Atlanta Beer: A Heady History of Brewing in the Hub of the South

INTRODUCTION

Beer, initially a food source, has for some time been a cultural mainstay and social lubricant. Beer in Atlanta’s history is particularly interesting, as most historical writings on American beer focus on cities like Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati. Little has been written about the history of breweries in the Southeast. They have been mostly overlooked by authors who focus on fast cars, fast politics and the fast profits of Prohibition whiskey. Only a few diehard collectors have knowledge of the South’s brewing heritage.

Beer is contextual. Many of us remember not only the flavors of our favorite beers but also the first places we enjoyed them, with whom and, sometimes, even the mood we were in at the time. The story of Atlanta beer is also contextual. It’s a frontier story, an immigrant story, a saloon story, a religious and moral story, a story of decline and a tale that ends with an amazing comeback. This book covers a portion of the Greater Atlanta metropolitan statistical area—specifically, a subarea extending a nearly thirty-mile radius from downtown, with the addition of Cumming.

There are variations of a few words in the book, mainly due to historical usage. Whisky and draught are used in historical contexts, while whiskey and draft are used for modern times. Prohibition with an uppercase P is used to denote national Prohibition, while prohibition with a lowercase p is used for state and local anti-alcohol laws. The titles of brewers, business owners and coowners were taken directly from company information or personal communications and are a reflection of the research information, with no implication that one title is better than another.

Not all representatives of the beer industry in Atlanta could be interviewed for this book. The rapid growth of the industry and the time and coordination of schedules made it impossible to talk to everyone. Instead, this book is a carefully constructed cross-section of Atlanta’s past and present beer culture. Our regrets are that we had limited time and limited words.

Writing this book was a learning process, both about brewing history (which Ron dearly loves) and about the people in the Atlanta beer scene. We already knew these folks were into beer. The extent of that passion was not fully revealed until time was spent interviewing brewers, bar and brewpub owners, distributors, homebrewers, breweriana collectors and craft beer and growler shop owners. Atlanta is on the verge of a beer renaissance along with the rest of the United States. With each sip, everyone writes the future.

CHAPTER ONE

FRONTIER BEER AND TAVERNS

If barley be wanting to make into malt,

We must be contented and think it no fault;

For we can make liquor to sweeten our lips,

Of pumpkins and parsnips, and walnut tree chips.

—Forefathers’ Song, circa 1630

FRONTIER BEER

Beer on the American frontier was dramatically different from beer of today—as different as the territory itself. The Georgia frontier was once the lands of the Mvskoke (Creek) and Cherokee Peoples, became the southwestern end of England’s colonial American territory and, later, marked the southwestern border of the newly formed United States of America. Due to Georgia’s distant location, supply lines into the area were slow and sporadic.

Brewing varied depending on the availability of fermentable items and seasonal temperatures. Before refrigeration (by natural ice or mechanical means), it was nearly impossible to keep beer for long in the summer heat, even in a cooler storage area. The beer would spoil due to poorly sealed containers and bacteria that thrived in the heat. In winter, not much was available to ferment, unless resourceful individuals had stored syrups, dried fruits or tubers or other starchy vegetable material.

Beer in the southern frontier was often made from a combination of corn, molasses or treacle mixed with one or more of the following: pumpkins, persimmons, maple or birch syrup, potatoes, sassafras roots, Jerusalem artichokes (a tuber from a type of sunflower) and even peas. If you were lucky, you might have a small amount of wheat, barley or the bran from a grain to add to your mash. Hops were an occasional item; in lieu of hops, gruit (grut) was used. In the Southeast United States, this herb mixture could be juniper berries or spruce tips, locust beans, various berries or medicinal and aromatic herbs.

In early Georgia, the most commonly documented beer is made from one or a combination of molasses, corn or persimmons. An intriguing persimmon beer recipe made from persimmon pone, water and locust beans is outlined in Pigsfoot Jelly & Persimmon Beer. (Pone is dried or fresh cake made of a base ingredient, water and seasoning. In the South, where corn has always been the staple crop, corn pone is most common.)

Corn was often used to make beer, especially during times of hardship, such as the Civil War and periods of alcohol prohibition. An 1800s recipe for corn beer was reprinted in the early Atlanta newspaper the Southern Confederacy in March 1862. It calls for a mash of molasses, corn and water, kept in a jug. By adding fresh water and more molasses, the same corn could be used for six months. Yum, yum.

As trade roads improved, Asian ginger became available. Ginger was first brought to the American colonies by ship and out to the frontier by horse, wagon and, eventually, railroad. It was used in cooking (especially desserts) and medicinal cures. The root also made an excellent ginger beer or served as a hop substitute in other beers of the time.

