A History of the Detroit Brewing Company.

   Note: The following is a history of the Detroit Brewing Company, taken from the book “Brewed In Detroit”. It was written by Stroh historian Peter Blum. Peter sadly passed away on July 12, 2002. He was responsible for helping John and I with the start of research into the history of the brewery, and I couldn’t tell this story any better than Peter, so I will let his words do the speaking.

Mike Bieke    

  The three Martz brother-Frank, Michael and John-were natives of Bavaria who arrived in Detroit in 1839, at ages twenty-one, eighteen, and fifteen, respectively. They reached ownership of the Detroit Brewing Company from two directions. Michael learned to be a shoemaker, and after some travels, he became successful at that trade in Detroit.

   The German community must have brought him and Phillip Kling together, because in 1856 he joined Kling and Henry Weber in purchasing property near the Belle Isle bridge to either establish a brewery there or own an existing small brewery. Six years later, in 1863, the three partners were proprietors of the Peninsular brewery. Going from boots to beer seems an odd career move, but he must have had ambitions to be a brewery owner, and his younger brother John worked there. Even so, he hedged his investment and continued his shoe business for seven more years.

   THE MARTZ BROTHERS JOIN FORCES

   In 1868, Michael’s brothers, Frank and John, started a brewery at the corner of Orleans and Bronson with John Steiner. The firm was officially called Frank Martz & Company and was promoted as the Continental Brewery. It was successful from the start. In 1875, Michael, then fifty-four years old, sold his interest in the Peninsular Brewery to Phillip Kling and bought out the equity of John Steiner. This brought the three brothers together in the Martz Brothers brewery. Michael and Frank managed the business side, and John was the first brewmaster.

   The brewhouse consisted of three floors and a cellar. It was not large in area, 40 by 50 feet, and was dwarfed by a 35,000-bushel, four-story malthouse of 45 by 120 feet and a large icehouse and beer storage cellar, 68 by 150 feet, with enough tanks to store 4,000 barrels. A two-story bottling house, 20 by 40 feet, completed the plant. The yearly capacity was given at 16,500 barrels in 1880, but sales were 6,000 barrels in 1879.

   MARTZ ON THE MARCH

   Ten years after the brothers joined forces, they incorporated the firm under its final name, Detroit Brewing Company, with a capitalization of $150,000. It continued to be very much a Martz family operation. There certainly was no lack of male descendents. When president Michael died in 1897 at the age of seventy-six, he was succeeded by his son George, who had been secretary-treasurer. Frank was still vice president, and his son Charles and Michael’s other son Albert divided the position of secretary-treasurer.

   The main brand was pale Bohemian in competition with Stroh. Other brands were Erlanger and Extra. Erlanger, named after the Bavarian town of Erlangen, was a light amber beer, also brewed by Schlitz in those years. The beers were well accepted. Already in 1892, production was 30,000 barrels and climbing. The Martz family commited itself to a major expansion and had a six-story brewhouse constructed the following year, next to the original brewery. A two-story, 40-by-50 foot bottling facility, a keg wash house, and a boiler house were also built. The expansion was designed by noted brewer architects Fred Wolf and Louis Lehle. The malthouse was large enough to supply the brewery’s demand. By 1895, Martz management was claiming a capacity of 100,000 barrels.

   A further major upgrading occurred in 1898, when brewmaster Herman Kleiner oversaw the installation of glass-lined steel tanks to replace the original wooden vessels. Metal tanks were a radical departure from cedar or Cyprus, which were lined with a rosin and had to be relined annually. Manufactured by Pfaudler of Hoboken, New Jersey, steel tanks had an interior glass surface which was sprayed on while the steel was red hot and formed a sanitary permanent bond. After prohibition, Pfaudler technology permitted the lining of a large tank as a single unit and became the standard of the industry until the use of stainless steel after World War II. Martz also adopted closed steel fermenting tanks, which permitted recovery of carbon dioxide.

   Pfaudler’s claims for better sanitation and avoiding the annual relining were true, but there was another side: wooden tanks had a traditional appearance, and even the odor of hot rosin during the annual relining was part of the romance and tradition of brewing. Change did not come quickly or easily in an industry that relies as much on tradition as brewing.

   An Oldbru label joined the Bohemian and was developed into the dominant brand. The label shape for both brands was very distinctive- a rounded diamond with a pointed bottom. When Frank and John Martz both died in 1902, the family was well established as a strong presence on the local beer scene. Annual production was estimated at 130,000 barrels in 1914. This gave the Detroit Brewing Company fifth place out of twenty brewers in the city.

A MODEST REVIVAL

   The brewery remained closed during Prohibition, with the Martz family maintaining ownership. When they reopened in 1934, George resumed the presidency, his brother Albert moved up to vice president, and their cousin Charles took the position of treasurer. George’s other brother, Edward, was represented by his son Oscar as secretary. Nonfamily management consisted of brewmaster Andrew Freimann and sales manager Fanks C. Bette. The Oldbru name was revived. After the initial pipeline-filling year of 1934, when 184,000 barrels were produced, sales settled at around 125,000 barrels. This was enough to support the Martz families.

   Workers toiled for long hours, but life had it’s pleasant moments. The workers formed a baseball team which played weekends on Belle Isle. Each summer, there was picnic at the Martz farm in Willis near Belleville, where catered German-type food was served and kegs of Oldbru were tapped.

A MARKETING MALAISE

  On the negative side, Oldbru did not receive any noteworthy advertising or develop a memorable personality, and it did not take off as a sales brand. This was in spite of Martz having hired the experienced sales manager Arthur J. Anderson in 1938. The characteristic die-cut diamond label shape used before Prohibition no doubt presented technical difficulties for fast machine labeling and was replaced by a standard rectangular label, unfortunately dull in color and graphics. Later, a more colorful label for Oldbru Bavarian Type Lager appeared. The text indicated it was Extra Dry, somewhat at odds with the Bavarian type. A special Martz Select Beer failed to catch on.

   Sales had gradually declined to 100,000 barrels by 1940. Five Martz men were still running the business, headed by chairman Louis Peter. Brewmaster Freimann retired in 1938, and William F. Stegmeyer, who joined the year before, succeeded him. Like his brewmaster father Matthews, he was trained in brewing science and technology at the Siebel Institute in Chicago. Ale had never been a major segment in Detroit, but Detroit Premium Ale was launched in 1941 with as much publicity as the Frank W. Atherton Agency could generate, including radio and outdoor ads. The introduction was deemed successful, but the brand could not be maintained during wartime restrictions.

   The war years were good for business. In the three years 1944, 1945 and 1946, between 199,000 and 211,000 barrels were sold annually. This doubling of production was surely at some cost to quality, because the amount of traditional raw materials was fixed at prewar levels. With the return to a buyers market in 1947, sales fell back to 110,000 barrels, and kept falling. The last year of full production was 1948, when 71,000 barrels were sold. Efforts to sell the brewery failed, and it was closed early in 1949 after eighty years of Martz family ownership, the first of the postwar casualties. President Oscar Martz blamed “terrific expansion of larger Detroit competitors.”

   This sudden failure probably had it’s roots in Detroit Brewing’s modest efforts between 1935 and 1942. Reopening the plant after repeal must have involved a major capitol outlay, but then the business was not or could not be developed. The third Martz generation seemed comfortable being Detroit Brewers of reputation. In retrospect, they had a false sense of security. The firm remained a second-tier brewer and became increasingly vulnerable. The buildings still stand in the Eastern Market area next to those of E&B Brewing Company, where they serve as refrigerated meat storage and warehouses.