Anton Wagenhauser was the father of industrial beer in the Metroplex. The Bayern, Germany, native moved from St. Louis in 1884 and quickly founded an eponymous brewing association, personally putting up 60% of the $100,000 invested.
By 1885, Wagenhauser had a steam-powered brewery producing up to two hundred barrels a day. As soon as a grand opening was announced, if not sooner, the prohibitionists started in with the hand-wringing and lamenting.
Despite advertising his beer as a tonic that will “restore to you your health and add vigor and strength to your broken constitution,” the financial troubles set in quickly. Before the brewery was a year old, it was sold to satisfy creditors.
One of those creditors, Frederick Wolf, ended up with the brewery and handed it off to the Gannon brothers who, in the midst of a lawsuit and legal mess that The Dallas Morning News headlined “The Dallas Brewery Muddle,” established the Dallas Brewing Company in 1887.
Financially, they fared little better, though they limped along until Thomas Keeley purchased the brewery in 1893. He re-chartered it as The Dallas Brewery.
From there, the Dallas Brewery finally found its footing. By 1900, it was producing 75,000 barrels a year and poised to make a $75,000 investment on facilities that year and more than twice as much in 1907.
It was about the turn of the century where it first occurred to name beers rather than just advertise “lager beer” and the Dallas Brewery established brands including Home Beer, Tipperary Beer and White Rose Beer.
Though the Dallas Brewery tried to ride out Prohibition as the Grain Juice Company with a delicious-sounding “pure cereal and hop beverage” called “Graino,” the business eventually shifted focus. Beginning in 1925, the old brewery was demolished for new construction and it was entirely razed by 1930.
Remember the Gannon brothers? One of the pair, James J., departed Dallas in 1890 with the idea of traveling, but ultimately he didn’t get farther than Fort Worth before a clean well and handy trains convinced him to build the Texas Brewing Company in late 1890.
Before the beer was even on the market in May 1891, they were already expanding. Soon the Texas Brewing Company was known as the largest brewery and ice plant in the south, with 160 employees and 250,000 barrels per year. The brewery soon grew to a nearly 5-acre complex.
Gannon was quick to promote his beer as Fort Worth-made and urged in advertising to “Patronize Home Industry.” Among its brands were Household Beer, Crown Beer, Worthburger Beer and, after winning a prize at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, Gold Medal Beer.
“When you buy Gold Medal Beer at the price of common beer,” one ad read, “you are getting double value.”
When Prohibition came in 1918, Texas Brewing Company became Texas Beverage and Cold Storage Company, then the Texas Ice and Refrigerating Company.
And when Prohibition was over, the facility was back in business, but as Superior Brewing Company, instead of ‘Texas.’