A Brief History of Falls City Beer Falls City Brewing Co. was formed in 1905 by a collection of saloon owners and grocers who were in protest of theaforementioned Central Consumers Company alliance formed by several larger Louisvillebrewers, which had essentially monopolized beer sales in the city. This group of pluckybusinessmen combined forces and built a 75,000-barrel brewery at Thirtieth Street andWest Broadway downtown, next to Southern Railroad. (It should be noted that a number of smaller operations brewed beer under the name FallsCity well ahead of this brewery’s launch; as breweries opened, closed, reopened andchanged hands in the 1800s, a number of names came and went.) Otto Doerr, formerly of Schaefer-Mayer, was hired as brewmaster for Falls City, and inNovember 1906, Falls City Beer was tapped for the first time in Louisville’s saloons andtaverns, starting a legacy that is still strong today. By 1908, Falls City had added a bottling plant and was selling bottled beer across the city as well as draft beers bearinginteresting names such as Peerless, Salvator, Life Saver, and Extra Pale. During the first years of its operation, deliverieswere made with the customary horses and wagons. According to the Kentucky Digital Library, in 1911, Falls City bought

a five-ton Morgan truck and a one and one-halfton auto car, “and there was great rivalry amongstthe drivers as to who would be chosen to drivethese two new trucks.” While the brewery struggled at first, by 1912 itwas making a profit, narrowly surviving a 1911takeover bid by rival Central Consumers. In fact, ameeting on Dec. 11, 1911, to discuss selling FallsCity to their rival began in the afternoon and lasteduntil nearly midnight, with a number of heateddebates igniting along the way. But the ultimatedecision, at the urging of loyal stockholders, wasto keep moving forward. Of course, this was ahuge victory for Falls City, which had the originalmission of competing against the monopoly. The ensuing seven years were steady, but a lackof capital and continued competition with theCentral Consumers Company provided obstaclesto growth. Of course, you already know whathappened in 1919 – Prohibition forced the brewing

operation to close, and the property was sold at auction to a man named George F. Korfhage for $61,000 just two weeksbefore national Prohibition was set to become law. Korfhage, along with some newly assembled investors, kept thefacility running, producing “near beer” and soft drinks, and selling ice under the name Falls City Ice and BeverageCompany. But perhaps surprisingly to all, Falls City not only managed to stay afloat, it actually turned a profit during Prohibition.When the boilers were again fired up in late 1933, Falls City was primed and ready to start brewing beer for Louisvilleand beyond. The brewery found an eager audience. Following Prohibition, beers such as Hi-Bru, Falls City Ale, FallsCity Bock, Falls City Extra Pale, and Falls City Lager were being produced and sold across the city and the South.

Not unlike Oertel, Korfhage’s death in 1929 assured he would never seea beer brewed at the plant, but his leadership would enable Falls City todistribute its soft drink products regionally – Falls City previously hadonly sold locally – paving the way for beer brewing later. It should benoted that after Korfhage’s death, former Falls City president TheodoreEvers was named secretary and treasurer. At that time, a woman namedLillie G. Madden was named assistant secretary. She would go on tobecome a key player in the story of Falls City brewing. By the late 1940s and into 1950, Falls City was brewing 750,000gallons a beer annually and distributing to Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio,Tennessee, the Virginias, and Illinois. It had become a dominant southernbrewery. In 1951, the death of long-time president John W. Bornwasser openedthe door for Madden – known as “Miss Lillie” – to become president. By1955, the Falls City plant was undergoing several major upgrades,including a new barrel kettle and faster bottling lines. At one point it wasthe official beer of the Indianapolis 500, and it enjoyed popularitythroughout the region. But as the years went by, Anhueser-Busch, Miller Brewing, Schlitz, andothers were establishing their stranglehold on the brewing industry in theregion and around the country. Falls City began to adapt its flavor as away of keeping up, which would gradually result in the beer being lessand less flavorful as America began its swing toward corporate light beer. Advertisements from the 1950s show this emerging trend. A Falls City ad from The Kentucky New Era in May 1956,

promotes pasteurization of the beer, promising that it’s “sparkling … light … refreshing,”that it “always tastes the same” and that it was “bitter-free,” bragging that “our processkeeps hop’s [sic] bitterness OUT … locks the right amount of taste-pleasing flavor IN.” By comparison, as recently as 1939, Falls City was describing its beer as “amber,”describing the flavor as “dry,” and with “mellow heartiness” and “perfect balance.” Thatwas Falls City Hi-Bru, and it clearly predates the “light” trend. Creativity in brewing was dying under the weight of corporate homogenization.Meanwhile, Falls City was doing what it had to do in order to survive, which was to getcreative in other ways. One offer in the 1950s was for a “Holiday Gift Pack,” a way togive your friends and family the gift of bitter-free beer in a festive, holiday package at noextra charge – a package they were just going to throw away. A 1962 ad in the KentuckyNew Era is positioned as a personal classified ad, and reads, “PARTNER WANTED: Manwith cooler full of Falls City Beerand fishing rod wants to meet manwith can opener and fishing rod.Object: Fishing trip. Fishermenagree that you can’t buy bettertasting beer than Falls City at anyprice.”