Ginger beer was popular worldwide, and Georgia was no exception. References to the drink exist all the way up to the early 1900s. Ginger beer is basically ginger, a sugar (molasses, cane sugar or both) and water. It could also contain a measure of grain and other herbs. Citrus, especially lemons, was a preferred ingredient when available. Ginger beer was fermented first with wild yeast and, later, domesticated yeast.

Beer on the frontier was mostly made at home, often by the women of the house. It was generally consumed on site due to difficulty of transport and spoilage. Corn beer would become an ingredient in another alcoholic beverage that could be kept longer and transported farther—namely, whiskey.

Other than household consumption of homemade alcohol, early settlers needed news from the outside world, social interaction beyond family and an occasional escape from small living quarters and hard work. They would head up the road to the nearest public house. A public house, as the term suggests, is a place where the public can gather and be served. A public house keeper was a publican. This term is also the basis for our modern shortened word pub. In the early Southeast, the public house was commonly called a tavern or inn.

Colonial Beer Brewing, drawing by Rose Dunning, 2013. Courtesy of Rose Dunning.

EARLY ATLANTA-AREA TAVERNS

When the Georgia frontier was described by people who viewed it from atop Stone Mountain, it was portrayed as an endless forest in which a few clearings contained dwellings and farmsteads. The heavily forested area was passable on simple dirt roads used by the military, traders, travelers and new settlers. Crossroads presented an economic opportunity. Taverns sprang up along these frontier crossroads, not just in Georgia but also all across the developing nation. It was the first place in the frontier where the common folk of a place could get together to share drink, food and gossip.

The tavern would have had beds for travelers and meals and drinks for patrons. Sometimes, taverns offered entertainment. As described in America Walks into a Bar, most taverns were relatively uniform. They included tables where patrons could sit to drink and eat and an area where the tapster would pour drinks. Absent from these early establishments was the long wooden bar. Meals in the South would have consisted of pork (a southern staple), chicken or wild game served with corn pone, potatoes and eggs. Whiskey was common, as were varieties of wine, cider and beer. Whiskey’s higher alcohol content allowed for longer storage and year-round transport. Wine was local or, if bottled well for transport, imported. Beer served in early Georgia was typically from the immediate area.

Whitehall Tavern

In 1830, the city of Atlanta did not exist, nor did most of the towns that would later compose the Greater Atlanta area. In this year, Charner Humphries and his family migrated from South Carolina to settle in the area that would become modern-day West End. Within a few years, he built the area’s first tavern at the crossroads of Newnan and Sandtown Roads. It was an unusual structure because it had a coat of whitewash while most structures of this time were constructed from simple unpainted wooden planks. The tavern became known as Whitehall or White Hall.

Atlanta, a City of the Modern South notes that Whitehall Tavern had the only accommodations for travelers from South Georgia to Tennessee. It served as an inn, a voting precinct for DeKalb County (before Fulton County’s formation), a post office, a stagecoach stop, a mustering area for the local militia and a general community center complete with food, drink and occasional gambling. The small town of Whitehall formed around this crossroads tavern. The site functioned as the town’s gathering point until Charner Humphries died in 1855. Whitehall Tavern was never used as an inn or tavern after his death and was later torn down.

The tavern was located near the modern-day intersection of Lee Street and Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard. The road leading from this tavern into Atlanta was known as Whitehall Street. A portion of this street was later named Peachtree and became the main access through Downtown Atlanta.

Henry Irby’s Tavern

The area of Atlanta commonly known as Buckhead was once Irbyville, so named for Henry Irby, who purchased 202.5 acres of land in the area and built a tavern in 1838. This combination tavern, grocery, post office and community center was located near the current intersection of West Paces Ferry Road Northeast, Roswell Road Northeast and Peachtree Road Northeast in the heart of Buckhead.

Local legend has it that either Irby or a friend shot a large antlered buck and hung the head of the buck on a post near the tavern or on the tavern itself (depending on the story). The tavern and the area became known simply as Buckhead, much to the chagrin of the town of Buckhead, Georgia, in Morgan County. Henry Irby died in 1879, and a monument honoring him was erected in the Sardis Methodist Church yard on Powers Ferry Road.

John Kile’s Tavern

In 1845, the modern-day Five Points area of Atlanta was downtown Marthasville, Georgia, a mud street with a few stores and shops near the Western and Atlantic Railroad. John Kile’s Tavern and Grocery was located at Kile’s Corner. Today, this site is 32 Peachtree Street Northeast in Downtown Atlanta. Little information exists about this early tavern and store. However, it was one of only two distributors of goods both dry and wet to Marthasville until the first saloon was introduced in 1847.

Rough and Ready Tavern

The town of Rough and Ready was a stop on the stagecoach line from Macon, Georgia, to the Atlanta area. As with many such establishments, the Rough and Ready Tavern served as the local community center, post office and a place to eat and drink. It was a cotton shipping point during the cotton boom and the gathering point for