Wheeling embraces its brewing heritage

As a beer lover, you have to appreciate how the city of Wheeling embraces its brewing heritage. No other place in West Virginia even comes close.

Folks in this 250 year old city are finding that lots of people are very interested in learning more about the history of beer and brewing. They have discovered that promoting beer heritage is an effective platform for community fundraising, and it is becoming an important tourism feather in the city’s cap.

A perfect example of what Wheeling is doing happened this past August. Four important beer-themed events on three consecutive days grew from the city’s love of the brewer’s art. The events included:

• a beer and food pairing dinner at Wheeling Island Casino,
• a Prohibition and beer history themed theatrical presentation,
• a guided tour of the a 150 year old brewery complex, and
• the Mountaineer Brewfest on the riverbank at the Wheeling Heritage Port.

The events were all teaming with people, from younger adults to senior citizens, and every age in between. Each of the events met or exceeded expectations. In total they raised well over $20,000 for community non-profit coffers and brought many mugs of joy to all who participated.

Food and Beer Pairing

The series of events started off on a Thursday with a beer and food pairing dinner for Mountaineer Brewfest V.I.P. ticket holders. The dinner, hosted by Wheeling Island Hotel, Casino and Racetrack, matched up four styles of beer with four different dishes.

Chestnut Brew Works owner Bill Rittenour brought the beer, and hotel/casino executive chef John Greenwald brought the food. A large crowd of diners brought their appetites. No one left hungry.

Chef Greenwald had recently taken his new job heading the food service for the property, and he really wanted to make this pairing shine. The always solid Chestnut Brew Works beers were on point that night. Together, they were a thing of beauty. The pairings included:

• Chico’s Lager with smoked beef tenderloin, balsamic glazed onions and crab mac and cheese;
• Halleck Pale Ale with roasted pork belly, cornbread and apple ginger chutney;
• Misty Mountain IPA with potato crusted Atlantic salmon cake, soba noodle salad and blood orange cucumber salsa;
• Berry Me In WV Fruited Wheat Ale with shrimp wonton tacos, jicama slaw and sweet chili chipotle lime sauce.

Bringing the culinary arts together with the brewing arts helps people better appreciate both. Beer is enjoyed best with food, and food is best enjoyed with beer. Sometimes, it seems we lose track of that. The folks in Wheeling are trying to make sure we don’t.

Getting theatrical with brewing

Next up, was an integration of beer with the theatrical arts and local history. It revolved around the second annual Francis Pier-Pint Historic Brew-Off “Prohibition Edition.” Proceeds from this Friday evening $30 ticketed event in downtown Wheeling supported the Wheeling Heritage organization.

The evening began with a brew-off featuring eight period-dressed members of the Wheeling Alers Homebrew Club, who each served up a historic-themed beer for attendees to sample. Beer names like 18th Amendment Ale, Carrie’s Hatchet Pale Ale, and Bootleggers Brut IPA made for an enjoyable experience at their pop-up Speakeasy.

Brewing history takes the stage

The highlight of the Francis Pier-Pint event was a dramatic presentation of the events leading up to, and during, the Prohibition era from roughly 1900 to the 1930s.

Local thespians Ryan Stanton, portraying brewer Henry Schmulbach; Hal Gorby, as rival brewer Anton Reymann; and Judi Hendrickson playing temperance champion Carrie Nation, were most entertaining as well as informative.

While they presented a rather light-hearted version of the history, their skits did justice to the true and important story of the rise and fall of the brewing industry in Wheeling. The Prohibition portion of the drama focused on the legendary Wheeling bootlegger-racketeer William “Big Bill” Lias (played by Dave Clutter) and his battles with the law.

All in all, it was an incredibly well thought out production, getting people in touch with their local beer history. The theatrical portion of the evening was tastefully accompanied by beer selections from the city’s two current breweries: Wheeling Brewing and Brew Keepers.

Fresh air and brewery views

If you go back 150 years, Wheeling was a major beer center. Its breweries rivaled those in Pittsburgh and any in Virginia. Looking back a little over 100 years, to the time just before state Prohibition took effect in 1914, Wheeling breweries were selling a ton of beer.

