101 North Main Street
Cheboygan
231-268-3218
PRIMARY OWNERS: Jamie McClurg and Mark Lorenz Head of brewery operations: Mike Eme
BREWER: Brian Lindsay
FLAGSHIP BEERS: Lighthouse Amber, made with caramel malt and Noble hops; La Cerveza, a summer beer similar to Corona; Blood Orange Honey, an American wheat beer brewed with honey made from local wildflowers, blood orange zest, and blood orange puree; IPA #11, an IPA that balances malt and hops for a pleasant bitterness
When the Cheboygan Brewing Company opened its doors in 2011, there were more than a few skeptics. A craft brewery in northeastern Michigan? It would never survive in an area with a strong taste for Stroh’s and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
But owners Jamie McClurg and Mark Lorenz saw an opportunity to reach into the past and restore a measure of civic pride to the city that had been missing since 1911.
In the late nineteenth century, Cheboygan and other towns across Michigan were booming as a result of the lumber industry. Cheboygan, Oscoda, Alpena, and Rogers City grew rapidly because they were important ports for shipping lumber to Detroit and Chicago to meet the needs of a swiftly expanding country. Those northeastern Michigan towns may have been small, but they had considerable pride and set out to prove they were every bit as civilized as their big-city cousins to the south. Residents built opera houses and grand government buildings, churches, and schools. But what separated Cheboygan from its northern Michigan peers and burnished its pride was the presence of a local brewery.
The brewhouse at Cheboygan Brewing Company.
Cheboygan proudly boasted it was home to the Cheboygan Brewing and Malting Company, a purveyor of German-style lagers whose motto was “The Beer That Made Milwaukee Jealous.” At its peak the brewery produced forty barrels a day and distributed beer as far away as Mackinac Island, Harbor Springs, and Alpena by horse-drawn carriage.
The county’s population peaked at nearly eighteen thousand in 1910 at the height of lumber production and began to decline as the supply of trees was depleted and the lumbermen moved elsewhere. (Census records show that the county’s population did not recover to that level until the 1970s.) With declining population and pressure from the Prohibition movement, the brewery shut its doors in 1911.
Cheboygan and the surrounding area struggled economically for most of the twentieth century. The town lost its passenger railroad access in the 1960s, and the Procter & Gamble plant that made paper products and employed three hundred people closed in 1990. Still, Cheboygan kept a strong sense of pride as the community became a tourist destination for boaters and summer residents.
Cheboygan may not be a burgeoning city, but it’s back on the map again because of beer. Mike Eme, the head brewer, says that he’s been told the number one question fielded by the local chamber of commerce is, “Can you give me directions to the brewery?”
In just a few short years, the Cheboygan Brewing Company has become an important part of the community. The brewery and taproom are in a modern new building a few blocks north of where the original brewery stood in the nineteenth century. One corner of the new brewery is given over to a display of Cheboygan’s brewing heritage.
Upstairs, a second-floor deck overlooks Main Street and is a comfortable place to sit and watch classic cars and boats on the nearby Cheboygan River cruise past, people coming and going, or the town’s annual Independence Day Parade. A small patio on the north side of the taproom is just the right size for an intimate concert on a gorgeous northern Michigan summer evening. It’s a place for locals to gather when the snow piles up and a place for tourists and cottage owners to have a beer or pick up a growler during a weekend getaway.
The brewery’s awards on display in the taproom.
Besides acknowledging Cheboygan’s brewing history, McClurg, Lorenz, and Eme are conscious of the brewery’s place in the community. They may not be making beer for thirsty lumberjacks, but they do make an effort to pull up a chair and chat with beer tourists and the locals who come regularly during the winter. “I’ll often sit with people and chat,” Eme says. “Then I’ll invite them behind the glass [into the brewery]. I’ll pull a glass out of the brite tank for them and watch their faces light up.”
Because of that effort to connect to customers as well as the past, patrons often tell Eme and Lorenz how important the taproom has become to the community; it has filled a need for a bright, airy place where people can go just to have a beer, relax and hang out. And Lorenz says that locals tell him over and over again that they didn’t realize what the community was missing when they didn’t have a brewery.
Some of those thank-yous have come from people in the city’s administration who appreciate the brewery’s value in attracting tourists, many of whom usually head to other northern Michigan towns on the west side of I-75. “The brewery is a source of pride for Cheboygan,” says Lorenz. “We can say to people that we have great recreation. Bring your boat, vacation here—and by the way, we’ve got a new brewery.”
It may be a new place, but it has a proud history, and the past echoes through the room with every clink of a glass.