The Pilsner years: brands, barrels at three dates, and a tied house in Michigan

1887 — 1918

What the house sold: The celebrated brand was "Pilsner" — the company account's word is celebrated, and its fame is given a geography: "famous throughout South Bend, Mishawaka, and northern Indiana and Michigan." The trade timeline's brand list for the pre-Prohibition house fills out the line: Red Band Lager, K&S Standard, Premona, and Private Stock Export beside the flagship Pilsner. The saloons that poured it in Mishawaka stand keeper by keeper in the Bars & Nightclubs section; what belongs here is the making, and the making grew.

The barrels, at three dates: The period account of about 1901 sizes the mature plant at "an output of about 30,000 barrels." De Kever, writing the decades before Prohibition, gives the house "producing 75,000 barrels of beer annually by 1918." The two figures are a growth arc, not a conflict — a regional house of thirty thousand barrels at the century's turn, two and a half times that on the eve of the dry law — and the third point of the series, the rated capacity of 150,000 barrels the trade timeline records for 1937 and 1939, stands in the Repeal entry below. No fuller production series survives in the record reached; the three dated points are printed as the series, not smoothed into one.

The Michigan trade, proven in court: The Pilsner's Michigan fame has a paper trail of the hardest kind. On 25 April 1905 the company bought, by warranty deed from Mary Withers, a lot with its business building in the village of Constantine, in Michigan's St. Joseph County — the brewery holding property in a Michigan village is the tied-house system in a deed, the house owning the ground its beer was sold from beyond its home market. The building burned, the insurer refused the policy, and the company sued: Kamm & Schellinger Brewing Company v. St. Joseph County Village Fire Insurance Company, decided by the Michigan Supreme Court in 1912 on a directed verdict for the insurer below, is this section's one litigated window into the brewery as a going concern — the case that also carries the March 1887 incorporation in its recitals. The fire itself, at the company's Michigan property, is a dated loss in the court record; the fires of the Mishawaka plant are a separate matter, and the record reached does not date them, as the Repeal entry states.

The ground the brewery gave the city: A brewery of this size gives its city more than beer. It gave Mishawaka its island's name: Kamm Island lies in the St. Joseph River at the brewery ground, its course — and the lawsuit that got the public onto it — carried whole in the Parks & River section. It gave the riverfront its landmark, the 262-foot boiler-house stack of about 1870. And it kept a brewer's house at the corner of Center Street and Lincolnway West — the Adolph Kamm House, which stood until the 100 Center conversion demolished it, as the after-brewing entry records. One human line of the plant's working years survives in the trade record: John Murphy, "connected to the Kamm & Schellinger Brewing Co.," died on 10 March 1906 of rabies from a dog bite — a death the brewery database transcribed from the news of the day, printed here at the size of its single line.

Sources:

1. The period company account carried at historic-structures.com — the celebrated "Pilsner," famous throughout South Bend, Mishawaka, northern Indiana and Michigan; output of about 30,000 barrels.
2. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — 75,000 barrels of beer annually by 1918.
3. Tavern Trove, brewery record — the pre-Prohibition brand list (Red Band Lager, K&S Standard, Premona, Private Stock Export, Pilsner); the news item of 10 March 1906 for John Murphy's death.
4. Kamm & Schellinger Brewing Co. v. St. Joseph County Village Fire Insurance Co., Michigan Supreme Court, 1912 — the warranty deed of 25 April 1905 from Mary Withers for the Constantine, Michigan lot and business building; the fire-insurance action on the policy, judgment below for the defendant on a directed verdict.
5. Parks & River section of this history — Kamm Island at the brewery ground and its public-access course; Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the Adolph Kamm House at Center and Lincolnway West, demolished in the 100 Center conversion.