KC's Beer Brewing History

To help celebrate KC Oktoberfest, the Kansas City Public Library and Missouri Valley Special Collections are proud to help KC Bier Co. highlight the city’s German American and beer brewing history. Click on the links below to learn more about two prominent families that made a name for themselves in the brewing industry: the Muehlebachs and the Heims, and about how a 19th century German biergarten and amusement park once occupied the site of today’s Crown Center. You are also invited to explore KCHistory, where you can find thousands of digitized photographs and material related to the history of the Kansas City region and begin to learn more about Kansas City’s German American communities.

The Heim legacy

What’s Your KCQ? investigates a Kansas City brewing tradition

Among the available libations at the J. Rieger & Co. distillery in Kansas City’s East Bottoms is a specially brewed lager, Heim Bier – a homage to a pre-Prohibition family brewery that once operated and thrived on the site. A What’s Your KCQ reader recently enjoyed a pour and inquired about the name.

What’s the Heim history? It traces to Austria, where Ferdinand Heim Sr. was born in 1830. He and his brother Michael were trained by their father as ropemakers, emigrated to the United States when Ferd was 21, and tried their hands at a number of ventures before purchasing a small brewery in Manchester, Missouri, near St. Louis.

Who were the Muehlebachs and why is their name everwhere?

KCQ investigates

In a recent article about the history of Municipal Stadium, we learned that the former home of the Kansas City Athletics and first home of the Royals and the Chiefs was originally called Muehlebach Field. We also learned that it was named after Blues owner, George Muehlebach Jr. A reader noticed the same name on a downtown hotel sign and asked What’s Your KCQ?, a collaboration between the Kansas City Public Library and The Kansas City Star, to explain who the Muehlebachs were.

KCQ Taps into the History of an Early Kansas City Beer Garden

On the first weekend of October, thousands of Kansas Citians will raise a glass – or perhaps more fitting, a stein – to celebrate German heritage during KC Oktoberfest at Crown Center. It will be two days of Bavarian-style food, music, and, yes, bier. The latest installment of What’s Your KC Q?, a partnership between The Star and the Kansas City Public Library, tells the story of German immigrant named Martin Keck who operated a popular beer garden in the 1870s.