Portner’s Beer For Everybody

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 operation in Wilmington for his brewery in 1878.

    For Wilmington this meant the opening of bottling houses, branches of breweries from other states which stored, bottled, and distributed beer for the surrounding region. One of the first to open in the Port City was a branch of Robert Portner's Brewing Company, headquartered in Alexandria, Va. 

    Portner began brewing beer by accident, purchasing a grocery and brewery with his partner Frederick Recker in 1865. Portner initially ran the grocery store until his partner asked if he would switch roles and Portner took over the brewery with no training in the brewing industry. It would become highly lucrative and in his book, Virginia Beer, Lee Graves states that by the 1890s the brewery produced 100,000 barrels a year.

One of Robert Portner's earliest bottling houses in Wilmington was located at 21 N. Second Street, pictured on the right side of the above image between a grocery store and Southerland's Livery.

    The first recorded Portner bottling house located in Wilmington opened on November 17, 1878 on Front Street between Dock and Orange. After a fire destroyed what was known as Lippitt's Block in 1879, the operation moved to 21 N. Second Street. This is currently the location of the parking deck downtown, across the street from First Bank. The bottling plant would later move to the corner of Eighth and Brunswick streets, which would put it close to the rail line. According to a 1904 booklet compiled by the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce:

The establishment in Wilmington is conveniently located, contiguous to the railroads, affording the best of shipping facilities. The beer is received direct from the brewery in bulk, except the export beer, and is bottled here, there being a complete and latest improved bottling plant available, with cold storage, which has a capacity for 300 barrels.

The warehouse and bottling operation moved to the corner of Eighth and Brunswick streets in order to take advantage of the rail line, which ran out of downtown Wilmington. Portner acquired similar property in Washington DC for his bottling operations there. 

    Portner's produced several different styles of beer including English style ales and German lagers, but ale production ceased before he opened the Wilmington branch. People could buy Portner's beer from local grocers, and the popularity of the beer led to decades of growth for the company, not just in the Wilmington market but also around the state. Bottling houses were also constructed in Charlotte, Wilmington, Goldsboro, Raleigh, and Greensboro, as well as in South Carolina and Georgia. 

The most popular brand by Robert Portner, Tivoli, encompassed at least four different styles of lager.

   The early bottled beers came in custom stopper bottles patented by Portner. According to newspaper ads, these bottles were to be returned to the brewery for reuse. In 1881 he issued a statement in the Wilmington Morning Star stating that due to these bottles not being returned after use he intended to pursue legal action against those found in possession of the bottles. 

   

Portner's patented stopper bottles became popular just like his beer and he threatened legal action against those who stole the bottles.

    The early Tivoli lager produced around the time Portner opened the Wilmington branch was known as Tivoli Cabinet, and was similar to a traditional Märzen, dark brown and malty. While this beer was renamed, and other styles continued under the Tivoli brand name, the dark lager continued as the Vienna Cabinet. Another popular lager produced by Portner was the Tivoli Haufbrau, which replaced his Virginia Extra Pale Export Lager. This light and crisp beer was probably a pilsner, but named after the famous Hauf Brau Haus beer hall in Munich. This beer, over all others, became the sales leader for Portner. These lighter lager beers became more popular throughout the last decades of the 19th century and made up the majority of those bottled in Wilmington, though beers such as the Tivoli Extra, a bock, continued to be produced and distributed to all branches. By 1902 it seems that only the Tivoli Haufbrau and the Vienna Cabinet were produced and sold in all branches. 

Robert Portner's Brewing Company produced several different styles of beer but ultimately two became the most widely produced and bottled in Wilmington, the Vienna Cabinet, a Märzen, and the Tivoli Hofbrau, a lighter, pilsner style lager.

    A second post on Portner and other bottling houses in Wilmington will explore how the temperance movement and eventual prohibition affected their operations. 

    A detailed and comprehensive study of Robert Portner's Brewing Company can be found in a work produced during an archeological survey of the brewery in Alexandria, Va. Written by Timothy Dennee, Robert Portner and His Brewing Company is a valuable resource for the history of the man and his business venture. Descendants of Portner, his granddaughters, have recently opened a brewery by the same name in Alexandria, Va.