Upon continuing my research of the Leinenkugel Brewery, I was able to find a good secondary source that provided me with some key information. On fundinguniverse.com, the article of Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company History makes itself a reliable source by providing key information about the brewery’s long history along with providing a nice overview of the business. The overview informs you on the brewery’s current address, phone number, home website, number of employees and more.  The article is nicely broken up into different time periods that describe Leinenkugel’s history. These sections cover a wide range of the brewery’s history beginning with the startup of Jacob Leinenkugel in 1867, to the information about its current expansion in the 1990s.

This article really helped me answer a few questions that I had been exploring. The source provided me with a great summary of how the brewery got started. The company’s founder Jacob Leinenkugel was an immigrant from Bavaria, and came from a family of brew masters.  Picking the great city of Chippewa Falls was no coincidence though. During the time of Jacob’s move to Chippewa Falls WI, the logging business was in the midst of its peek. This meant man were working manual labor for 12-16 hours a day/ everyday! So what better way to end a long work day than with a “couple” beers? The logging business wasn’t the only factor in making Chippewa Falls the home of Leinenkugel’s beer, the pure water was another key factor in establishing the brewery here.  Pure water was an easy and plentiful ingredient that came from the Chippewa Rivers and the Big Eddy Spring. A family history of brew masters, the logging business, and pure water, made for three great ingredients to establishing the Leinenkugel Brewing Company of Chippewa Falls WI.

Another great aspect I got from this source is that of seeing the progression of the distribution of the beer. Beginning with Jacob’s start up where his partner John Miller delivered the beer in a horse and cart to the local area, to now the wide range of distribution throughout the United States. Having the ability to make the beer more known throughout the U.S. came in 1988, when one of the nation’s biggest breweries (Miller Brewing Company) wanted to team up with the small brewery from Chippewa Falls. The article describes how many of the faithful Leinenkugel customers became nervous after the merger of the two companies. Loyal customers were afraid that Miller being the big company it was, would come in and change everything including the historical recipe. This obviously was not the case, Miller wanted to join with Leinenkugel for its respectable product while at the same time Leinenkugel wanted to join with Miller to help them expand its products distribution.

I was happy to read about this source in another classmate’s blog. After looking up the source myself and skimming over it I found that this source would be very helpful in my research. This article was able to provide me with information on two of my key research topics (how the brewery’s got started, why Miller/ Leinenkugel merged together). Though I got a lot from this article I would still like to explore more sources to find a more in depth story of Jacobs’s startup of the brewery. I am hoping to find some time to go and take to Leinenkugel Brewery tour to find out some facts/story’s that cant be found on the internet, along with getting a look at the inside of the historical brewery.