IF IT WERE EASY, EVERYONE WOULD DO IT.
—BILL WAMBY, INDUSTRY CONSULTANT AND FORMER HEAD BREWER AT REDWOO D STEAKHOUSE AND BREWERY
Michigan is today the Great Beer State because of the contributions of many people, but of one man in particular.
Ben Edwards was a bit of an unusual character in that he was always looking to challenge himself to try something new and different. In 1965, the high school English teacher bought a rough-and-tumble bar at the corner of West Canfield and Second Avenue in Detroit’s Cass Corridor, closed it down, remodeled it, and reopened it as the Traffic Jam and Snug.
Edwards’s restaurant evolved over the next twenty years, and by the late 1980s—even though the neighborhood was slowly dying from the influence of drugs, prostitution, homelessness, and decay—the establishment was still popular with professors, politicians, urban pioneers, and a few suburbanites. The Traffic Jam was an early example of what would become today’s locavore farm-to-table movement. Besides the restaurant, Edwards owned a bakery and dairy that supplied him with ice cream and unusual and delicious breads and cheeses. But Edwards longed to provide his customers with one more item that would complement the unique flavors of his breads and cheeses: fresh-brewed beer.
Only he couldn’t.
Michigan law prohibited a restaurant from owning both a license to sell beer at retail and a brewing license. Every other state in the Midwest had already changed similar laws to make way for the brewpub trend. But Michigan lagged behind, and Edwards became determined to change that.
Knowing full well he was entering uncharted territory and working under the belief that it would be better to ask for forgiveness than permission, Edwards built a small brewery with a ten-barrel system in the back of his parking lot on the north side of West Canfield. Then, on September 16, 1988, Edwards asked the Michigan Liquor Control Commission to grant a brewery license to his restaurant. At that time, Michigan had just four breweries: the Stroh Brewing Company, the Frankenmuth Brewery, G. Heileman Brewing Company, and Larry Bell’s fledgling Kalamazoo Brewing Company.
Edwards’s request to become the state’s fifth brewery was denied.
That’s when Thomas Burns Jr. stepped forward. Burns was a Grosse Pointe Park lawyer who would rather have been a brewer. Burns home brewed while he was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, then became a brewer for Cartright Brewing Company in Portland, Oregon, while attending law school. After graduating and moving into private practice, Burns continued to brew for the Boulder Brewing Company in Colorado. When he was stricken with his first bout with cancer in 1984, Burns and his wife, Priscilla, returned to Michigan.
In 1989, Burns read about the Traffic Jam’s attempts to get a brewing license and approached Edwards to help. Together, they sued the State of Michigan in federal court charging that Michigan’s liquor law, which consisted of a three-tier system of brewers, distributors, and retailers, was unconstitutional under the Sherman Antitrust Act because it restrained trade. Burns’s argument was a bit of a reach for two reasons. First, the Sherman Antitrust Act was established to promote trade by preventing the formation of monopolies. Second, there is a long tradition of federal courts being unwilling to intervene in what they view as state issues. Ultimately, two federal courts ruled against Edwards and Burns.
In 1992, the two took their argument to the state courts, and were greeted with sympathy—to a point. Edwards and Burns got the case as far as the Michigan Court of Appeals, but that panel concluded that any changes to the state law would be a matter for the legislature, not the courts: “It may very well be that brewpubs are desirable features on our economic and social landscapes, but this is not a question for us.”4
The legal defeat disappointed Edwards and Burns, but they were already moving ahead with plan B: changing the law through legislation. State Representative Curtis Hertel Sr., a regular patron of the Traffic Jam, understood what Edwards and Burns were trying to accomplish and thought he could help. In 1990, Hertel introduced a bill in the Michigan House to allow a restaurant to sell beer that was made on premises. The bill, however, was opposed by the powerful Michigan Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association, and the proposal died in committee.
Even though the bill was dead, the idea was not. The following year, Hertel proposed House Bill 5407, and this time negotiations began in earnest with the wholesalers association. Hertel recalls that the wholesalers had two demands: they wanted a cap on how much beer any one brewpub could produce annually and a requirement that any brewpub that planned to distribute must do so through a distributor. In the end, the compromise allowed for an imperfect bill to pass. “It wasn’t the ideal,” Hertel says. “It was, however, a breakthrough, allowing the industry to begin in Michigan.”
Surprisingly, Larry Bell opposed the bill because he thought it would be harmful to his established small brewery. A Kalamazoo Brewing Company spokesperson even testified before a legislative committee that the bill was unfair since it was possible for a restaurant to become a brewery, but it was not possible for a brewery to become a restaurant, and as a result his brewery would lose customers.
