Rizzo Michael F - Buffalo beer : the history of brewing in the Nickel City

Published by American Palate

A division of The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2015 by Michael F. Rizzo and Ethan Cox

All rights reserved

First published 2015

e-book edition 2015

ISBN 978.1.62585.168.0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953416

print edition ISBN 978.1.62619.637.7

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For Steve, Gene, Mike, Al and Neumann, who introduced me to heavy metal and beer.

Dedicated to my wife and sonsJennifer, Aleister and Phineasfor their love and patience and to David Mik and Stephen R. Powell, for keeping the flame of history alight.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

I was sixteen years old. It was a typical cold winter night in Buffalo, New York, where I grew up, when one of my new friends, Gene, called me and asked if I wanted to hang out. Of course I did. I was in a new school, a new neighborhood, and he was the first kid who introduced himself to me.

I met him, Steve and Mike at his house. What was the great plan on this cold night? Why, drink beer and hang out under the viaduct. At this point, I had never really had beer and was not really interested, but these guys were going to do it, so I joined them.

Looking back, standing under that viaduct two blocks from my house, drinking a (literally) ice cold Genny, my fingers frozen, shivering in the cold, bullshitting with those guys, was one of the best nights of my young life. It would lead to many years of friendship.

That was my baptism into beer.

Sometime in the late 1990s, I took a multi-week course on homebrewing that was run by Paul Dyster, the owner of Niagara Tradition Home Beer and Wine Supply (and currently mayor of Niagara Falls, New York). One of the guest speakers Paul had was a friend and homebrewer named Tim Herzog who wanted to start his own brewery. Just a few years later, he didFlying Bison Brewing Company. As for that class, I went on to brew a few batches of beer and even entered one in a competition, taking home third place in a specialty category.

In 2008, I formed a Buffalo history tour company, and by 2011, we had added walking tours of former brewery magnates in United German and French Cemetery in Cheektowaga. The tours were well received, and through them I met Ethan Cox, co-founder and president of Community Beer Works. We had briefly discussed the only other book on Buffalo beer history, Stephen Powells Rushing the Growler, and our desire to rewrite it one day but left it at that.

When I decided I wanted to pursue this project, he was the first and only person I contacted, and he was ready. Ethan has been a great co-author, editing my manuscript, finding inconsistencies in the stories and questioning, as well as applauding, different aspects of the book. In addition, he went way beyond what I anticipated, taking photos and updating the Facebook page for the book months before its release.

There are always people and places that need to be recognized when a project like this is undertaken. First, thank you to Ethan for his commitment to the project. I think we succeeded. Thank you to brewery historian Dave Mik for access to his enormous collection of breweriana and to Chris Groves for the fantastic photography. Thank you once again to Fultonhistory.com for access to newspaper archives. For photos, thank you to Jennifer Reed, WNY Craft Beer magazine, Jeff Ware, Matthew McCormick and Buffaloeats. org. If we missed anyone, we apologize.

And as always, thank you to my wonderful wife, Michelle, and son, Gerlando, for losing me at times while I delved into the Internet or went on a two-day writing binge. I love you both tremendously.

MIKE RIZZO, OCTOBER 2014

I have a photographamazinglyof the moment I first discovered that Buffalo had this incredibly rich brewing (and malting) history. I was home in Buffalo for Christmas 1999, on a break from studying cognitive psychology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. I was sitting in front of the tree, holding Stephen Powells Rushing the Growler (a copy I still have in much thumbed-through condition), which was a present that year from my mom. I also distinctly remember buying new local beer that year in the form of Blizzard Bock, from the now defunct Buffalo Brewing Company. Even as I was off in the desert studying intently to research interesting questions in human-language processing (and homebrewing like mad), the seeds of a future in Buffalos brewing industry were being planted. I have to thank my mother, Stephen Powell and Kevin Townsell for that.

In 2006, my wife and I relocated to Buffalo from Chicago and began our family; I took a job teaching at a local, small college. I also immediately got active in the local homebrewing scene and have met so many great people through it over the years. I cant thank the various members of the Niagara Association of Homebrewers and the owners of Niagara Tradition Home Beer and Wine Supply enough for encouraging my beery passion but also for formalizing my understanding of beer in the form of education and certification. My Beer Judge Certification Program study and testing have added a lot to my evaluative skills.

Additionally, writing for the online (and briefly print) publication Buffalo Rising introduced me to many of the generous and entertaining figures in Buffalos brewing, drinking and restaurant industry, and without those connections, I very much doubt Id be part of a successful brewing concern or writing this book. In some sense, Newell Nussbaumer is both directly and indirectly responsible for the craft beer and brewing explosion weve seen in Buffalo over the last eight years or so, and I owe him a debt of gratitude for helping me into the industry.

In 2009, when it became clear that I was parting ways with the academic world, my longtime friend Dave Foster and I began exploring businesses that would combine my brewing interests and his restaurant background. Around the same time, I approached a guy Id met many times on the beery scene, Robert Rudy Watkins, about conspiring to form some kind of homebrewing collective with a shared space. Neither project happened, exactly, but together they evolved into Community Beer Works, and along with Greg Tanski; Dan Conley; Chris Smith; Matthew Daumen; and my dad, Joseph Cox, weve had a really incredible run so far with a very promising future ahead. I have to thank those guys for putting up with me, especially as I try to juggle ever more balls at once, this book being one of them.

Mike aptly described, in his own preface, how we came to meet and the genesis of this partnership; I am forever thankful for his reaching out to me for help. There is no way this book would have or could have happened without himnot only did he have the means to reach out to The History Press to initiate the project, but he can also write far better and faster than I, and his research-from-afar skills are impressive. In providing what I could to this endeavor, I met and got to know an incredible researcher and collector, David Mik (and his wife Lori), and I also cannot thank them enough for allowing me and Chris Groves into their house (and Daves basement museum) for incredible photos and information.