Kenneth Schwartz, who worked atFalls City for roughly 40 years up until its closure, recalls the slowbut sure decline following years of thriving under Madden,beginning with the brewery improvements in 1955. “They decided they wanted to put a new powerhouse in, and anew engine room,” he said, peering through oval wire-frameglasses. “Those two boilers they put in were brand new. They putnew equipment in the brewery part, too – tanks and stuff like that.They bought us a new fleet of trucks. One thing about them, when

KENNETH SCHWARTZ

they made up their mind to do something, they doneit. And they didn’t buy that stuff on time – they paidcash for it.” He recalls Madden as being very strict but very fairwith her employees. “She was a smart woman,”Schwartz said. “As far as I’m concerned, she’s theone who built that brewery up to what it was.” In later years, he said, employees, who previouslywere given all the beer they wanted while on theclock, could drink only in a certain part of the plant,and the limit was two per day. Schwartz said herecalls a former co-worker who would go beyondthat limit, and one day Madden walked in and caughthim. “He said, ‘I guess I’m fired?’ and she said, ‘Youare so right.’” But as the 1960s wore on, Falls City’s salesdeclined. Distribution and consumption of nationalbrands was on the rise, and local loyalty was waning– well, for everyone but the brewery workers. “When I worked there, that’s the only beer I drank,” Schwartz said. “Even if I was at somebody’s house and theyoffered me a beer, if it wasn’t Falls City, I wouldn’t drink it.”

He came home from work one day to find a non-Falls City beer sittingon his kitchen table. “I said, ‘What in the hell?’ My wife said, ‘What’s the matter with you?I said, ‘Whose beer is that? She said, ‘It’s your son’s.” He picked up the beer – “It was maybe a Bud or a Miller,” he said –opened the door and slung the bottle out into the yard. “I said, ‘Tell him there’s his beer.’” Schwartz said it gradually became clear that the brewery was goingdownhill. Finally, a last-ditch effort to save Falls City was hatched in1977. It almost worked. Falls City persuaded famous beer drinker BillyCarter – brother to then President Jimmy Carter – to switch brands andendorse Falls City’s specially-brewed Billy Beer. That beer was releasedin September and was popular at first. Billy Carter himself came toLouisville, toured the Falls City plant, and even made a visit to Check’sCafé in Germantown, where a picture of his visit still hangs. Billy Carter was even quoted at a press conference during his visit assaying, “Who knows? Maybe I’ll become the Colonel Sanders of beer.” Maybe not. “He come back there and shook my hand,” Schwartz said. “I didn’tthink much of him.” Still, the Billy Beer experiment nearly worked, and showed a great leapof faith on the part of the struggling brewery – or possibly a last-ditcheffort of desperation. “The only way to survive is to be innovative,” then Falls Citypresident James F. Tate told The Associated Press, “and that’s justwhat we’ve tried to do. … When you go up against the big guys inthis

industry, you have a helluva job on your hands.”

Tate said in that article that Miller and Anhueser-Busch were spending $100million annually in television advertising and were “chasing us off television” as aresult. In addition, by that time one of the two mega-brewers was sponsoring prettymuch every major event in town. Falls City couldn’t compete in its own market, letalone regionally or nationally. While publicity fueled the first few months of Billy Beer sales, keeping Falls Cityin the black for 1977, a massive winter snowstorm immobilized the entire city ofLouisville in January 1978 and brought sales and distribution to a near stand-still inthe process. By May, sales of Billy Beer were inching back up, but the end was near.Another problem was that the price point was higher than Bud and Miller, andpeople simply didn’t want to pay it once the novelty wore off. Some of that pricepoint had to do with Carter’s royalties. “They paid him I don’t know how many thousands of dollars just to put his nameon the damn thing,” Schwartz said. “It went over pretty good for a while. It wentover well in these colleges because it was something different. Pretty soon – boom, it

just petered.” Brewing in Louisville wasdying a slow death; it was anational trend. A BowlingGreen Daily News storyfrom June 8, 1978, reportedthat just after Prohibition,between 1933 and 1935,some 750 breweries were in operation in the United States. Atthe time of Billy Beer, the number was down to 45. Late in 1978, Falls City closed; newspapers around the countryin November of that year ran a photo of a Reynolds AluminumRecycling Plant in Louisville shoveling beer cans onto aconveyor belt. Falls City had sold 8.7 million Billy Beer cans tothe plant in the shutdown, a sad symbol of the brewery’s laststand. The plant was sold, and the equipment shipped out of thecountry, the buildings demolished. The brands, including FallsCity and the lesser known Drummond Bros., were sold to theHeileman Brewing Company. Schwartz, who says he was the last hourly employee at FallsCity, remembers his last two days on the job: “I left there oneday, and [Tate] said, “Tomorrow morning, Kenny, when youcome in, shut the boiler down. I said, ‘All right.’” When he finished shutting down the last operating boiler,Schwartz walked around the plant one last time and said hisgoodbyes to a few of his co-workers. Then he got into his carand drove home, in search of a new way of life. It was 32 years later that David Easterling bought the rights tothe brand and revived it, bottling its now-signature English-style

pale ale and distributing on draft. The brewery is now under new ownership and is in the process of building a newbrewing facility and taproom, while also brewing not just its core line of bottled products, but rotating seasonals, theSeven-Barrel Series, the Neighborhood Series, and more. The future looks bright.

This is an excerpt from the 2014 book Louisville Beer: Derby City History on Draft, by Kevin Gibson.