Brews and busts

The smell gave them away.

The scent of more than 5,000 gallons of beer is hard to miss.

And in May 1932, the odor of fermenting mash was not one you wanted associated with your business.

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In the early 20th century, Anheuser-Busch wasn't the king of beers in Southeast Missouri.

There were many kings; breweries dotted the landscape, from Wittenberg to Apple Creek, Allenville to Cape Girardeau.

One had ties to the legendary Anheuser-Busch. Another was overtaken by gangsters who bootlegged beer to St. Louis during Prohibition. A third cooled its beer in a sandstone-block cave tunneled under the city of Cape Girardeau.

Or so the stories go.

There are few still living who can recall the height of brewing in Southeast Missouri. But traces of the breweries are still evident in newspaper accounts of Prohibition raids, in descriptions of the brewing process in a few local history books and in the physical remnants of boarded-up beer cellars.

From raids to bootlegging, it is a colorful history.

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There were rumors.

By 1932, the suspicion that Old Appleton Brewery was producing more than soda and ice was public knowledge, according to newspaper reports from the time.

Like most breweries, Old Appleton shifted gears with the onset of Prohibition in 1920. The company produced a "near beer," which contained less than half of 1 percent alcohol.

In the process of creating the near beer, real beer was brewed, then the alcohol within boiled out, according to a 2004 story about Old Appleton in American Breweriana magazine. Nonintoxicating, it was legal under the new Prohibition law.

And yet, somewhere along the way, the workers at the Appleton brewery apparently stopped brewing all of the alcohol out of their product.

The 2004 edition of American Breweriana magazine, along with accounts from local residents who worked at the brewery at the time, purports that the Appleton brewery was taken over by mobster Benny McGovern -- and renamed McGovern Brewing Company -- during Prohibition, leading to production of beer for St. Louis speakeasies.

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The men who worked in the breweries 70 years ago still refer to them as "revenuers."

Technically, they were prohibition agents from the U.S. Department of Treasury, formed to enforce what was commonly known as the Volstead Act.

Whatever their title, they were in Southeast Missouri often in the 1920s and 1930s.

Along with the breweries, there were whiskey distilleries throughout Southeast Missouri as well during that time, including the Withers distillery in Allenville. A 1914 edition of the Cape Girardeau Republican called it "one of the most up-to-date distilleries in the state."

The Allenville distillery, along with local breweries, shipped its products throughout Missouri and surrounding states. The businesses played an important role in the local economy.

Robert Fiehler, a longtime resident of Altenburg who grew up in nearby Wittenberg and often gives tours of the now vacant town, said the brewery may well have been the first industry there.

Remnants of the Wittenberg brewery, which opened in 1850, are still visible in 60-foot deep cellars carved into a rock bluff not far from the Mississippi River. Books written about the brewery claim one of the business's initial owners was Eberhardt Anheuser, who went on to form the famed Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis.

Evidence to substantiate that claim has never been verified, Fiehler said.

By 1898, the Wittenberg brewery had closed.

But nearby breweries were still flowing.

The 1906 Cape Girardeau city directory describes the Cape Girardeau Brewing Co., at the corner of Morgan Oak and Middle streets like this: "The mammoth plant of this great brewing company is one of the most important enterprises of this city and furnishes employment to a large number of men."

The Cape Girardeau company bottled 125 cases of beer per day and had a cellar of 18 casks holding 2,400 gallons of beer each. The brewery was established in 1891. During Prohibition, production of beer ceased but resumed when the Volstead Act was lifted in 1933, according to newspaper accounts.

Seven years later, the brewery closed for good and the building was rented out the Missouri Electric Works. The building was destroyed in a fire in 1952.

There were other breweries in Cape Girardeau as well. Local historian and university professor Dr. Frank Nickell said most were opened by German immigrants.

The most unusual story he has heard about the breweries is that one was once on the hill where Southeast Missouri State University's Academic Hall now sits.

"I find it interesting that a college may have developed around a brewery," Nickell said.

Another Cape Girardeau brewery was in Happy Hollow, west of Merriwether Street's dead-end. Ferdinand Hanny operated the brewery in the mid- to late 1800s. A man-made sandstone block cave believed built as a cooling cellar for the brewery attracted children and vagrants long after the brewery disappeared. It was reported that the cave at one time extended several blocks. The brewery closed after Hanny died in 1887.

While the doors of other breweries were closing around them, the Appleton brewery kept producing beer.

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On May 27, 1932, the headline in the Cape Girardeau Republican read: "Dry Investigator Who Smelled Odor of Beer Is Credited With Coup at Old Appleton Brewery."

The story beneath tells how three Prohibition agents visiting the brewery noted the odor of beer, obtained a search warrant in Cape Girardeau and upon return to Old Appleton discovered 5,184 gallons of high-test beer.

It wasn't the first time.

Newspaper reports show the brewery was raided in twice 1923 and in 1924, resulting in fines and jail time for those involved.

But the brewery never closed.

Eighty-four-year-old Ruben Schnurbusch wasn't around the brewery during Prohibition, but he's heard stories of those days passed on from one generation to the next.

Schnurbusch, a longtime resident of Old Appleton, worked at the brewery as a teenager in the late 1930s. His favorite tales from Prohibition are of the wives and girlfriends who continued to manufacture beer after their spouses and boyfriends had been carted off to jail.

And of the beer-loving mule named Dan, who could pick out the "mule" beer produced at Old Appleton from a lineup of other brands.

By the late 1930s, the Old Appleton brewery was legitimate again. Prohibition had ended, and Schnurbusch, along with his brother, was working the label machine there in the summer of 1939.

He earned 15 cents an hour working 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The 84-year-old, who still lives in Old Appleton today, actually bought the brewery after it closed and, along with his brother, turned it into a chicken farm. In 1965, the chicken farm closed and the property was sold. Some 20 years later, a flood took out the buildings that were still standing on the property.

But, says Schnurbusch, the old cellar is still there.

cmiller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128