A Beer that Made Milwaukee Jealous: The Story of Pioneer Beer and the G. Weber Brewing Co. Part 2

The following is the second part of a multi-part historical piece on the G. Weber Brewing Company and Pioneer Beer. The information was compiled using these sources: “Roll Out the Barrels: Brewers of Eastern Dodge County, Wisconsin, 1850-1961” by Michael D. Benter; “History of the Weber Brewing Company” by Tony Geiger and Otto Tiegs; archives from the Dodge County Pionier and The Mayville News; “The Beers of Theresa Part 1: Die Biere von Theresa” and “The Beers of Theresa Part 2: Weber Bier” by Rob Bowe; interviews with Sam Chemer Jr. and descendants of the Weber family; the Theresa Historical Society; and volumes one through six of its newsletter, “The Bridge.”

The Volstead Act went into effect on January 17, 1920, bringing in the era of Prohibition. During this period, the Weber Brewery carried on by selling malt syrup, a near beer that contained less than 1% alcohol, and wort. According to Bowe, wort was a “liquid made from blending and cooking malted grain and hops before yeast is added for fermentation.”

In “The Beers of Theresa Part 1,” Bowe recorded a note from the writings of the late Theresa historian Les Beck, who noted: “The public would supply five-gallon (or larger) milk cans and buy wort as a health drink and for animal feed. Strict instructions were included NOT to add yeast, as that would cause fermentation and alcohol, resulting in a violation of the Volstead Act.”

Adding yeast is exactly what many customers did after purchasing the wort. It is rumored that others bought “spiked wort” directly from the Webers. While it is not confirmed, some believe that the Webers used the narrow tunnel that ran under the road to the Weber house (originally for piping steam and water) to transport beer during Prohibition.

In “Roll Out the Barrel,” Benter writes that some local residents believed “bottles of wort were handed one by one through the wall that separated the tunnel from the house. The people in the house would re-case the bottles and place the filled cases on a horse-drawn wagon to be distributed secretly.”

When alcohol became legal again after the ratification of the 21st Amendment in 1933, G. Weber Brewing Company struggled to “restart smoothly” due to the diverse and widespread marketing and operations of large breweries, along with outdated equipment. Restarting required “new help and new money,” leading the Webers to share the brewery’s ownership with Mark Hanna and Sam Chemer. Hanna was a secretary for the Wisconsin Taxpayers & Security Holders Association in Milwaukee and had received a secondary education in music. He invested $10,000 into the business, which is now valued at almost $200,000. According to Benter, Chemer, an innkeeper, owned 51% of the brewery and invested roughly $5,000, valued at almost $100,000 today. For Chemer, the business was a dream come true. His son, Sam Chemer Jr., recalled that his father always wanted to own a brewery.

Before the brewery was back up and operational, it ran into its first roadblock in November 1933 when its water tank exploded. However, this only put a pause on beer production. In early 1934, the G. Weber Brewing Company produced its first batch of beer since the start of Prohibition, and by the late 1930s, the brewery was producing between 8,000 and 10,000 barrels of beer per year. While much of the beer was sold to customers local to the greater Theresa area, due to Hanna and Chemer’s active involvement in finding new markets for the beer, sales extended as far as the Evergreens Resort located near Chicago. Chemer created a market for Pioneer Beer in Milwaukee when he converted his boarding house into the Pioneer Tavern located on Juneau Avenue. Due to Hanna and Chemer’s promotional efforts, Pioneer Beer became one of several beers to hold the nickname: “The Beer that Made Milwaukee Jealous.”

It was also in the 1930s that a “Pioneer” identity became the brewery’s signature brand, with the company sponsoring bowling and baseball teams and running promotional Sunday picnics where the beer was sold. Besides the beer itself, the staple of these picnics was the brewery’s own Theresa Pioneer Band. The band’s formation was inspired by Hanna’s background in music.

