Brewery

Fleckenstein Brewery

Excerpts from my correspondence with John Fleckenstein, great-grandson of Ernst Fleckenstein

Ernst Fleckenstein Brewing Company was a family owned business, as the patriarchs passed from view, their widows inherited the stock. The widows moved from the area, losing touch with the business.

One day in the early spring (I think) my father came home and said, "They told us to take a 100 dollar pay cut or get out". After much discussion between my father and his brothers Charles and Al, they decided to try to try to buy enough stock to have the controlling interest, but there were no sellers among the widows. They only lacked 2 or 3% of the shares. They felt that their only alternative was to get out. About three months later, after the widows brought in an "expert" to operate the business, Dad got a call from a friend from the ATF. Dad's friend said "we're going to padlock the brewery at midnight on the first of the month, this new guy has never paid the alcohol taxes, if you have any personal stuff in there you better get it out".

Dad and I moved a lot of family heirlooms from the upstairs of the office building before the last day. Good to their word, the ATF closed the Brewery as they said. Every thing was sold at auction to pay $16,000 in taxes. The property was purchased by Shattuck, a private military school. The Brewery residence was razed in 1959(?) because no one from the family wanted to live there.

The secret of the beer was, like someone else said, "it's the water". Fleck's Beer had an artisan well from a limestone strata 400 feet deep. This well would produce 80 gal/min. As far as the recipe, I believe that it may have died with my uncle Charles. Before him, my great uncle "Boots" Fleckenstein had the brew.

Today you can get a brew very similar in taste to Fleck's, it's called Henry Reinhardt Private Reserve. I think that the taste is very close.

I find it ironic that the brewery could survive multiple depressions, fires and a little argument with "a nasty little man" (Grandma Fleckenstein's words) named Andrew Volstad, but, could not survive the internal conflict of a family disagreement. In Germany, I have been told that the Fleckenstein family had been brewing beer since 1577.

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Historic Photos