Repeal, the last expansion, and the end

1933 — 1951

The second brewing: With the Twenty-first Amendment the house brewed again — "one of the first companies in Indiana to resume making beer," in De Kever's account — and the second brewing was bigger than the first. Production soon reached 120,000 barrels a year; the trade timeline rates the plant's capacity at 150,000 barrels in both 1937 and 1939, five times the output of the Pilsner years' account; and the company "carried out a major plant expansion and modernization to meet this demand." The firm, now styled the Kamm & Schellinger Company at North Center Street, brewed Arrow Beer and Copper Beer, K&S Bock and Standard, Premona to 1940, and the Kamm's line that carried the family name forward: Kamm's Ale, Kamm's Bock, Kamm's Export, Kamm's Pilsener, Kamm's Skil-Bru, Kamm's Fine Gay 90 Beer, and Schuper Beer at the end of the 1940s — the last brand in the timeline, dated 1949–1951, a house brand's name on the final run.

The causes of the end, as the record gives them: De Kever assigns the end three causes in one sentence: "A fatal explosion, a destructive fire, and strong competition from larger breweries, though, brought the end for Kamm & Schellinger in 1951." The competition is the era's documented weather — the national brewers' postwar consolidation that closed regional houses across the country, and the fate of every house in the three-brewery frame within twenty years. The explosion and the fire are another matter: the city history names a fatal explosion and a destructive fire at the plant and dates neither, and no source this section reached dates them or names the man killed. They stand in this section as De Kever gives them — real in his telling, unplaced in time — with their settling source named: the South Bend Tribune and Mishawaka Enterprise runs for 1933–1951, at the Mishawaka-Hamilton Public Library, where a fatal explosion at the city's brewery cannot have gone unreported. No date is guessed here.

The end, carried two ways: The close itself is dated in two years by its carriers, and both are printed. The state marker, the National Register line, the trade timeline, and the period company account all close the brewery in 1951 — "The brewery ceased operations in 1951." The South Bend Tribune's retrospective of 1993 writes that the company "made beer in Mishawaka until 1952, when the brewery ceased operations." Three carriers and the trade record against the paper's one later memory: this section dates the end 1951, governing, and keeps 1952 in print as the Tribune's dating wherever the end is summarized. The last president's name, as the succession entry states, the record reached does not give; the house that Wagner founded in the iron-works town closed in its hundred-and-twelfth year from the distillery's dating, its ninety-eighth from the plant's.

Sources:

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — among the first Indiana companies to resume beer in 1933; production soon 120,000 barrels a year; the major plant expansion and modernization; "A fatal explosion, a destructive fire, and strong competition from larger breweries, though, brought the end for Kamm & Schellinger in 1951."
2. Tavern Trove, brewery record — the Kamm & Schellinger Company of 1933 at North Center Street and its beer line to 1951 (Arrow Beer, Copper Beer, the Kamm's line, Schuper Beer 1949–1951); capacity 150,000 barrels in 1937 and 1939; closed 1951.
3. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.1995.1, and the National Register line — beer production ended in 1951.
4. South Bend Tribune (1993), the 100 Center retrospective — beer made in Mishawaka until 1952 in the paper's dating, printed as the conflict.