Nevertheless, on December 8, 1992, the state legislature passed the law—with the blessing of the Michigan Liquor Control Commission.
The law immediately changed the brewing landscape across the state. Detroit’s Traffic Jam got license number one. Grand Rapids Brewing Company got license number two. In Oscoda, Dean Wiltse got license number three for his family restaurant. In Escanaba, Hereford and Hops Steakhouse and Brewpub was given license number four. In Ann Arbor, Barry Seifer made plans to open Grizzly Peak Brewing Company, and Matt and Rene Greff started to hunt for a location for Arbor Brewing Company. In Kalamazoo, Larry Bell, who already had a microbrewer’s license, made plans to open a taproom.
Each of those early breweries had its struggles; in fact, Grand Rapids Brewing Company went out of business. But Michigan’s beer entrepreneurs were not intimidated, and a second wave of breweries opened in the state in 1996–97. That two-year period saw Arcadia Ales open in Battle Creek, Atwater in Detroit, New Holland in Holland, Dark Horse in Marshall, Dragonmead in Warren, Mackinac Brewing Company in Traverse City, and John Pannell Brewing Company—now known as Founders—in Grand Rapids. It’s also when a beer enthusiast named Rex Halfpenny established a publication—the Michigan Beer Guide—which has acted as the state’s craft beer newspaper and bible ever since.
Ironically, Edwards didn’t get a license for the brewery that he had built. The new law said that Edwards could now own a brewery and sell beer at the same location, but there was one problem: his new brewery, now called Detroit & Mackinac Brewing Company, was across the street; technically it was a brewery and not a brewpub, so he could not own it and have a license to sell beer at his restaurant. Edwards sold the brewery to Burns and opened his own brewery inside the Traffic Jam.
Within two years of taking over at Detroit & Mackinac, Tom Burns would die from another bout with cancer, and Burns’s brewer, John Linardos, would buy Detroit & Mackinac and rename it Motor City Brewing Works.
Michigan is littered with the carcasses of breweries that started shortly after the state law was changed in 1992 and went out of business within a few years: Local Color in Novi, Big Buck in Auburn Hills, King’s and Bo’s in Pontiac, Copper Canyon in Southfield, Michigan Brewing Company in Webberville, Bad Frog in Rose City, Bear River Brewing in Petoskey, Fire Academy Brewery and Grill in Westland, Traverse Brewing Company in Elk Rapids, Brewbakers in Ann Arbor, the Blind Tiger in Howell, Frog Island in Ypsilanti, Duster’s Microbrewery in Lawton—and the list goes on. Sadly, some of those breweries still sit empty, rotting like a discarded beer can by the side of the road.
There are lots of reasons why these breweries went belly up rather than belly to the bar. They may have tried to start out too big. Some were run by home brewers who lacked business acumen. Some had sloppy brewers who didn’t understand that the failure to thoroughly clean their brewing equipment affected the taste of their beer. Some were bad restaurateurs. Some had impatient investors. Some were ahead of their time and just didn’t find a market for the kinds of beers they produced.
But a handful did survive. Some because they were lucky. Or because they had a small band of loyal customers. Others because they were able to change with the times. Some owners were persistent or just plain stubborn.
Ask John Linardos about those early days at Detroit & Mackinac and you will hear stories of desperation—about how he and Tom Burns would keg beer in the morning and then drive around the city in the afternoon selling it to restaurants and party stores just to have enough money to pay the electricity bill.
Ask Larry Bell about those early days, and he’ll tell you there were times when he was forced to ask his employees whether he should pay them or pay the water bill so that they could keep brewing. Steve Buszka, now the head brewer at Frankenmuth Brewery, recalls making beer for Bell in the late 1980s. He says even though things were financially bleak, there was never any question how the employees would respond when Bell approached them about the cash flow dilemma. The answer was always the same: “Pfffft! Just keep brewing!”
It took years for Ben Edwards’s vision to become a reality, and it took decades for that reality to become part of Michigan’s culture. Thanks to Edwards, there are now more than three hundred breweries in the state, and barley and hops have become important cash crops for Michigan’s farmers, start-up businesses give beer tours in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, and Detroit, and there are three companies making brewing equipment in the state. “I don’t think anyone had any clue what craft brewing would turn into,” Bell says.
But before there was a Ben Edwards or a John Linardos or a Larry Bell, there was a brewing pioneer in Chelsea who was years ahead of his time.
