"The Beer That Is Beer!"

Park next to curb. High muggle area. BYOP. Area to North and East of cache is now in development. Please avoid walking or parking on private property.

Walter Brewing Co.-The Beer That Is Beer

The story of the Walter family and their contribution to the growth of the brewing industry in America was typical for the German immigrants in the late 19th century. Fleeing war & social unrest in their homeland, they arrived in America with only a few dollars in their pocket but with a will to succeed. They also brought with them a thirst for lager beer. Up until this time, brewing was a cottage craft in America, primarily producing top fermented ales and ports. In a matter of a few years a whole brewing industry sprang up, primarily in the Midwest, to satisfy the increasing demand for German style lager beer. While not as well known as the Busch, Uehlein, or Pabst family, in the 1950s, the extended Walter family were the largest brewers in America, operating breweries in Eau Claire, Menasha, Appleton, and West Bend, Wisconsin as well as in Pueblo, & Trinidad, Colorado. Walter Brewing bought the original Pueblo Brewery that changed hands at least sixteen times in the thirty years before 1898. The Pueblo based brewery had gone through many changes since Martin Walter had, in a sense, inherited all the tradition and experience of previous Pueblo brewers. He began the company in 1898, on the heels of the Spanish American War. The company faced several small recessions during its existence of three quarters of a century. The closing of the plant during Prohibition (both state and federal) was after 1915.

The Walters tried to sell near beer during Prohibition, but this only lasted one year. They mothballed the brewing operations but continued to produce and sell wort for its "nutritional" value, though no doubt its primary purpose was to produce home brew bootleg beer. (How much wort do you see being sold in supermarkets today?) ?
Onset of the seventies marked the beginning of the end. Even though awarded the "Gold Award" in 1956 and the "Excellence of Quality" award in 1972 by the Brewers Association of America, the company was to experience the same fate as other brewers around the nation. Falling on hard times for several reasons, the company slowed.

Review of Walter's in 1978 by James Robertson in the Great American Beer Book - if you didn't get a chance to try it you really missed it! This just goes to prove Jim Morrison's theory "Who owns the media owns the mind..." Many locals thought Walter's made "cheap" beer, but when it was put in front of objective experts, it always won rave reviews...
By the mid 70’s, there were only two of the original five Walter family breweries remaining, Eau Claire and Pueblo, CO. From a high of 400 major brewers in the U.S. in 1949, only about 115 had survived. The demise of a major corporation within any industry can seldom be attributed to one single factor. Rather, like other economic phenomena, many causes may be found. In 1974 the only other remaining Walter brewery in Pueblo, CO was sold to asset stripper Paul Kalmanovitz and suffered the same fate as his General, Falstaff, and Pabst operations, closing forever on January 3,1975. The labels were transferred to other locations but sales of the brands eventually disappeared from the marketplace.

Walter’s paraphernalia continues to be popular all across the United States!

Congrats to Kyotmoon for FTF!! And yes I did change the difficulty and size. Thanks, this was my first!