Oakland – Milwaukee of the West

To wet your historic whistle, here's a look at Oakland's beer history....

You may not know that from the late-1880s until Prohibition, Oakland not San Francisco was the beer capital of the West. Oakland and the surrounding communities processed raw materials of all kinds from all over the region into finished products. This included barley and hops grown throughout the Bay Area into tasty, tasty beer.

California farmers were growing a lot of hops and barley. The newly founded city of Oakland had a large German population. These two elements came together in 1852 with the founding of the city’s first brewery. The Oakland Brewery produced 150 barrels of lager beer a year. The brewery survived a fire, rebuilding, expansion, another expansion and the replacement of horses with steam engines. This all boosted output to 18,000 barrels.

The next of Oakland’s breweries opened in 1856. The Washington Brewery specialized in steam beer. They found a ready market and the brewery prospered and grew.

In 1869, the trans-continental railroad arrived in Oakland. It brought new customers and opened new beer markets all across the West. That same year the Anchor Brewery (no relation to San Francisco’s Anchor Brewery) opened. Anchor brewed steam beer and could produce 35 barrels a day – that’s 70 kegs! Anchor later became part of the Oakland Brewery.

Another of O-Town’s big breweries, the Brooklyn Brewery opened in 1872. In those days Oakland, Brooklyn and Anchor were the city’s three largest breweries.

Next to open was the East Oakland Brewery. It opened in 1881 and brewed steam beer and porter. They sold their beer in kegs for local hotels, restaurants and taverns and in bottles to be shipped all over California.

On January 1, 1890, a story in the Oakland Tribune wrote an article about the East Oakland Brewery, “The principal output is steam beer and porter. Special care is taken in the brewing of porter and extra stout which is acknowledged to be fully equal to the celebrated imported English and Irish brands.”

The article went on to talk about Oakland’s brewing industry,” These establishments furnish the city and surrounding towns with a very superior quality of the popular beverages, lager beer, steam beer, and porter. They give employment to a large number of men and consume a vast quantity of hops and barley, and cause hundreds of thousands of dollars to circulate through the channels of local trade. Each of these institutions is thoroughly equipped with all the latest improved inventions , methods, and appliances of manufacturing a first class quality of beer, and all of them enjoy an extensive and lucrative trade. It has been asserted by many who are acknowledged judges of the beverages, that the beers and porters made by the Oakland brewers are in many respects superior to the products of the other breweries on this coast and are equal to the famous beers of St. Louis and Milwaukee. This being the case, it is not to be wondered at that the Oakland breweries are prosperous and are steadily increasing their traffic with the outside world”.

In 1890, Oakland’s four breweries were producing 35,000 barrels a year. At the turn of the 20^th Century, there were 7 breweries in Oakland plus nine more in Berkeley and Alameda.

In 1910, the Washington Brewery merged with Oakland, & Anchor to become Golden West – Oakland’s largest and most famous brewery.

During Prohibition, Golden West made near beer and some real beer on the side. On the day Prohibition was repealed, December 6, 1933, somehow there was a ready supply of beer. That very day, trucks lined up outside the brewery to carry a fresh supply to all of the city’s restaurants and hotels. Within 48 hours the brewery was running at full production.

Prohibition’s demise (in 1933) led to another Tribune article. This time written by George White, president of Golden West in which he stated: “The return of beer means much to the community. It has stimulated industry in all quarters and we are proud that we have been able to take a leading part in this revival.”

The brewery was locally famous for both good beer and sponsoring the radio broadcasts of Oakland Oaks baseball games. In 1950, the brewery was purchased by Goebel Brewing of Detroit.  In 1958, the name was changed back to Golden West.

In 1959, Golden West, Oakland's longest-running and biggest brewery, shut down. Its tanks and vats were sold at auction (1963), and soon after (1964), it was demolished - thus ending the city's storied history as a big beer-making. The Golden West Brewery’s site is now a parking lot in the shadow of the West Oakland BART Station.

In 1890, the city had 40,000 residents and its breweries were producing 35,000 barrels of beer a year. Remember, a barrel is 31 gallons. Before it closed, Golden West was brewing half a million barrels of beer a year. For the next 50 years, Oakland continued to grow but, sadly, no local breweries sprang-up to quench the thirst of the city’s residents.

In 2009 everything changed and brewing came back to the Bright Side of the Bay. The Linden Street Brewery opened and began making lager beer in its tiny facility. They could produce 1,000 barrel per year (By comparison San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing makes 150,000 barrels a year). “The brewery’s owner, Adam Lamoreaux said, ”We are a very tiny brewery in a very big city. We want to honor beer styles native to the West Coast and contribute to the revitalization of this beautiful city and its people.”  Their first beer was a “steam beer”, a throwback to the late 1800s when that style dominated Bay Area brewing.