Brewing Bigger Beer: The Rise of Midwest Breweries into Industry Leaders

Abstract

This thesis examines the rise of American Midwestern breweries from 1870 to 1940, a period when these companies became the largest breweries in America. These years are important in the expansion of the breweries in the cities of Milwaukee and St. Louis because they were at a time when technological advancements in both producing and shipping beer, greatly helped them expand their markets beyond the cities they originally started in. Even though the prohibition amendment may have shut down the breweries temporarily, they were better prepared when beer became legal again because of their infrastructure and production capacities they had built up in the years preceding prohibition. Through analyzing the histories, production numbers, and geographic elements of how these breweries became so big I have come to the conclusion that these breweries were better set up going into prohibition and thrived afterwards because of this.