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The first brewer in Grand Rapids was an Englishman named John
Pannell, who came to town in 1836 and built a small brewery over a stream at the bottom of
Prospect Hill on the east side of Kent Street. His modest output - "a barrel or two
at a brewing" - of English hop beer gradually increased, and by 1844, thanks to
rising demand, his brewery was doing quite well. That same year, Christoph Kusterer, a
brewer trained in Germany, established a brewery on the west side of the river and shortly
thereafter went into partnership with Pannell.
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Christoph
Kusterer was a prominent figure in the local German-American community. A founding member
of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Immanuel in 1857, he was the captain of the
Grand Rapids Rifles, a German- American militia unit. He also served as a parade marshal
for the "Grand German Jollification," an event which celebrated Prussia's
victory over France in 1871. Kusterer's life came to a tragic end in October 1880 when he,
along with all others on board, went down with the steamer Alpena in a violent Lake Michigan storm. His brewing business, however,
was carried on by his sons and grandsons, and the Kusterer name remained linked to the
brewing of lager beer in Grand Rapids well into the twentieth century.
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Christoph Kusterer |
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Engraving
of the Kusterer Brewery
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The Kusterers and other German- American brewers stressed the
health- fulness of their product and advertised it as a "family drink,"
especially when compared with whiskey. Their claims may have had some merit, as early
Grand Rapids historian Albert Baxter pointed out:
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And just
here is a coincidence. Ague and fever - the old-fashioned, boneshaking kind - prevailed
very largely when those German beer makers came. In 1847 chills and shaking ague were
terrors of malarially afflicted people, and sallow faces and feeble frames were familiar
sights. In the eight years following came two experiences - a great growth in the habit of
drinking lager beer, and the almost complete dying out of the shaking ague. It is not the
province of the historian to moralize upon these facts, not to attempt an explanation, but
only to chronicle the coincidence. ( 5 )
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