The National Brewery Museum - Potosi, WI

 Years ago, Cindy and I used to take little weekend trips to get away from the little bungalow house with no air-conditioning that we lived in up until 9 years ago. These days, with a much nicer house, a deck in the back and a wonderful yard full of flowers and plants, it's a little tougher to get away from the laid back home life we've become accustomed to on the weekends. However, one place that I've wanted to visit for quite sometime is Potosi, Wisconsin - home of The National Brewery Museum. We took a Sunday drive up to Potosi to have a look around the museum and to have lunch at the attached Potosi Brewing Company brewpub/restaurant.   

Potosi is a picturesque little community in Southwest Wisconsin (see map), about a 20 minute drive from Dubuque, IA. The small town has a significant history in brewing beer with the original Potosi Brewing Company - which brewed "Potosi" and "Holiday" beers - in existence from 1852 to 1972. The Potosi Brewery fell into severe disrepair over the years before Gary David bought the building in 1995 with the hope of restoring the property.  David owned a woodworking shop in Galena, IL - Gary David Woodworks and Design - and is known nationally for his workmanship in restoring and making wood furniture, entertainment cabinets and handmade bars.  After three years of restoration, David brought in his cousin, Denis David, and a friend, Rick Tobin, to help with the rebuilding process.

In 1999, spurred on by Denis David and his wife, Madonna, the group organized a town meeting with a group of people in Potosi to put it to a local vote to either demolish the building, or seek investors and grants to rehab the building into a museum and a functioning brewery/restaurant. The rehab vote passed and it led to the formation of the Potosi Brewery Foundation. Originally, the project was given a budget of $3 to $3.5 million dollars, but over time the costs ballooned to almost $7 million dollars. More money was raised and the museum/brewery opened in June of 2008. 

In conjunction with the American Breweriana Association, the National Brewery Museum chronicles the history of brewing beer in America through displays of machinery, merchandise and marketing tools. Through private and corporate donations of memorabilia, the National Brewery Museum boasts one of the largest collections of beer cans and bottles, signage, advertising and paraphernalia in the world. The museum also has it's own research library on the premises.

The museum opened that Sunday at 10 a.m. and we were one of the first couples to go inside that day. On the main floor as you come in, there's a room to the side that shows the history of transportation for the Potosi Brewing Company's brands (below left). There was an old tail-finned Buick that had a wooden case of "Good  Old Potosi Beer" in the trunk. There was an old time, horse-drawn beer wagon, as well as pictures and models of old beer trucks. There were interactive displays that told about the specifics of getting beer to the masses in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The room also featured a glass encased display of the various cans and bottles of beer that were brewed at the Potosi Brewing Company over the years. Many of these were either donated or lended to the museum from private collections. It was a pretty impressive display of bottles and cans.

We were met by a lady who was acting as the hostess that day. She asked us if we had been to the museum before and we said we had not. She said, "Well, the exhibits on the main floor are free. However, there are two more floors of self-guided exhibits above us and they have a $5 dollar admission fee. With that admission fee, you'll also get a free beer at the end of your tour in the brewpub next door." We immediately gave her $10 bucks and continued through the main floor exhibits after she put some yellow wristbands on our arms.

Of course, every place like this has to have a gift shop and the National Brewery Museum was no exception. Actually, it was more Potosi Brewing Company clothing, signage and chotskies than anything to do with the museum. And, of course, the shirts - while pretty cool - were outrageously expensive. There was a cool Potosi Brewing bowling shirt with the logo on the back that they wanted $60 bucks for. Cindy was actually cold - the air conditioning was really cranked up - and she was looking at getting a "hoodie" sweatshirt. But a cool looking one that she found was well over $50 bucks, as well. She decided she could handle the cold for that kind of money.

Just past the gift shop was the glass enclosed original brewery room for the Potosi Brewery in the 19th century (below left). Basically a cave, this is where the brewmasters gathered the spring water (that still flows today and is used in the new Potosi microbrewed beer) and added the hops and grains to make the beer. A number of the old machinery and apparatus to make the beer over 100 years ago is on display in the room.

In the room that allowed you to look into the old brew room, there are more displays of cans and bottles, not only from the old Potosi brewery, but from other old time breweries around Wisconsin (above center and above right). Once again, some of these were on loan to the museum from private collectors.

We took the elevator up to the second floor where the elevator opened into a stone-walled room that had a video presentation about the history of brewing in the State of Wisconsin. While we didn't watch much - if any - of the video, we turned our attention to the display cases that had more historical items for the Potosi Brewing Company.

One of the more interesting aspects of this part of the museum was the homage that was paid to the old Potosi Brewing Company's "Rolling Bar". (Pictured above right - this is not my picture, I found it on Flickr and do not know the photographer's name.) This relic of a long era where the brewery would take the rolling bar to events to serve their beer. Many a people rented out the rolling bar for weddings, parties, and other private celebrations. And because they couldn't get a specific beer license for the rolling bar, the Potosi Brewing Company had to give away the beer at public functions - the ultimate public relations venture for the brewery.

