Wilmington Beer History

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...