Beer baron Adolph Coors was just another young man hungry for work when he stumbled into the Stenger Brewery in downtown Naperville in 1869.
The Stenger Brewery was a booming business, the third brewery to spring up in Naperville but considered its largest and most successful. In one year, it shipped 17,000 barrels of lager and ale as far north as Elgin and as far south as Ottawa.
Owner John Stenger saw promise in Coors, an ambitious 22-year-old German immigrant who had spent three years indentured to a brewery owner after his parents died and then left for America with the dream of owning his own brewery. Stenger quickly promoted the young Coors to the position of "General Brewery Superintendent," putting him in charge of the entire Franklin Avenue operation.
"My grandfather probably knew about as much about brewing as anyone in the country at the time," said Bill Coors, chairman of the Coors Brewing Company, the nation's third largest brewery. "And Mr. Stenger took quite a shine to him. But after 2 1/2 years in Naperville, he quit abruptly. And there's two stories told about why he did.
"One story goes that Mr. Stenger had him in mind as a husband for one of his three daughters. This idea did not appeal to my grandfather, so he headed west. The other story was that he fell in love with one of the Stenger girls, and when he was jilted, he left town. And which story is true depends on who in my family you happen to ask."
Whether he was a heartbreaker or heartbroken, Coors' curious tie to Naperville's history shows how important beer once was to the region's economy.
Stenger Brewery went out of business 100 years ago, destroyed by competition from large breweries that were able to produce more beer and sell it cheaper. And in the decades after Prohibition, the hometown brewers all but disappeared as the suds market was taken over by mass-produced beers from a handful of giant breweries.
But now the tradition has come full circle, thanks to the remarkable popularity of microbrews and home brewing. There are now more than 1,000 craft brewers in the country, a $2 billion industry which includes microbreweries (those that produce less than 15,000 barrels of specialty beers a year), brewpubs (restaurant-breweries that sell most of their beer on site) and regional breweries (which produce up to 500,000 barrels of beer a year). And that doesn't include homebrewers, of which there are several hundred in DuPage County alone. These hobbyists spend hundreds of dollars every year to brew five-gallon batches of beer in their basements and bottle it for their friends.
"I think people are drinking smarter. They're drinking less, but they're drinking quality," said Glenn Taylor, owner of the Taylor Brewing Company, a brewpub that opened in 1994 at the Fifth Avenue Station in downtown Naperville. "I imagine beer as being bread. It's a product that's best consumed fresh. That's what people are looking for."
And that's why beer making is returning to its roots in DuPage County. Stenger Brewery, opened in 1854 on an eight-acre site, was the original microbrewery and brewpub all rolled into one.
In the Stenger brew house, workers mixed the hops, malted barley, yeast and water in giant kettles. The mixture was then clarified and piped to separate storage containers where the brew was aged in underground ice-covered tunnels. Stenger made his famous German lager beer from spring water that came up from the ground about where Washington Junior High School now sits. The Stenger workers could drink all the beer they wanted throughout the day, but knew "they had to drink with discretion or lose their jobs," according to historical accounts.
The Stenger beer--more potent than today's brew, with an alcohol content of 6 to 7 percent--was sold in one of two ways. Residents could bring a bucket to the brewery and fill up at tap outside the stone building. The beer also was poured into kegs, loaded onto wagons and delivered to pubs in surrounding towns. That all ended in 1896. The stone buildings that once housed the brewery became a mushroom factory in the 1920s, then were demolished in 1956 to build a regional office for what is now an Ameritech branch office at Franklin and Webster streets.
But with a few adjustments for technology, beermaking works in much the same way today at Taylor Brewing and other area brewpubs, such as Walter Payton's Round House, which opened in March in downtown Aurora.
The specialty ales are brewed on premises, and what comes out of the tap is about as fresh as beer can get. Beer connoisseurs said such freshness is crucial in appreciating the complexities of flavors in these designer ales. And that's why microbrews are gaining in popularity despite a slow decline in the overall consumption of beer, which dropped from 22.7 gallons per person in 1985 to 21.2 gallons in 1995.
Ed Bronson takes a special enjoyment from Adolph Coors' history in Naperville because he's doing his small part to carry on the legacy. Bronson, by day a design engineer at Lucent Technologies, moonlights as a brewmaster at Taylor Brewing.
"I'm the first professional brewer in Naperville in 100 years," said Bronson, 44, of Naperville. "There's a lot of tradition here, and I like the idea of that."
Bronson is the guy in the dirty apron who mixes up the ales that flow out of Taylor's taps at the rate of 800 gallons a week. And he's the designer behind brews such as "Hoparena," which the beer list describes as "a complex ale with a delightfully floral bouquet."
If it sounds like the brewers have borrowed a page from the vintners, well, that's because they have. The consumer's demand for originality over uniformity helped transform the wine-making business a decade ago, and brewers are hoping to capitalize on the same growing sophistication. There's an art to drinking great beer, and it doesn't involve guzzling or ice-cold cans.
"It was the taste issue that finally turned things around," Bronson said. "It's really an exciting cacophony of tastes ... that's what really brought people back to sipping beers."
It's not just a few snobs who are looking for beers with bouquets. Supermarkets and liquor stores are creating special microbrew sections, where buyers can build their own six-packs with single bottles of specialty and imported beers. The Internet is awash with beer fanaticism, with literally hundreds of home pages that allow beer lovers to indulge their passion and share their secrets.
And if all that isn't enough, some connoisseurs aren't happy unless they're making their own beer. The do-it-yourselfers have created the need for businesses such as The Brewer's Coop, a retail shop that sells raw supplies to homebrewers throughout DuPage County and starter kits to wives who have run out of gift ideas for their husbands.
"My basement is divided into three sections--game room, laundry room and brewery," said Jay Kash of Downers Grove, who stopped in The Brewer's Coop last week to get the fixings for his Christmas batch. "When I make my own beer ... it's fresh and it's always what I like. If I want more hops, I add more hops. That's the beauty of it."