Ulmer Beer Mystery Solved - sorta

A short while back, we published this picture and talked about Ulmer Beer - noting that Ulmer seemed to be the only beer in town and in research found that The Sterling Bottling Co., bottled the beer that came out here in barrels on the Long Island Rail Road.  We felt like Sherlock Holmes incarnate.

Now we find that there is more to the story and we really missed the obvious....that is if we can ever make the deduction that the Ulmer's of brewery fame had something to do with our village other than shipping it beer.

We looked at the 1910 phone book to see if there was truly an Ulmer living in our midst and couldn't find one.  Mr. Petty, who owned the above pictured wagon to deliver his bottled brews was there but no Ulmer. So when this picture from about the same time popped up, our brain wheels actually started to move a bit.

It seems that we not only had an Ulmer Building but an Ulmer Block; beverage store on the corner, the fashion store in the middle and the A&P Grocery on the end.   The photo is clearly labeled the Ulmer Block, Greenport, NY.

We searched Ancestry.com for leads and found none.  The Ulmers of Brooklyn fame are in the middle of countless Ulmers in that neck of the woods so we are at a loss. But that is something we enjoy. Everyone loves a mystery.

Our journey this morning takes us to the Ulmer Block on other business and we are going to nose around some...see what is up...magnifying glass to the ready, cap on, cloak, no pipe....here here my dear Watson.

We'll report to you later.

Ulmer revisited, Old Bottles and Jaromír Vejvoda

D.C. Petty popped up in a picture driving his Ulmer Cabinet beer wagon and after we noted the Ulmer Beer sign over the old Claudio's building in the prior post, we figured there was something more to the tale so we went looking.  Again, we figure this picture to be about 1910 or a bit earlier and its taken outside Preston's at the foot of Main St. in Greenport.  Most of the buildings are recognizable including the Reeves building (the tall, square-topped on 1 in on the far left).  This would all seem logical in time, particularly if we put on our Sherlock Holmes thinking hats and noticed that Mr. Petty was delivering cases of bottled beer and not big kegs.  Aha!

It seems our Mr. Petty was affiliated with the Sterling Bottling Works here in Greenport. Ulmer shipped in barrels and Mr. Petty bottled the beer. In fact Mr. Petty bottled a lot of stuff and his bottles, which if you rake for chowder clams in the area, you occasionally turn up. Some of them fetch a pretty penny now and his "blob top" bottles are pretty scarce all cleaned up.

There are a couple stories deeper in this.  One is how bottles were made back then and the other is Sterling v. Stirling.  Lord Stirling was the subject of a prior entry so let us look at the other.

If you look at bottles from about 1910 or so, you can actually see that they were made in halves and fused together. The molds were of wood and one of us actually has a Ruppert Beer bottle "clamed' from the bay that shows the wood grain that was often left in the glass surface as something of a fingerprint.  The other method is the modern method that made the bottle 'proper' out of one injection mold - all save the bottom which was often added.  Enough. But Mr. Petty was known for his blob-top bottles and even Mr. Barth - of apothecary fame - used his services.

In the blog entry before this we noted that the Ulmer Brewery was in Brooklyn and the brew was likely transported out here in the traditional kegs and as the Long Island Railroad had its main line terminal here in Greenport and actually a train ferry went from here to Connecticut, perhaps Mr. Petty figured having a bottling company here made great sense.  Bulk in - bottles out.

Jan, one of our local residents with a great deal of common sense along with business skills noted that refrigeration as also an issue - how to serve a cold beer on a hot day.  We have noted that there were ice houses in the area - mainly to pack shellfish for the NY Market (yes we blogged about that a while back) but that doesn't permit cooling a big keg of beer - but bottles meant an ice box came into play just on the size issue alone so Mr. Petty's common sense was likely a gold mine.

Last, we come to Jaromir Vejvoda, who no one remembers although he died just over 20 years ago. He was a Czech musician who penned a catchy tune in 1927 "Škoda lásky".   We will tip the beer bottle on its side for a while and venture on to other things but it was a fine if not tipsy couple days of thinking about our village a hundred years ago....a fine time indeed.

Bushwick to Greenport on the 9am express

Four and twenty Yankees, feeling very dry,
Went across the border to get a drink of rye.
When the rye was opened, the Yanks began to sing,
"God bless America, but God save the King!" (Canadian Drinking Song 1920 at the onset of prohibition)

We are guessing that this picture dates from about 1900 as the road (Main St. Greenport) is dirt and there are no cars - just horse drawn wagons.  There are, in the distance clear signs of utility poles and we note that in 1900 several dozen businesses had phones so let's leave it at that.

We found interesting that on the roof of Claudio's Restaurant there is an "Ulmer's Beer" sign, plain as day. That set us in motion as Ulmer's Beer isn't in our memory and some of us grew up in the Midwest where it seemed every big town had a brewery or ten so Ulmer stumped us. 

With a little digging we found the Ulmer Brewery was founded in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn about 1870 at 31 Belvidere Street and pictures of it are extant. The building is on the historical tour and for good reason as a grand building it was.  Technology being what it is, we can spot that selfsame building from the air although it is clearly a shadow of its former self.  The "main office" under the flag to the left still stands and is on the tour if you care to find where the tour starts.

We checked and found that it is 95.88 miles from Ulmer to Greenport and on roads that probably didn't exist back then.  And then it hit us.  Why would the Ulmer Brewery, a fairly small time operation compared to Colonel Ruppert's Brewery and dozens of others, get a foot hold in Greenport.  By the picture, trucks were scarce and our minds finally focused on the fact that Greenport was the end of the main line of the Long Island Railroad and that the main station out west in metropolitan New York was - and you guessed it - not far from Ulmer. Not far at all. Why beer brewed and kegged in the morning could be on tap by 3pm in the afternoon and fresh as a daisy.

Now that we have settled that mystery, such as it was, we can go about our day.  Perhaps something from YouTube that is in keeping before you wander off.