Sioux City Brewing Company Heidel-Brau Beer

 

(The Sioux City Journal. July 12, 1914)

The Sioux City Brewing Company opened in 1899, founded by Joseph Baumgartner and Abel Anderson. Its brick brewery became part of a growing industrial city filled with packinghouses, railroads, factories, and plenty of thirsty workers.

Its beers included Bavarian Export, Extra Pale Select, Western Brew and Alpen Rose. By 1914, newspaper ads were also pushing Heidel-Brau, promoted as “The Royal German Beer.” The name would survive long after the original brewery was gone.

Ownership changed around 1908, when George Kingsbury and F. L. Eaton bought the company. They took over at a tricky time to be in the beer business. Iowa’s temperance movement was getting stronger, and brewers and saloon owners were facing an ever-growing pile of rules.

Sioux City Brewing tried to work around them.

One answer was Justus Beer, a low-alcohol brew made much like regular lager, except fermentation was stopped early. It contained only one-half of one percent alcohol. Even that wasn’t simple. A dispute over Justus helped produce an Iowa Supreme Court case in 1910.

Still, the beer kept flowing.

By the 1910s, Sioux City Brewing was selling several brands and distributing its products beyond Sioux City. Heidel-Brau advertisements from 1914 show a brewery still actively fighting for customers.

Then Iowa pulled the plug.

Statewide prohibition arrived in 1916, ending legal beer production. Sioux City Brewing shut down, and its brewery went quiet.

For the moment, anyway.

The company—and Heidel-Brau—would eventually get another life after Prohibition.