Portner’s Beer For Everybody

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By the end of the 19th century several breweries maintained branches, which distributed beer bottled at their headquarters, in Wilmington, NC. One of the first to open such an operation in Wilmington was Robert Portner's Brewing Company located in Alexandria, Va.     During the latter half of the nineteenth century large breweries, primarily owned by German emigrants operating in the Midwest, began pushing the boundaries of their local markets. Due in large part to Louis Pasteur's work culminating in pasteurization, a process that stops microbial growth using heat, breweries were able to ship bottled beer to markets further away without fear of spoilage. According to historian Maureen Ogle both the Anheuser family and the Busch family began shipping pasteurized beer from St. Louis by 1872. Another innovation, refrigerated rail cars, opened the way for non-pasteurized kegs of beer to be transported by the late 1870s.  Robert Portner opened a branch bottling opera...
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A Porter Please

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Henry Singleton - The Ale House Door

       Many of the beers consumed in Wilmington prior to the American Revolution and even in the years leading up to the American Civil War were ales brewed in the English style. Most common were porters, though stouts, brown ales, amber ales, pale ales, and cream ales also made appearances. Most of these were imported from England, though exports to the south from the northern states grew in number throughout the 19th century.

       The most frequently imported beer in Wilmington was aporter. A dark beer, originally brewed with 100% brown malt, Porter was aged in casks at the brewery instead of being  shipped and then aged at a tavern, pub, or ordinary. Check out Ron Pattinson's great breadth of work on porter on his blog Shut Up About Barclay Perkins. According to Pattinson a Porter would have had about a 1.070 starting gravity, which means it could have been 6.5% to 7% ABV, depending on how low the fermentation went.

Casks of porter arrived on ships which were then sold to merchants for resale. Cape Fear Recorder, June 1816.

Empty bottles could be purchased from merchants in order to fill from various sized casks. Cape Fear Recorder, November 1818.

       Early Wilmington newspaper ads show a great quantity of porter and other ales being brought to Wilmington. Ads detailing ship's cargo available for sale were published with information on where to purchase goods and to whom inquiries should be made. Sometimes sold directly from the ship that brought the beer across the Atlantic, it often was sold by the cask. Grocers and other merchants could then bottle and sell the ale to people more easily. In the 1840s merchants such as Howard and Peden, R.W. Brown, J. & W. L. McGary's, all sold porter, as well as other ales, by the cask or bottle.

J. & W. L. McGary sold their bottled ale in both quart and pint sized bottles. Weekly Commercial, November 1848.

According to the diary of Nicholas W. Schenck, who moved to Wilmington as a boy in 1836, Howard and Peden, grocers, had their store front one block south of Market Street facing the Cape Fear River. This location is just across from the public restrooms and adjacent to Quince Alley. Schenk also recounted that up the alley, about midway to Front Street, a man named Miller kept a bar.

     Widespread German migration to the United States in the 1840s and the subsequent rise in popularity of lagers saw the slow demise of porter and other ales as the drink of choice. Liquor too, whiskey in particular, took up more of the market once held by English style ales. By the 1880s most of the beer consumed in Wilmington came from domestic breweries in New England and the Midwest, the majority of which were German style lagers. There were some local bottling houses, that packaged beer from closer breweries such as the Robert Portner Brewing Company headquartered in Alexandria, VA, which opened a branch in Wilmington in the 1878, and the Home Brewing Company from Richmond, VA, which opened a branch at the turn of the 20th century.

    Fortunately for today's beer drinkers we have a much wider selection in Wilmington, both locally produced and imported from other states and countries. I for one am pretty fond of the Dark HoRyeZon Porter brewed at Broomtail Craft Brewery (I'm biased, it's my recipe) and the Damn Good Brown Porter from Wilmington Brewing Company.











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