CHICAGO — Seipp Brewing’s Extra Pale Pilsner has become a staple at taverns across the city since it was re-introduced in 2020.
Based on a beer that once quenched the thirst of 19th century Chicagoans, the Extra Pale is a link between the city’s vibrant brewing past and present, where craft breweries can seemingly be found in every neighborhood.
That link exists thanks to Laurin Mack, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Conrad Seipp, a German immigrant who started brewing beer in Chicago in the 1850s and grew his business into what was at one time the country’s largest brewery.
Mack grew up hearing tales of her distant relative, and four years ago she partnered with Metropolitan Brewing in Avondale to revive some of the company’s long-forgotten beers.
Since then, Mack’s worked with Metropolitan co-owner and head brewer Doug Hurst to create not just the Extra Pale but also the Columbia Bock and Bavarian Hefeweizen — styles that meshed with Metropolitan’s stable of German-style lagers.
Metropolitan closed late last year. Now, Mack is beginning a new chapter of the Conrad Seipp Brewing Company.
Quinn Myers details Seipp’s Chicago history:
With help from historian and friend Liz Garibay, Mack’s partnered with Pilot Project Brewing, a brewery incubator which operates a Logan Square taproom and brewery, to continue making Seipp’s at its Milwaukee production facility.
Hurst is staying on as a consultant, and together they plan to keep the legacy of Seipp beer alive — with the hopes of eventually adding a few more classic styles that haven’t been seen in Chicago in a century, Mack said.
“Seipp’s beer is about connecting with the past while enjoying the present,” Mack said in an interview this month. “I’m just trying to put one foot in front of the next and really focus on this transition and making sure that we keep the city and the Midwest with plenty of Seipp’s beer.”
‘It Helped Build The City’
Originally from Hessen, Germany, Conrad Seipp began brewing beer in Chicago in 1854, less than two decades after it was incorporated as a city.
German immigrants flocked to Chicago in the second half of the 19th century, and Seipp and other brewers competed to meet a massive demand for fresh beer.
Chicago’s greatest tragedy was also a moment of opportunity for Seipp. While many of his peers saw their businesses destroyed in the Great Fire of 1871, Seipp’s south lakefront brewery was spared — a twist of fate that helped him greatly expand his market, Garibay said.
“When the 19 breweries in the area where the fire was were all destroyed, he was able to take advantage of that and grow, and at one point in time, his was the largest brewery in the nation,” Garibay said. “I think that, that is incredibly significant to helping create Chicago as a center for beer.”
Seipp’s would eventually produce about 250,000 barrels of beer a year, not just for Chicago drinkers but also surrounding towns and even western states, Mack said. That success continued after Seipp died in 1890 and passed the business on to family members.
“He came to Chicago at the right time, when for the next century, there were beer drinkers here who were consuming just an incredible amount of beer, just the whole Midwest, everyone coming to build the city,” Mack said.
Seipp’s ran into economic trouble during World War I and, of course, Prohibition. The brewery shut down in 1933, right before the 21st Amendment repealed the ban on the production and sale of alcohol.
The company laid dormant for the next 87 years — until Mack began working with Metropolitan Brewing to resuscitate her family’s beer.
Revival And Expansion
As Mack began contemplating reviving the Seipp brand several year ago, she connected with Garibay, a historian with deep connections at Chicago’s breweries and taverns.
Garibay is the executive director of the Beer Culture Center, formerly known as the Chicago Brewseum. The organization hosts an annual summit and hopes to launch a standalone museum exploring the history of beer, Garibay said.
“I always joke that for a historian that focuses on beer, getting an email from a woman who is the descendant of Conrad Seipp is the equivalent of, like, an everyday person getting an email from someone like Oprah,” Garibay said. “That’s a giant exaggeration, but I mean, Conrad Seipp, if you’re studying American beer history, especially Chicago beer history, you know [what] this brewery was.”
Garibay introduced Mack to Doug and Tracy Hurst at Metropolitan, and they decided to first focus on making a pilsner — one of Seipp’s most popular beers and a style they thought would also do well today.
While there wasn’t an exact recipe to follow, Doug Hurst and Mack landed on their final product through detective work and educated guessing, she said.
