HOPPED up on HISTORY

Kalispell's early beer-brewing days were full of flavor

Steve Lozar knows all the good stories about the history of beer in Montana.

Like this one: High Life (as in the famous Miller High Life) was a Montana brand of Capital Brewing Co. in Helena long before Miller Brewing Co. took the name in 1903 for its pilsners.

Or this one: Olympia Brewing Co.'s famous slogan, "It's the Water," was first used in Montana by the Red Lodge Brewing Co. for its Glacier Beer. German immigrant Leopold Schmidt, who had Centennial Brewing Co. in Butte, later took the slogan to Tumwater, Wash., where Olympia beer was brewed for more than a century.

And then there's this one: Pabst Brewing Co. beer once was bottled in Troy, Mont., so the Milwaukee company could avoid paying a per-bottle tariff when transporting beer across state lines. Incidentally, Christian Best, the nephew of Pabst founder Col. Jacob Best, operated Kalispell Malting & Brewing Co. and sold Best Beer in the early 1900s.

Yet today on cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer, there's an insignia with the letter "B" on the can, referring to the Best family.

Lozar has spent more than 40 years poring through old newspapers and publications and gathering antique beer memorabilia for his beer museum in Polson. It's given him an encyclopedic knowledge of Montana brewing history.

He shared his expertise in an expansive article written for the "Foam on the Range" publication of Big Sky Chapter of the Beer Can Collectors of America.

THE FLATHEAD Valley's rich brewing history began on the bank of Lang's Creek about 2 1/2 miles east of Egan, once a small community southeast of Kalispell. Judge Jim Lang opened Lang's Brewery (not to be confused with today's Lang Creek Brewery at Marion) in early 1890.

"The water in Lang's Creek reputedly never froze," Lozar said. "It was perfect for brewing Lang's Flathead brands year round."

A 1890 Missoula Publishing Co. publication called "Flathead Facts' mused about the pure water quality for the beer, saying "there must surely be some mysterious virtue in the character of such a stream when its waters can glide placidly along when all our large rivers and small streams are frozen over…"

Lang took on a partner, Mr. Teideman, and they operated one of the earliest shingle mills on the opposite creek bank. Lang's Creek no longer shows up on Flathead maps, but Mill Creek is located in the same vicinity and most likely was the original Lang's Creek.

In 1892, a former Helena union brewery owner, Michael Schlegel, started Northwestern Brewery, also in the Egan area.

But the Flathead Valley was poised for more growth in the beer business. That same year German immigrant brothers Henry and Charles Lindlahr opened a 'sample room" on Kalispell's main street called the Brewery Saloon, Lozar said. It gave the brothers a retail outlet to test their brewing recipes, and when the locals took a liking to their beer, they opened Kalispell Brewing Co. on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue West and Center Street.

Remnants of the brick brewery remain today and have been incorporated into other buildings at the site.

Beer was delivered six days a week in Kalispell by horse and wagon in the summer and by sleigh in the winter, Lozar said. The Great Northern Railway ran next to the brewery and gave the company a crucial shipping outlet.

"Once a month a wagon load of beer was freighted to Somers on the north end of Flathead Lake, and shipped by barge to Polson," he said.

The Lindlahrs incorporated Kalispell Malting and Brewing Co. in 1894 for $50,000 in capital stock. Gus Gamer, a German who operated a saloon and wholesale liquor house in Demersville on Flathead Lake, became a partner in the business, and homes for brewery workers sprang up on Fifth Avenue West.

The use of locally grown barley was highly promoted. The brewery supplied barley seed to local farmers, then bought the harvest back from them at prices 20 percent higher than the national average.

When Schlitz Brewing Co. offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could prove that their beer contained anything other than hops and malt, Kalispell Malting and Brewing Co., not to be outdone, published a local newspaper advertisement in 1898 offering a $1 million reward to anyone "who can prove that it is better for the people of Flathead Valley to send money for beer to Milwaukee, when a better article is made at home by Flathead County taxpayers from their own barley, fuel, ice and labor."

Brewers also promoted their local beer as a health food, a "concentrated liquid food which is practically non-intoxicating, restores health, invigorates and enriches the blood."

Col. Jacob Best, a German brewer who founded what would later become Pabst Brewing Co., purchased stock in Kalispell Malting and Brewing Co. for his nephew, Christian Best, who operated the Kalispell brewery until 1913, establishing the popular Best Beer brand.

By 1904 the brewery used only union labor, and there were some perks for union workers, Lozar pointed out.

Under union contracts at the time, employees were allowed eight visits to the beer tap during an eight-hour shift to fill their growlers. The growlers ranged from 18 to 24 ounces, Lozar said, allowing workers to imbibe generous portions of brew each day.

In 1910 the brewery's output had grown to 12,000 barrels a day. The tall brewery buildings, including the tower on the malt house, were a landmark in Kalispell, along with the large sign that declared "Best Bottled Beer."

The brewery survived Prohibition by manufacturing soda syrups and "near beer." When the booze ban ended in 1933, the brewery blasted onto the scene once again, the first brewery in the Northwestern United States to resume bottling.

After Prohibition, the Kalispell brewery produced a number of beers, including Glacier Special Beer, Topper Beer, Topper Deluxe and Glacier Bock.

Gus' Topper Beer was another favorite, named after Gustav Bischoff Jr., who with other members of his family bought the Kalispell brewery in 1935. It featured the cone-top can.

"They chose the high profile cone-top over the flat-top cans because they could be filled in the existing bottling equipment with some very minor modifications," Lozar explained.

Gus' Topper was brewed starting in 1952 in an effort to boost sagging beer sales. By that time competition from national brands and Missoula and Great Falls breweries was cutting into the Kalispell brewery's bottom line.

Bischoff's daughter, Helen Bischoff Jernberg, a longtime bookkeeper at the brewery, operated the business for many years with her husband, Arthur, until it closed in the mid-1950s. The Jernbergs continued to distribute Rainier and Hamm's beer through the 1970s, Lozar said.

When Kalispell Malting and Brewing Co. closed, it was the city's oldest business, a testament to the importance of beer in Kalispell's formative years.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com