Along with being the days for hosting picnics, Sundays were also when people came to the brewery after church to purchase beer for the upcoming week. With customers receiving at least one glass of free beer, the weekly visit to the brewery became almost like a social gathering in the Theresa community.

To fulfill the demand and try to compete with the large breweries, the Weber Brewery modernized its machinery throughout the 1930s and early 1940s. A pasteurizing unit, keg filler, and keg elevator are just a few of the brewery’s new or updated pieces of equipment. Some of these were designed and built by Cornie Weber and Chemer in Chemer’s brewery workshop.

Promotion of Pioneer Beer and the other G. Weber Brewing Co. products began to abruptly decline on October 14, 1944, when Hanna died in a vehicle accident in Theresa.

World War II brought further struggles to the business due to the increase in barley prices. At this time, the brewery was no longer using locally farmed hops and barley. To reduce production costs, the beer was diluted and made with corn grits and a small amount of malted barley.

After the war, the brewery received a “Golden Certificate of Public Service” honor from the Brand Names Foundation. Unfortunately, with the domination of large breweries in TV advertising and the national market, by 1950, the production and overall existence of small breweries had significantly declined.

In 1950, the G. Weber Brewing Company sold only 5,500 barrels of beer. This decline continued throughout the decade. It is theorized that the brewers’ strike in Milwaukee helped keep the small Theresa brewery afloat during this time. In the article, “History of the Weber Brewing Company” by Tony Geiger and Otto Tiegs, Cornie Weber’s nephew, Gebhard, is recorded as saying, “Beer depots were coming like fleas; we couldn’t supply them all. We had to take care of the few accounts we had. We sold beer to the others when we had beer available.”

Ultimately, the Webers and Chemer decided to leave the beer business in 1958. The brewery was bought by attorney Nathaniel Lemke of Shorewood, and David Kincaid of Whitefish Bay served as the brewery’s salesman. Lemke appeared uninvolved in the business. His wife, Alice, was the brewery’s president for the short remainder of its existence, though, according to Benter, her role within the brewery appeared to have been mostly limited to administrative duties, likely due to her gender. Geiger and Tiegs recorded in their article that Alice always signed the brewery’s papers with her initials, “so people [wouldn’t] know that the firm’s [p]resident was a woman.”

In his book, Benter claims that it was most likely Kincaid’s poor financial decisions and short-term change of the beer’s recipe that hastened the brewery’s closure. By 1960, the brewery had only three employees and brewed less than 1,000 barrels of beer per year.

“Times had become so slow that, one year, the workers at the brewery raised ducks and geese outside the brewery and used the cellar in the brewery to butcher the fowl that fall,” Benter remembered from an interview with Roy Zastrow.

The G. Weber Brewing Company closed on St. Patrick’s Day in 1961.

Though the brewery itself has passed away into history, a part of it lives on in the hop vines from Benedict Weber’s farm that continue to grow on the J. Schiefer House on the Theresa Historical Society’s campus.

Thanks to the efforts of the Pioneer Keg and the Theresa Historical Society, Pioneer Beer was revived on March 3, 2026, with the brewing of its first batch in 65 years by Brewmaster Jacob Sutrick of Bavarian Bierhaus in Glendale. A private keg tapping ceremony was held at the Pioneer Keg on St. Patrick’s Day to celebrate the continuation of Pioneer Beer and the G. Weber Brewing Company’s lasting legacy.

“It’s good to see it come back,” said Sam Chemer Jr. after the tapping. “The beer was very good.”

To the descendants of “Gebby” Weber (Gebhard Weber Jr.), who had served as the brewery’s barrel room superintendent, the keg tapping ceremony was more than the revival of Pioneer Beer. It was an honor to their grandfather.

“Beer was near and dear to my grandpa’s heart,” shared Gebby’s grandson Dean Van De Hey. “My grandpa was my hero. This [tapping] has nothing to do with beer. It has to do with family.”