There was a time in Northern Kentucky – particularly Newport – after Prohibition that you could only get your beer at what was called a jug house. The laws right after Prohibition wouldn’t allow grocers to sell beer. A separate jug house, with what is now called a (retail) package liquor license was only allowed to sell beer. Most jug houses were also small bars. At least in Newport they were called jug houses, because the neighborhood beer, Wiedemann Fine Beers, on Sixth and Columbia, sold beer in 2 gallon jugs. They also sold resealable clamp-on caps so that you could refill your jug at the jug house, like we do today with growlers at our local microbrews.
The reusable Wiedemann jug beer cap used for fills at a Newport jug house.
A large beer garden, designed by Samuel Hannaford was built in 1893 in the German Romanesque style on the Wiedemann brewery complex. Many German organizations and companies celebrated at the beer garden, which specialized in a dish called ‘pitched potatoes’ which were potatoes cooked in boiling tar to make a super fluffy spud.
The last remaining Newport jug house, Jerry’s Jug House, at 414 East Seventh Street, has just been purchased by award winning historic preservationist Mark Ramler and his cousin, bar industry veteran, Stuart MacKenzie, who plan to reopen it upon renovation later this year. They will be the fifth set of owners.
Jerry’s has a long history and started life as a jug house in the 1930s after Prohibition. It was owned by EDWARD “BARRELL” HEHMAN, who at the time ran the Newport Bowling Alleys. He converted it from two renovated garages. Barrell married Nora Degenhart Bruns in 1921, the mother of Robert Bruns, the next owner. Robert’s father and Nora’s first husband, Frank Bruns, died shortly after his brother Frank Jr. was born in 1913, and with two boys under the age of 2, and a single mother, Nora decided to send them to be raised at St. Joseph’s Orphanage. The Hehmans were members of Corpus Christi German Catholic Church in Newport. After Edward Hehman died in 1938, Nora ran the jug house until her death in 1948. Back then it didn’t have a bar. It was divided into 2 rooms – a sitting room for women, and a room where the beer was “iced” up. Robert Bruns took over from his mother, and named it Bruns’ Jug House. He was not surprisingly – given Newport’s gambling past – in the slot machine business and service calls were booked through the jug house. When Bruns died in 1961, it was purchased by Jerry Bittner and renamed. When Jerry died, his bartender since 1968, David Wentworth bought the business and operated it until his death last year.
Although a slice of a short time after Prohibition and before major national breweries took over what was a purely local scene, there were many jug houses in Newport, Covington, and northern Kentucky. Upon the repeal of the 18th amendment in 1933, which ended Prohibition, only six breweries returned to the scene – Bruckmann, Hudepohl, Foss-Schneider, and Schaller in Cincinnati; Wiedemann in Newport, and Bavarian in Covington. Wiedemann pretty much owned the bars in Newport, Dayton, and Bellevue, while Bavarian supplied those in Covington. Bruckmann sold beer in jugs as well, but specific retail stores in Cincinnati where it could be purchased (same in Cincy that beer just after Prohibition couldn’t be purchased at groceries) were not known as jug houses, they were more commonly known as pony kegs, a term that predated Prohibition. The jug house moniker was a unicorn of northern Kentucky.
Growing up my Mom told stories that when she was a girl in the 50s, her Dad would send her down the alley from their bakery in Dayton, Kentucky, to get a quart of Wiedemann beer for him at the carry out on the corner after he was done with the baking. Grandpa called it Wiedy-Pop, and drank it into the 1980s, even after it wasn’t being made in Newport.
The 1950 Wiedemann beer lineup from the Wiedemann Cookbook, showing the jug Bohemian lager beer in bottom left.
There was a Harold’s Jug House at 701 Central at Seventh, owned by Harold Johnson of Newport, that sponsored a softball team in the 50s and 60s that competed with teams sponsored by Bruns and later Jerry’s Jug House. Bruns also sponsored a women’s bowling league in the 1950s, even though it was a stag bar with only a men’s bathroom until much later in its life. A Wigg’s Jug House operated in Covington in the early 1960s, but they most probably sold Bavarian jug beer.
A 1955 ad in the Cincinnati Enquirer noted a grocery in Newport for sale, with “room for a jug house.”
Unfortunately both Wiedemann and Bavarian suffered the same fate – they had old inefficient pre-Prohibition breweries that couldn’t compete when the national brands came on the scene. Wiedemann sold to Heilmann Brewery in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, in 1967 and was later acquired and brewed by the Pittsburg Brewing Company until 2007.
In 2012 the Newport based Geo. Wiedemann Brewing Company, LLC, re-established the brand and started brewing Wiedemann Special Lager as a craft beer. The brand was acquired by beer brewer and journalist Jon Newbury. Just last year Jon and his wife Betsy, opened the Wiedemann Brewery and Beer Garden in the old Imwalle Funeral Home in St. Bernard, Ohio, to carry on a tradition started in 1870 by Germanic immigrant Georg Wiedemann. They do this very well with over twenty varieties, more than the original Wiedemann ever brewed. I visited the new Wiedemann Beer Garden with my brother and nephew for the first time last weekend and had a great time and enjoyed the food (which included goetta tator tots) and, of course the beer.
Hanging prominently on the wall inside the new Wiedemann is a large photo of the Jerry’s Jug House sign, which will remain hanging in place in Newport as the last of its kind.
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