt and hops - none of the corn or rice some American beers use.
With its strict malt-and-hops formula, Gettelman should be "maybe a little bit beefier beer, a little more body," Reid said.
The brewing museum, a virtual entity working on establishing a physical presence, will serve up other attractions this evening.
Nancy Gettelman will speak about her book. Fred Gettelman, a great-grandson of the family's brewing patriarch, will show company memorabilia.
And there will be a tribute to Fred's grandfather, Fritz, a smart, tough-minded character who guided the brewery through the '30s and '40s and entertained listeners with his mastery of the old German-influenced, streetcar-bends-the-corner-around Milwaukee grammar.
Besides running A. Gettelman, Fritz found time to invent such things as a steel beer barrel, a widely used snowplow and a steam-brush bottle washer. Displays of some of his inventions will be shown.
The principal business, though, will be the tapping of the keg and the tasting of its contents, which Ryder and other participants are eagerly awaiting, and which might even prompt a Fritz-worthy comment like one Nancy Gettelman highlighted in her book:
"Come, we hoist another yet!"
