“Ask Steve” is a State Journal-Register series where you can ask the questions about Springfield’s personalities, history, buildings or tall tales and reporter Steven Spearie will do his best to answer them. What are you curious about? Send your questions to sspearie@sj-r.com.
Question: My question is what is Springfield’s history related to beer breweries? – B.J. Murray, Springfield
Answer:Â Several sites indicate that the first commercial brewery in Springfield dates to 1840. English immigrant James Busher operated Springfield Brewery on the north side of Jefferson Street, west of Klein Street, from 1840 to around 1860. Busher also operated a tannery with his brother, John.
Fire destroyed the brewery in 1849, although it was operational again by 1852. James Busher appeared back on the scene by 1855. Franz Sales Reisch and the Reisch Brewing Co. began its celebrated run by producing its first beer, a German lager, in 1849.
Patrick John Reisch is now a sixth-generation brewmaster working for Goose Island Brewery in Chicago. He helped his now-retired brewmaster father, George, oversee the first batches of Reisch Gold Top Beer when it re-started its production in Potosi, Wisconsin, in 2019.
Roy Mayfield, a Springfield beer historian and one of the founders of the Reisch Brew Crew, said it was “very common” for cities like Springfield to have multiple breweries.
It was also reflective of the area’s large German settlement to see names like Reisch, Kun, Weist, Herman & Laubheimer and Ihlenfeldt on breweries.
“The beer didn’t last very long. It wasn’t pasteurized. They had to have these cellars to keep them underground and try to make enough it to get from one year to the next,” Mayfield said.
Speaking of underground cellars, a part of Springfield beermaking revealed itself, literally, in 1993, when the Illinois Department of Transportation was investigating a sinkhole in the 600 block of North Walnut Street. IDOT was in the process of widening the street.
The cavern was a brewery storage warehouse built by Kun Brewery, located at the west end of Reynolds Street, around 1858. Andrew Kun had been involved with the St. Louis brewer, William Lemp, before he came to Springfield.
Kun rented out the nascent Reisch Brewery from 1854 to 1857 when there was a local prohibition going on. That didn’t stop Kun from producing beer.
A number of Springfield breweries, Mayfield said, came and went quietly. Even now, Mayfield is still uncovering breweries, like one at roughly Fifth and Madison streets that made a spruce beer made out of pine needles.
One of the rivals to Reisch was Springfield Brewing Company, which began operation in 1933 after the repeal of Prohibition.
A 1935 Illinois State Journal article referred to the brewery’s high-tech equipment as “nothing short of a revelation.”
But the company, which marketed to as far away as California, had closed up shop by 1947.
The Reisch Brewery eventually grew to 11 buildings and at one time had a stable for 48 horses to pull delivery wagons.
The Reisch family was churning out more than beer. Civic engagement of family members included supporting the Springfield Art Association, donating land to establish Washington Park and aiding Catholic schools and parishes around town.
In 1966, facing pressure from large, corporate breweries, Reisch Brewing ceased operations.
Buildings for SIU Medicine now sit on the land.
For a complete list of Springfield breweries, visit the Old Breweries website.
Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Ask Steve: Springfield’s history with beer breweries
Reporting by Steven Spearie, Springfield State Journal-Register / State Journal-Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Steven Spearie, Springfield State Journal-Register | USA TODAY Network
