Miami Valley's small breweries then and now

Infographic: "The Illusion of Choice," by Jeff Desjardins, visualcapitalist.com.

© Copyright 2019 Timothy R. Gaffney

A 2016 infographic titled “The Illusion of Choice,” by Jeff Desjardins at the Visual Capitalist, shows how a handful of megabrewers own most of the myriad brands you find on supermarket shelves.

In my research for Dayton Beer, I learned this trend was much older and deeper than I’d ever considered, and I saw how it transformed the brewing scene in the Miami Valley.

Well before Prohibition smashed the brewing industry a century ago, the trend in the beer business was one of mergers and takeovers. For example, by the late 19th century, English investment groups were on the hunt for hometown American breweries they could buy up and consolidate for greater profits. That’s how Springfield’s two local breweries became one company, the Springfield Breweries, in 1890.

The turn of the 20th Century found local brewers in cities nationwide forming combines in the face of growing competition from national brands. Here, a half-dozen Dayton brewers merged as the Dayton Breweries Co. in 1904.

But this decade has seen small craft breweries proliferate and thrive. Changes in consumer demand and state laws have dramatically reshaped the market, as Derek Thompson wrote last year in The Atlantic.

Tailspin Brewing Co. in Coldwater, Ohio. Photo by Timothy R. Gaffney

Can a brewery be too small? I'm not a business expert, but so far, the craft brewery marketplace seems to have enough space for local breweries to grow without crowding out smaller ones. And I've seen tiny breweries sustaining themselves themselves in very different business environments. 

A couple of examples are the Heavier than Air Brewing Co., located in the suburban Normandy Square Shopping Center in Washington Twp. near Centerviile, and the Tailspin Brewing Co. in the rural village of Coldwater in Mercer County. Both are tiny microbreweries that seem to have found niches in very different circumstances.

Opened in 2017, Heavier than Air is a small, storefront brewpub with its brewery and taproom sharing 2,000 square feet in a suburban shopping center. It’s managed to survive its first year despite being surrounded by bars, pubs and restaurants.

Tailspin’s situation is just the opposite: it’s located deep in Ohio farm country west of Grand Lake. Started in 2015 by a retired Air Force fighter pilot, it occupies a picturesque, repurposed dairy barn on the edge of town.

Coldwater’s population was only about 4,400 in 2010, according to Wikipedia, but founder-owner Jack Waite deliberately planned small: Tailspin's capacity is only 700 barrels per year, he told me last year. And Waite is located in the heart of the “Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches,” a region that strongly reflects the heritage of its German settlers.

“If I can’t sell a beer here, I’m doing something wrong,” he said.

A century or more ago, microbreweries were common in small communities across the Miami Valley. Many fell victim to the pre-Prohibition temperance movement—especially a 1908 Ohio law that allowed “dry votes” to ban the sales of alcoholic beverages at the county level.

I found records of breweries existing for years in communities far smaller and more isolated than Coldwater—but they, too, faced challenges. Here are two examples I found.

1860s map of Auglaize County shows two breweries in New Bremen.

New Bremen is a small village of about 3,100 people in Auglaize County, 13 miles southwest of Wapakoneta. Its population was only about 2,000 in 1875, according to a state directory. But an 1860s map of Auglaize County marked two New Bremen breweries just a block apart, straddling Second Street on the east side of North Main. Records indicate saloons also operated at both locations, so the breweries might simply have been supplying their own establishments.

Were they too small to survive? Land records saw a succession of owners for both properties over the second half of the 1800s. The brewery north of Second turned out 425 barrels in 1870, according to an industrial census taken that year. By 1878, under different owners, production had dropped to 320 barrels. The other brewery was of a similar size.

By the 1870s, they must have started feeling pressure from a new brewery just four miles away in Minster—the Star Brewery, whose Wooden Shoe beer would become legendary. Both New Bremen breweries appear to have ceased production by 1880.

Remoteness might have been a blessing for very small breweries. 

Tiny New Madison in Darke County lies 30 miles northwest of Dayton and 13 miles northeast of Richmond, Ind. Home to about 900 people today, it was half that size in 1870, yet it already supported a brewery.

1875 map of Darke County shows brewery in New Madison.

John Lantry, an Irish immigrant, built New Madison's brewery in 1858 and expanded it several times. By the 1870s, it stretched 144 feet down the west side of Fayette Street from Main. Lantry billed himself as “Manufacturer of Ale and Beer,” and his products were “guaranteed to be of the latest style and to give entire satisfaction,” according to an 1866 newspaper ad.

The brewery seemed to prosper: census records show the property's value grew from $300 to $10,000 between 1860 and 1870. But Lantry’s health failed. He closed the brewery in 1875 after a run of 27 years.

“Mr. Lantry is disabled so that he seldom leaves the premises,” W. H. McIntosh wrote in  The History of Darke County, published in 1880. The census that same year described Lantry's illness as “rheumatism”—a rheumatic disorder that could have painfully afflicted his joints, eventually disabling him.

Land and census records indicate Lantry was a sole proprietor with no children to carry on the business. Evidently, Lantry found no one else with the interest, capital or skills to take it over. As far as I could learn, the brewery never reopened.

Read more about these breweries and others that once dotted the region in my upcoming book, Dayton Beer: a History of Brewing in the Miami Valley (Arcadia/The History Press, July/August 2019.) Meanwhile, do you have a brewery story of your own? Share it!