Oshkosh brewery resurrects Walter Bros. Gold Label Beer for Menasha sesquicentennial

Duke Behnke, Appleton Post-Crescent
·3 min read
Gold Label Beer will go on sale March 5 in celebration of Menasha's sesquicentennial. The beer once was the flagship brand of Walter Bros. Brewing Co. of Menasha.
Gold Label Beer will go on sale March 5 in celebration of Menasha's sesquicentennial. The beer once was the flagship brand of Walter Bros. Brewing Co. of Menasha.

MENASHA — Bare Bones Brewery of Oshkosh has teamed with beer historian Lee Reiherzer to resurrect Gold Label Beer, one of the flagship brands of Walter Bros. Brewing Co., to celebrate Menasha's sesquicentennial.

The beer has been lagering, or aging at cold temperatures, for several weeks in preparation for its release on March 5, the city's 150th anniversary.

"We're making it from scratch," Dan Dringoli, owner of Bare Bones Brewery, told The Post-Crescent. "It's going to be presold to bars in Menasha. It will go on draft, and we'll also be selling it by the six-pack."

The initial batch of Gold Label Beer totals 15 barrels. A barrel contains 31 gallons.

One hundred cases will be canned.

"We're hoping we're going to have to make more of it," Dringoli said. "A lot of beer people will like that can because it looks like the historical can."

What's Menasha's connection to Walter Bros. Brewing Co.?

Members of the Walter family arrived from Germany in the 1870s and eventually started breweries in Appleton, Eau Claire, Menasha and West Bend, plus Pueblo and Trinidad, Colorado.

In 1888, brothers Martin, Christian and Matthaus Walter, along with partner Frank Fries, purchased the bankrupt Island City Brewing Co. at the corner of Nicolet Boulevard and Ahnaip Street and established Walter Bros. Brewing Co. They expanded and improved the facility, soon billing it as the "best equipped brewery outside of Milwaukee."

Reiherzer said Walter Bros. brewed Gold Label Beer from 1908 to 1920 and again from 1933 to 1950. The 13-year gap in production was due to Prohibition, when the United States banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages.

"Before Prohibition, if you went to a tavern anywhere in Menasha, you'd be drinking Gold Label," Reiherzer said. "You wouldn't necessarily find a lot of Pabst or Blatz or Budweiser or anything else. People really stuck to their hometown beers during that period."

Walter Bros. Brewing Co. operates from the corner of Nicolet Boulevard and Ahnaip Street in Menasha in this undated photograph.
Walter Bros. Brewing Co. operates from the corner of Nicolet Boulevard and Ahnaip Street in Menasha in this undated photograph.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Gem Beer, Gem Bock and Gem Pilsener became the flagship brands of the brewery.

By the mid-1950s, beer sales at Walter Bros. plummeted. The brewery closed in 1956 and was purchased by St. Patrick's Catholic Church and razed in 1960.

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What are the ingredients of Gold Label Beer?

Reiherzer said the sesquicentennial beer replicates the Walter Bros. recipe used between 1909 and 1919.

It's a classic American lager brewed with 75% malted barely and 25% corn grits and flavored with American Cluster hops and German Hallertau hops. Its alcohol content is 4.7%.

Reiherzer is convinced that he and Jody Cleveland, the head brewer at Bare Bones, got the recipe right to replicate Gold Label Beer.

"We had a lot of information," Reiherzer said. "We have all the ingredients that they were using at the brewery. We've got schematics of the brewery itself, and from that we can kind of define the process. We knew the alcohol content. We knew the basic flavor profile. I'm confident this is as close as anyone's going to get."

Bare Bones Brewery will produce 15 barrels of Gold Label Beer for sale on draft and in cans.
Bare Bones Brewery will produce 15 barrels of Gold Label Beer for sale on draft and in cans.

Reiherzer said after Prohibition, the recipe of Gold Label Beer changed, and not necessarily for the better.

"They stopped using imported hops," he said. "It was all domestic ingredients. They started using things like corn syrup in the beer. They really lightened up the beer. This was a trend for breweries across America at that point.

"So this (2024) beer is a bit more substantial than it would have been in 1945, let's say."

What does Gold Label Beer taste like?

Reiherzer compared Gold Label Beer to Miller High Life but with more body, a richer malt flavor and more hop character.

He said Gold Label Beer has some earthy flavors and a slightly fruity or spicy character typical of Hallertau hops.

"I think when people drink this, they're going to maybe be under the impression that it's a stronger beer because it's more flavorful than what you'd see in a premium lager today," he said. "It's got a lot of flavor, but it's also a very drinkable beer."

Contact Duke Behnke at 920-993-7176 or dbehnke@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DukeBehnke.

This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Oshkosh brewery resurrects Walter Bros. Gold Label Beer for Menasha