The beer revolution in the United States began in 1976 when Jack McAuliffe opened what is considered the nation’s first craft brewery—New Albion Brewing Company in Sonoma, California. Unhappy with American beers, McAuliffe decided to open a brewery that would duplicate the full-flavored, full-bodied ales he’d tasted while serving in Europe with the U.S. Navy. At the same time, Fritz Maytag was transforming the venerable Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco into a brewer of ales, porters, and barley wine in what would become the first microbrewery in the United States. Soon the microbrewing trend would spread from California to Oregon and Colorado.
Ted Badgerow, brewer at Ypsilanti Ale House, was Michigan’s first craft brewer, opening the Real Ale Company in Chelsea in 1982.
The Midwest got its first taste of microbrew in 1982, when the Real Ale Company opened in Chelsea. Looking back, brewer Ted Badgerow admits his baby brewery was destined to fail.
Badgerow said his brewery had no problem selling beer; he sold everything he made. It was shipped to stores all over the state, and beer lovers snapped it up; people came to Chelsea from all over the region just to have a glass and check out the operation.
But before the brewery even opened, there were warning signs. The biggest one was a form letter from the federal government after Badgerow applied for the brewery’s tax license. That letter ominously said the establishment of a brewery is a considerable capital enterprise, and anyone looking to open one should have substantial resources on hand. “But we didn’t take that advice,” Badgerow says with a smile.
It was the summer of 1980, in the midst of a national economic downturn, and Badgerow was working on a Michigan dairy farm that was facing hard times. At that point, the economics of farming had been turned on its head: it cost more to produce a gallon of milk than farmers could sell it for. Family farms were going out of business across the Midwest, and Gordon Averill, the owner of the farm where Badgerow was working, was considering getting out, too. As Averill and Badgerow stood in front of the nearly worthless milk storage equipment, Badgerow innocently asked how much the tanks would be worth if they were filled with, say, beer.
The conversation paused as the two began to consider the issue seriously: “What would it take?” Badgerow, a home brewer for nearly ten years, had the experience. Averill could convert his worthless dairy equipment into brewing vessels. What did they have to lose?
The two were stunned by the willingness of friends and family to invest, and they quickly raised $12,000. They found space in the building at the base of Chelsea’s famous clock tower and turned Averill’s dairy equipment into fermentation vats. The centerpiece of this new brewing empire was a fifteen-gallon commercial soup kettle that Badgerow got from a used equipment store in Muskegon.
The Real Ale Company was the Midwest’s first microbrewery and the first brewery to open in Michigan in thirty-nine years.
Word spread quickly about this new brewery in a little town just off I-94, and the crowds came. Among them was the pop duo Hall & Oates, who interrupted their Canadian tour to stop at the Real Ale Company to buy seventy cases. Badgerow and the Real Ale Company were even featured in a July 1983 story in Time magazine on the emerging trend of microbrewing in the United States.
Among the people attracted to this radical new operation was a young man who made the thirty-mile trip from Ann Arbor to Chelsea and back on his bicycle. His name was Larry Bell.
“He was there just once,” Badgerow recalls. “I remember him coming by. At the time we had such a rush of publicity. People were coming from as far away as Virginia and the midwestern states to see what we were doing because we were the first craft brewer in the Midwest. Some were coming for the beer, while others were home brewers who were thinking about scaling up. Some of the people who came to visit looked like they were ready to go into business right away. Larry looked like he was the least likely of those to start a business.”
The Real Ale Company’s success was short lived, and Badgerow admits he and Averill made two critical mistakes. First, they made unpasteurized beer that often went stale before it reached the consumer. Distributors at the time did not understand the importance of refrigeration for this unpasteurized beer. Second, it took $26 to produce a case of beer, but it was sold for only $20. “What we lacked most was any vestige of business sense,” Badgerow says.
Poke Badgerow today about his experiences with the Real Ale Company and he will not snarl with anger or whine with regret. Nor is he jealous of those who have found success and fame in the industry he pioneered. He has had a rich life since. He went on to a profitable career doing construction and laying tiles. He’s also a classical guitarist and the lead vocalist for an Ann Arbor–based brass band that performs nineteenth-century music.
But now, more than thirty years after The Real Ale Company closed, Badgerow is back in the brewing business. He is a partner in Mishigama Brewing Company, which opened in December 2015 as the Ypsilanti Ale House. He’s made some changes since his first approach. This time he’s well capitalized, uses modern brewing equipment, and has an experienced business guy—David Roberts, a former General Motors executive—looking over his shoulder.
Of course, Badgerow had to start over with new equipment as the original equipment at Real Ale Company was liquidated when the brewery closed. Badgerow has no idea what happened to most of his old stuff, but he knows who got the fifteen-gallon soup pot. It was bought by the young man who rode his bike from Ann Arbor.