We think we have a nice brewing industry today; you should have seen it then. In the early 1900s, Wheeling’s breweries were annually producing around 100 times more beer than the total annual production of all West Virginia’s breweries today.

Touring brewery history

That leads us to the third Wheeling beer-focused activity, which was a Saturday morning tour of the old Schmulbach Brewing Company complex.

Schmulbach brewery, which closed in 1914 and never reopened, was a large complex of buildings just south of downtown Wheeling. Most of the buildings date to the 1890s, but the original brewery on the site dates back to the 1850s. The largest structures were the brewhouse and the lagering building which connected to caves cut into the hillside. There were separate buildings for offices, a cooperage to make beer barrels, bottling and kegging facilities, ice house, beer packing and shipping, and stables for the horses that pulled the beer wagons. While a couple of the buildings have been torn down, most of them are still intact. Their size and impressive facades demonstrate the importance the brewing industry once held there.

The tour was led by Ryan Stanton and Betsy Sweeny. Stanton is the same guy who played brewer Henry Schmulbach in the drama the night before. Sweeny is a preservation specialist for Wheeling Heritage, which is an organization focused on business development, city planning, public art, and preserving historic resources.

Stanton, who teaches history at a local middle school, took the lead on telling the story of the brewery and its different parts and operations. Sweeny talked more about the sociological aspects of the German community back in the day and explained many of the architectural features of the buildings.

Viewing the massive buildings today and comparing them to our current local breweries, it is almost unbelievable how big a deal brewing was back in the early 1900s. Especially when you are told that Wheeling also had Reymann Brewing of a similar size to Schmulbach and three of four other smaller breweries all producing beer at the same time. That is a huge amount of local beer.

This brewfest is one of the best

On Saturday afternoon and evening, Mountaineer Brewfest did its thing downtown on the Ohio riverbank. If there is a better all-around beer festival in West Virginia, I’d like to see it. Mountaineer Brewfest exemplifies pretty much all that is good about the brewing industry and craft beer culture.

A tree-shaded lane of West Virginia brewery tents was the big draw. The festival had its largest line-up of local brewers to date with 16 plus one Wv cidery. Then, down by the river, more beer tents offering regional and national brands surrounded both sides of the music stage. There was no shortage of beer.

The 2,000 attendees and the 100 or so volunteers, plus the brewery and distributor reps, food truck operators, and entertainers, all were as friendly and up-beat a group as you could ever hope to find. People were happy.

There always seems to be some extra special event pop up at the the brewfest. This year a man, sponsored by Carenbaurer Distributing, jumped out of a perfectly good airplane and floated down a thousand feet to the festival riverfront on a Big Timber Brewing parachute. Not only that, but he also brought the mallet needed to tap the ceremonial cask that signified the festival opening. The jumper was sponsored by Carenbaurer Distributing.

While Mountaineer Brewfest is a lot of fun for a lot of people, its crowning achievement appears in the support it generates for worthy community non-profits and charities. During its six-year run, the festival has raised over $100,000 for them.

Brewfest excels at charity

This year, the festival donated $20,000 to Wheeling’s Augusta Levy Learning Center, which is the first intensive autism treatment program in West Virginia. The donation is made up of festival proceeds, tips collected by the Circus Saints & Sinners volunteers, and matching tips contributions. It is wonderful to see an independent beer festival donating $20,000 from only a 2,000 ticket sales event. That is an incredible accomplishment. The city must be proud of festival organizers Jeff Hayes, Jeff Yourkovich, all the Circus Saints & Sinners members, lead sponsor Wheeling Island Hotel-Casino-Racetrack, and the many other sponsors and volunteers, including members of the Wheeling Alers Homebrew Club.

Wheeling a good example for state

It would be great to see craft beer festivals in other West Virginia cities find more ways to integrate themselves into their communities the way that Mountaineer Brewfest does. This year’s brewing heritage events in Wheeling were a perfect example of how a craft beer festival can bring a whole community together to learn about, embrace, enjoy, and respect beer.

While other cities may not have Wheeling’s brewery heritage, festivals there could find other creative ways to hold beer-related educational, artistic, and cultural activities that lead up to the actual beer festival. Events involving more segments of the community could help build a stronger beer culture in our state.

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