Transcripts For CSPAN3 Miller 20240705 : vimarsana.com

And that is the last of the major brewers still located. Miller brewing was, founded by Frederick Miller, who was an immigrant from germany who arrived here back in 1855. He was born in 1824 in a small town called in southern germany, which is and still is a center of beer culture. And he came here with 9,000 in gold on his person and kind of looked around in milwaukee emerged as kind of an obvious choice. A lot of reasons for that. One was we had good farmland around here. So becomes malt hops. A key ingredient in beer. And those are both grown here. You also true winters at the time before refrigeration was done that was really important for ice cool during the selling season. The most important reason he led here was this was the germy in america. And you have that german triangle of milwaukee, cincinnati and saint louis. All three became brewing centers. So thats largely on the strength of their german populations. So by 1860, milwaukee had majority of germans and its population. So you have a lot of taste for beer here and a lot of talent for making it. You set up shop what was called anck roadrewery is just behind me here. The watertown plank road that went from milwaukee to a small townn th country, abou 60 miles from here. And had been started a few years before by members the best fami, who had also s pabst brewery. They make it. One died, one moved away. So you have this this vacant, disu brewery that he bought essentially at a share sale in his very first full year, which was 1856, he made 1200 barrels a year, which is not even a mornings work for the milwaukee brewery today. But that was the binning. That was the seed. Now were going to head down into the caves. This will be the oldest surviving structure here. Milwaukee campus, a handdug in 1849 by brewery workers at the ben plank road. Caves system here was built in 1849 by workers at the then plank road brewery. It was all hand, making it our oldest surviving structure in milwaukee. Now for a bit of perspective, the chamber that were in here is 15 feet wide. Its 18 feet high. And at one point, stretching additional 600 feet. Beyond that mural behind us here. Now, at one time, we had ten caves of that size that could store up to 12,000 barrels of beer. Imagine, if you will, a series of large wooden storage racks similar to a wine cellar stacked high with large oak wooden beer barrels. The primary purpose of the caves was to keep beer cold, which we did through a really sophisticated called ice. Each winter wheat harvest large blocks from lakes and streams have it delivered at a cost about 0. 72 a ton. Wed pack it along the walls and along adjoining tunnels and cover it with sawdust straw. The insulated nature of being underground here was enough to keep the ice intact in the caves. The median temperature 36 and 40 degrees all year round, at least until the following winter, when we can go and harvest more ice to do it again the following year. And thats how we kept beer cold for better part of 50 years until the advent of mechanical refrigeration. Now, unfortunately, this is the last surviving chamber of that entire cave system. The rest have either collapsed in on themselves, deteriorated beyond a point where they could safely be repaired by others. We actually intentionally filled in to accomda the construction of New Buildings as we expanded our brewery otr breweries who were active here, there were than two brewies in mwaukee before the civil war at around same time the Frederick Miller arrives here. He made a name for himself, basically with the quality of his beer. E became kia player but never became his lifetime. More than thfourth largest brewer to milukee butourth or fifth place here is good for first in virtually every American City brewing played a role in milwaukees for the first generation or two of city hood and. Milwaukee becomes the city back in 1846 and what went over the years was from 1840s to the 1850s sixties. They began to outgrow the local market. There were just not enough germans here to drink all that beer, so the more aggressive ones became what they called brewers, and that adding market area by year and a really big help. There was a chicago fire of 1871 and that wiped about half of chicagos breweries. And milwaukee breweries were only to to kind of fill that vacuum, satisfy chicagos thirst. I think in the years after the fire of 1871, there was a full of milwaukee beer going down chicago every day of the week. So they didnt get off the mat. No, those chicago breweries because milwaukee kind of filled that vacuum. So that was really important in terms of milwaukee having this Huge Population center, just 90 miles away. Theres only one year back in 1890 when brewing was our most important for a long time, milwaukee was a major leather tanning center, a major flour milling center, and early on became a meatpacking center as well. But what really kind of shifted milwaukees perspect did was manufacturing rising beginning the 1870s or so an. And for most of the years until, the recent past 1980s, what they call durable goods were our most important product and thats the metal bending kind of products everything from Machine Tools to howitzers during the war to turbines to marine diesels. So those became stock and trade. The fact that you did not go down to a corner store to buy a turret lathe or a mining meant that they werent advertising those things in the mass market. But brewing they were. So you have just these msive for advertising and even 1890 was the only when it was our most important product because beme cemented in nationalit consciousnes beer. Milwaukee equals beer, and that still is part of our image today. Welcome to our brewhouse. Now the brewing process begins one floor above us, where were going to combine cereal, grain and malted barley, a large tub called the mash time. And were going to cook that consist concoction for about 2 to 3 hours into a substance called mash, which you can think of as brown liquidy oatmeal after cooked, its going to flow down into one of our six lauter tubs large, copper kettles that you see here. Think of a lauter tun is a giant industrial size coffee filter. Were going to strain out the grains and barley husks from the mash from the rich, sweet, sugary liquid that were after for brewing called wort, spelled w o, r t. The word is actually to flow down into one of the six stainless steel brew kettles you see below here. Well, were going to take those spent grains and barley husks and actually dry out because theyre high in protein. Were able to sell those to local farmers, cattle and chicken feed. Now as i mentioned, every single drop of beer that we produce here and our milwaukee brewery gets brewed in one of the six brew kettles. You sit below here, theyre stainless steel, both inside and out, and theyre 18 feet deep. So theyre actually much bigger than what you can actually see here at this stage. Were going to add hops to the beer. Hops are the spice