“I think we probably got it very close to how it was because of Doug’s knowledge of traditional brewing techniques of that time,” Mack said. “We knew from the label, it said, ‘Made from Bohemian hops,’ and we know what those hops are. We know how pilsners were made before Prohibition, that’s why we called it a pre-Prohibition pilsner.”
Over the next few years, Seipp released two more beers created with a similar type of brewing forensics. That includes the Columbia Bock, which was advertised in a brochure from the 1893 World’s Fair as being dark in color and of “unusual strength,” Mack said. And in 2022, the company released the Bavarian Hefeweizen, also based on a Seipp classic.
“In a way, it was freeing to not have those recipes because we could connect to the past and really pay a lot of attention to the past, but also make a beer that people would want to drink now,” Mack said. “And we do that with all of our subsequent brands.”
Seipp beers are available across Chicago, from bars and corner stores to supermarkets like Whole Foods and, soon, Jewel-Osco.
The appeal of Seipp’s for drinkers is the high-quality, tasty beer and the history and local ties to the city’s brewing past, Garibay said.
“I think this is a brand that Chicago history nerds and honestly just Chicago nerds — which I feel like is just a Chicagoan — should truly embrace if they want to get connected to our history,” she said. “Unless somebody’s else’s great-great-great-granddaughter or -son from a brewery in 19th century Chicago came about, there’s nothing that rivals that story.”
A New Partnership
Metropolitan Brewing shut down its riverfront taproom Dec. 17 after 14 years in business. The company was facing mounting debt and a years-long rent dispute with its landlord.
Before Mack even launched the revived Seipp Brewing in 2020, she had connected with Dan Abel, the CEO and co-founder of Pilot Project Brewing, which acts as an incubator for startup brewers in Chicago and Milwaukee.
With Metropolitan no longer in the picture, Mack made the decision last year to move Seipp’s operations to Pilot Project’s brewery space in downtown Milwaukee — located in a former Pabst distribution center — where the company had open capacity.
Brewing began last month on the Extra Pale pilsner, which is available year-round. The Bavarian Hefeweizen will come out in May, and the Columbia Bock will be released in October, Mack said.
While there may be some irony in moving production of a classic Chicago beer to Milwaukee, Mack and Garibay said it makes sense given the cities’ myriad connections and brewing histories. Conrad Seipp and Frederick Pabst were also friends, and Seipp owned a vacation home on nearby Lake Geneva, Mack said.
Plus, Seipp beer will still be made with a vital main ingredient: Lake Michigan water.
“Pabst was one of Seipp’s pallbearers, not a pallbearer literally but what’s called an honorary pallbearer. So it means a lot to me to be doing this with Pilot Project, who they are, but also I think Conrad would get a huge kick out of his beer being made in Milwaukee with a connection to a friend of his,” Mack said.
Pilot Project will handle the logistics and technical issues involved with brewing Seipp beer, but the creative direction of the brand remains under Mack and Hurst. Seipp is also partnering with Louis Glunz Beer, another family-owned Chicago-area company, as its new distributor.
“We’re brewing the products; we’ll warehouse it in our facilities. We will deal directly with Seipp’s distributors, and then Laurin is there to build the business, to build the marketing story and everything that transpires with growing a brewery,” Abel said. “We are happy to be the new home of Seipp’s with the blessing of Laurin, and of course, the Metropolitan team.”
That growth could include adding a few additional Seipp classics to the roster, Mack said. For now, she’s focused on smoothly transitioning to their new brewery and continuing her core mission: making beers that can jumpstart meaningful connections for anyone who grabs a six-pack at the store or a pint — or two — at the bar.
“Sharing the story with Chicago and beyond, it’s just great to hear about where other people’s families were in the 1850s and what kind of beer they like,” Mack said. “Whether it’s a salesperson at Binny’s or someone I meet at a beer festival or just having a beer with friend on a weekend night, it’s really been important for me in that regard and hopefully others have benefited from having that as well.”
Support Local News!
Subscribe to Block Club Chicago, an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods. Already subscribe? Click here to gift a subscription, or you can support Block Club with a tax-deductible donation.
Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:
Support Local News!
Subscribe to Block Club Chicago, an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods. Already subscribe? Click here to gift a subscription, or you can support Block Club with a tax-deductible donation.
Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast: