Of all the crafts once commonly practiced in Milwaukee, barrel-making was among the most demanding. Every wooden stave had to be cut to precise dimensions, bent to a specific curve, and then bound with its mates by metal hoops to form a perfect circle.
The work was as essential as it was exacting. In the years before bottles, cans and metal kegs, it was wooden barrels that carried every drop of Milwaukee’s most famous product to market.
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Coopers were employed by the dozens at the city’s largest breweries, including the crew pictured here at Pabst in 1890. One size of final product did not fit all.
The Pabst cooperage turned out full 31-gallon barrels as well as half-, quarter-, and eighth-barrels for smaller customers. In 1890, the shop’s total output was 148,298 barrels of all sizes. Entire forests of oak trees were leveled so that Pabst could keep the suds coming.
Although they sell briskly in garden centers and antique shops today, wooden kegs had multiple drawbacks. They were expensive, for one thing; in 1890, Pabst spent nearly $100 in 2025 dollars to make one full-sized barrel. They were also heavy; a beer-filled barrel weighed more than 250 pounds, which may explain why beer wagon drivers tended to resemble NFL linemen.
Wooden kegs were subject to breakage, theft and wear, and they had to be regularly relined with pitch (pine tar, basically) to keep the beer from interacting with the tannins in the wood – quite the opposite of the barrel-aging process popular for some craft beers today.
Pabst started experimenting with steel barrels in 1910, and by the 1930s they had become the industry standard. The materials have changed and the craft is fading, but you can still roll out a barrel of Pabst 135 years after these proud Milwaukee coopers posed with the tools of their trade.
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK:
- The compact carving bench is called a schnitzelbank, featured in a popular German novelty song of the same name.
- Electric lightbulbs were a welcome innovation in 1890.
- Piles of wood shavings were an abundant byproduct of every cooperage.
- Pabst’s coopers refurbished old barrels as well as making new ones like those stacked on the right.
IN COLLABORATION WITH MILWAUKEE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