of the beer, give it its bitter flavor. And also act as a natural preservative. Now, after weve boiled them for about hour to an hour and a half, were going to strain out any remaining solid ingredients and were going to pump them over to our fermentation facility and piping system that actually underneath the street below. Now, fermentation is where we add our yeast. And for many of our beers, we still the same genetic strain of yeast that our founder Frederick Miller brought over in his pocket from germany. Now, fermentation, but its a living organism, yeast thats actually going to interact with digest the fermentable sugars and, starches in the work and reproduce essential byproducts needed for beer. One is carbon dioxide, which gives us the bubbles or carbonation, and the other is alcohol, which provides us the alcohol with an entire fermentation process. Takes about 8 to 10 days and were done were going to strain out the remaining yeast and going to dry that out. Were going to sell it to local pet food companies. So if you ever see brewers yeast as a listed on any of your pets food chances . It may have come from an facility like ours. And while we technically have beer this point, its fermented alcohol. Its not yet ready to be packaged and concealed. You now have to send it over to our aging facility over there. Were going to keep it in large tanks away from light where its to blend together in a process called mellowing for about ten days to two weeks. That time were going to filter it one final time to, remove any remaining impurities or cloudiness, and its finally ready to be packaged. The bottles, kegs and cans, an entire brewing process depending on the brand, anywhere from three weeks to a month for our flagship beers miller lite, it takes exactly 21 days start to finish for miller high life its 25 days prohibition was a long time out that took away what had been a critical source of license revenue. Local government and i calculate that just the loss of taxes the license fees would have been enough and inflation dollars to pay for every Neighborhood Library in the city so iteally a hit economically it was a hit culturally. You know people have been to kind of relaxing with a bw after work and saloons which were rechrtened taverns after prohibition were what some people described kind of counal living rooms. So they were kind of the poor mans club, the working mans club. So tre was a loss of a social out there as well. All the breweries doing prohibition had to do Something Else and pabst made everything from processed cheese machine parts. Schlitz made bars, they all made some form of soda water, pop and ey a made malt tonic, which was a must for nursing mothers. Th madmalt sirup, which was for home brewers. It wasnt illegal to make it legal to sell it. So the Public Library could not keep the brewing manuals the shelves because all these home were were hard at work. So it really was even though they tried to keep doors open and it was never more than a fraction of their capacity before prohibition inillers case. So this really surprised me. There have been interest in such a thriving operati before prohibition, and ty just decided the brothers decided to say, well, what will we take now . Whats our kind go awa price and they decided 5 million is what they would take for the whole operation. In 1925, after prohibition had been on the books for six years, the same assets were listed for sale for hundred thousand dollars, the same exact assets, and there were no takers. So it really kind of it took the economic value just just just hollowed out the economic of all these operations. And it not come back until 1933. So when beer came back in 1933. Miller among the brewers and there were all the majors now still in milwaukee, you know, were the ones who were able to survive. And it was it was like champagne, cork being released, just that this this pent up demand or really created this almost to frenzy people wanting beer or stories about chicagoans flying in plane just to pick up some cases to take back for a party. The same night a trucker comes from billings, montana, loads up a 600 cases to haul back to montana. So it really was kind of a finally, you know, the droughts over and people finally to to legally satisfy their thirst again. Well, welcome to our shipping distribution center, i milwaukee brewery sits on 84 acres and consists of 80 buildings. This the largest of those buildings with a total area of 200,000 square feet. And thats the equivalent five nfl football fields lined up side by side with our beer stacked up to 25 feet high. And here that means we can store up to 750,000 cases of beer in here at any one time. And that like a lot. And it certainly is. But when you think that we have the capacity to package up to 600,000 cases of beer here, our brewery, each and every day. That doesnt give us much time or space to keep things sitting. That means everything that you see in this facility is going to get shipped out and turned over and replaced with new product the next 24 to 48 hours, each truck can carry about 200 to 20, 2500. And that sounds a lot. But let me put that in perspective. You if you were to drink our beer a rate of a six pack a day each and every, it would take you 22 and a half years to drink all the beer and just one semitruck load, and we can send out between 200 and 250 of those each and every day long. Story short, theres been a lot of consolidation and a lot of merger activity and the beer market nationally and internationally. In pabst case, they were purchased by a California Investor and closed 1996. Schlitz closed. 1982 after managements recession problems. Blatz was gone long before then, so that left miller the of the old 19th century brewers as the last one standing the big change here was the purchase of miller by Philip Morris back in 1969 and Philip Morris, they were master marketers and what they did back in 1972, they a brand called light beer from meister brown in chicago, which had been marketed as a diet beer for women. They kind of retooled the recipe and, changed the marketing to taste great filling what you could not be near a tv you know for years and not hear those every athlete prossnal in the country was somehow enlisted and the result was that between 1969 and 1977, miller moved from number seven in the country to number two. So it was a remarkable case study of how you market your way to success. And that really established miller as not just the last major in milwaukee, but with anheuserbusch as one of the two largest brewers in the country the legacy of Miller Brewing here is just indelible and were at everything from the miller high life theater where you see shows downtown to miller park where that where the brewers play so it certainly has a huge role to play in milwaukees legacy what it is basically it is a tangible expression of an ethic and economic legacy that was really important here and remains important to the presen washington journal. Host we want to introduce you