Why Fond du Lac lacks a brewery

Whitney, Rachel, Martin (invisible) and I celebrated MLK Jr Day with a trip to little Potosi, almost all the way to Iowa. A cute little brewery in a quaint valley abutting the Mississippi River, definitely a fun place for a road trip.

But if little Pososi has a brewery (not to mention the National Brewery Museum), why can't my hometown of 50 times more people have a brewery?

Fond du Lac, it turns out, has a long brewing tradition. It's just that it's disappeared.

A model train brewery kit is even modeled after what one FDL brewery used to look like.



Only one brewer, Bechaud Brewing, made it through the Prohibition. But only barely. Beer was last made in Fond du Lac in 1937. Their most famous brew, says the internet, was Empire Beer.



Cheers to that.