The rolling bar dates back to the 1930's when it was built on the frame of an old delivery truck and pulled to events throughout Southwestern Wisconsin. When the brewery went out of business in 1972, the rolling bar went into storage. I had hoped to see the restored rolling bar, but according to the lady at the start of the museum when we asked her later that day, she said it was still in storage and no decision had been made whether to restore and display the rolling bar. She said, "We really don't have any room to display it and it can't be used for events any longer because of laws and insurance purposes."

She added, "My parents rented out the rolling bar for our wedding nearly 50 years ago!"

Attached to the second floor room was a larger room that had one of the most impressive collections of beer signs I've ever seen (pictured above, left and right). This room displayed a number of beer signs from Wisconsin breweries, both current and defunct, that dated back well into the mid to late 1800's. Some had been restored, but many were in their original state. In addition to beer signs, there were lithographs that many of the breweries put out to show the buildings in which they brewed the beer. It was a pretty amazing and interesting collection.

 Just up the stairs was the research library. Nearly any type of book that has been written about beer is in this library. Although I didn't want to get bogged down looking at every book, it was an impressive collection of books on the history of brewing, different types of beers from around the world, the process of making beer and information on breweries around the world, big and small. There was a computer desk and a large table that allowed people to peruse the books in the research library - for whatever reason.  I understand the museum will also lend out books to people.  

I've collected a handful of books related to beer over the years and I recognized many of those as part of the collection in the research library. They certainly take their beer seriously in Wisconsin.

On both the second and third floors of the National Brewery Museum, there are displays of old machinery that was used in the process of making beer back in the 1800's.  There were hop presses, bottling devices and in the far back of the picture below left is a table (you can see it a little better if you click on the picture) that was used as a bottle dryer when they would sanitize the beer bottles before the beer was added.  It was pretty medieval compared to the bottling process breweries go through today. 

As things became more industrialized and automated, so did the bottling process.  Above right is a machine from the early 1900's that allowed for simultaneous bottling of up to six bottles of beer.  This kept the beer under pressure and cut down on the time it took to bottle each beer individually.

Naturally, there were more historical exhibits to see in the National Brewery Museum.  Some of it dealt with what breweries had to go through in the height of Prohibition, while other displays focused on how the process of making mass quantities of beer.  One of the more interesting displays were the dozen of on-wall beer medallions such as are found on the far wall of the picture below left.  From the information I read, these were placed on walls of bars back in the 30's and 40's to signify that the bar was authorized to sell that brand of beer.  For the kids, and for the young at heart, there was a model train exhibit on the third floor.  Unfortunately, for the kid in me, it wasn't running that day.  

The whole time we were in the museum, we did not encounter another person.  So it was like our own little private self-guided tour through the National Brewery Museum.  Even a person like Cindy, who doesn't drink a whole lot of beer any longer, found the museum to be pretty interesting.  I found it to be very fascinating.

Near the exhibits on the 3rd floor was the small brewing and fermenting room that the Potosi microbrewery used for their brewing process.  Even with the door closed and heavy windows between us and the tanks, the smell of hops permeated the air.  Although it can smell like stale beer, there's something mentally intoxicating about the smell of hops.   

There is a fourth floor to the building at the brewery/museum and it houses a little meeting room/banquet area called The Founders Room. It has audio/video equipment for visual presentations, as well as a little keg refrigerator and a small bar area.  I wouldn't mind going to one of their meetings.  

We went back down to the first floor and encountered the lady who sold us the admission.  "Well, what did you think?"

I said it was one of the most amazing collections of beer memorabilia and history that I'd ever seen.  I told her I would highly recommend it to anybody.  Even Cindy said, "I don't drink beer almost at all any longer and I thought it was really interesting." 

The lady told us before we left that we had to venture across the street where they have the Holiday Gardens banquet facility and to check out the old silo they made into a replica of an old aluminum Potosi can with a beer bottle top.  The person who donated the land for the banquet hall stipulated that the old silo on the grounds had to be kept.  So during the restoration process for the brewery, they got the idea to turn the silo into a big beer can, complete with a bottle top.  

The lady told us that when they brought the top of the silo to Potosi on a flat bed trailer, it passed her house just up the highway.  "It looked like one of those old space capsules," she exclaimed.  If people didn't know that it was the top of the silo, they would have thought there was going to be a space launch or something!"  

That was our trip to the National Brewery Museum.  And we did get our beer when we went to the brew pub.  And we had lunch there.  I'll tell you about it in the next installment of Road Tips.   

Comments

[Al Kern]

Fun read, Will. My sister brought me a six pack of Potosi some time back...not bad at all. I had almost forgotten about Holiday Beer!

[Dirk]

Sounds like a great visit. Certainly something that I would enjoy.
Thanks for sharing your story.

[Darla Conners]

Found this on a search for the Brewery Museum and I have to say that it made my husband and me want to get there as soon as possible! We live in southern Illinois about six hours from the museum! My husband is a beer can collector and he's very interested in the history of beer memorabilia! Thank you!

Darla Conners

[Carol Hanson]

does anyone know of a beer museum north of Mischicott, WI.? Also, my Great Grandfather, George Blessing, ran the Premo label in Port Washington, WI. Are there any artifacts from that brewery?