8 Things You Should Know About Hamm’s, ‘The Beer Refreshing’

Minnesota: home of the Twin Cities, the Juicy Lucy, the Mall of America, and Hamm’s. While “the beer refreshing” is now available in select markets nationwide, it remains a true Midwest staple, and has been since the 1860s. One of the few regional lagers to survive Prohibition, Hamm’s has not just endured, it maintains a loyal fanbase.

There are a few quintessential characteristics that successful American regional lagers tend to share. The brand names are short and sweet. The beers are easy-drinking, but not too flavorful. And the brands’ respective advertisements play up the American landscape and fresh water sources. Hamm’s checks every box — well, sort of. While many regional lagers coast on local pride, Hamm’s actually tastes pretty damn good, too.

Beyond great flavor, the lager “from the land of sky blue waters” stands out from the crowd in branding, history, and its cult-like following. Here are eight things you should know about Hamm’s.

The brewery’s namesake wasn’t a brewer.

The history of Hamm’s dates back to 1865 when German immigrant Theodore Hamm inherited a St. Paul, Minn., brewery from his friend Andrew F. Keller, who had established it in 1858. Hamm became a business partner when Keller needed additional funding to fuel the brewery’s expansion, and Keller ultimately cut ties with the business in the early 1860s, leaving the keys to Hamm.

Hamm changed the brewery’s name from the Pittsburgh Brewery to the Excelsior Brewery. Though never actually a brewer himself — Hamm was a local saloon owner and a trained butcher — he proved to be a savvy business owner, as the brewery ascended to become the second largest in Minnesota by the 1880s. In 1896, it was renamed the Theodore Hamm Brewing Company.

The first Hamm’s brewmaster was Jacob Schmidt of Schmidt beer fame.

When Hamm took the helm of the brewery, he enlisted his friend and fellow German immigrant Jacob Schmidt as brewmaster. Schmidt worked with Hamm’s for several years before working at a number of other lager breweries around the country. In 1900, he established his namesake business, the Jacob Schmidt Brewing Company. The St. Paul-based operation became famous for its regional lager, Schmidt beer, which is currently owned and produced by Pabst.

Die-hard Hamm’s fans have a nickname.

If you love Phish, you’re a “Phan.” Followers of the Grateful Dead are known as “Deadheads.” Devotees of the late Jimmy Buffett are “Parrotheads.” And die-hard Hamm’s fans are considered “Hammpions.” As far as we can tell, no other fanbase of a specific beer has gotten tagged with such a moniker. Every regional lager has its loyalists, but clearly Hamm’s fans are on another level.

Punk rockers took over Hamm’s San Francisco brewery in the ‘70s.

For almost a century, Hamm’s was brewed and enjoyed exclusively in the Midwest, but the 1950s and ‘60s saw the company buy up a number of additional facilities in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and Baltimore in a stride to expand its reach to the rest of the U.S.

Unfortunately, all four breweries had either closed or been sold off to other companies by the early ‘70s. When the San Francisco plant closed in 1972, the brewery was left abandoned — but not demolished. In the early ’80s, some “urban spelunkers” broke into the space and used jack hammers to break into the old brewing vats. A bunch of punk musicians squatted them, turned them into living spaces, and used them as studios. For a few years, “The Vats” were the epicenter of the local punk scene before the building was renovated and turned into office spaces in the mid-’80s.

Theodore Hamm’s grandson was the target of a massive kidnapping case in the ‘30s.

There have been a slew of high profile kidnapping cases in beer history. One of the earliest examples was the kidnapping of William Hamm Jr., Theodore’s grandson and the then-president of the brewery. On June 15, 1933, Hamm was leaving his office when four members of the Barkis-Karper Gang pulled up and shoved him in the back of a car and whisked him away to a hideout in Illinois.

The gang sent a series of ransom notes to the Hamm family, signed by the kidnapped Hamm, demanding a $100,000 ransom (nearly $2.5 million today). The Hamm family paid the sum two days later, and William Hamm Jr. was released near Wyoming, Minn., on June 19.

Three months later, the FBI was able to lift fingerprints from the ransom notes using “Latent Fingerprint Identification” — the first time the technique had ever been successfully used to acquire forensic evidence — and pin the crime to Alvin Karpis, “Doc” Barker, and Charles Fitzgerald. Karpis was eventually charged for the crime and sentenced to life in prison.

The Hamm’s slogan is derived from the name of the homeland of the Dakota Native American tribe.

In line with many breweries throughout the 20th century, Hamm’s advertised its beer with imagery and jingles playing up Americana wilderness and sprawling landscapes. Schmidt’s slogan has always been “the brew that grew with the great Northwest.” Coors isn’t coy about promoting its Rocky Mountain roots. And in the 1940s, Hamm’s started using its now-famous slogan: “Born in the land of sky blue waters.” Minneapolis-based ad agency Campbell-Mithun created the original “Land of Sky Blue Waters” campaign, which featured scenic lakes and woodlands, as well as an accompanying jingle. The phrase “land of sky blue waters” is a rough translation of the Native American Dakota term for Minnesota “Mni Sóta Makoce,” which means “land where the water reflects the skies.”

The first sketch of the iconic Hamm’s bear was drawn on a restaurant napkin.

The “Land of Sky Blue Waters” campaign didn’t originally feature humans or animals, but that changed in the early ‘50s with the introduction of the Hamm’s mascot: a clumsy black-and-white bear that served as the star of TV and print ads for decades.

There is some uncertainty about who created the bear, but by most accounts, he was dreamed up during a 1952 meeting at Freddie’s restaurant in Minneapolis. As the story goes, Campbell-Mithun creative director Cleo Hovel and California-based animator Howard Swift were discussing the possibility of adding an animal character to the “Land of Sky Blue Waters” campaign, and Hovel drew a rough sketch of the bear on a napkin.

Hamm’s is now brewed in Milwaukee by Molson Coors.

After Hamm’s made efforts — and sadly, failed — to become a nationally distributed brand in the mid-to-late 1900s, the Hamm family sold the company to Heublein Inc. in 1968. The brand went through numerous ownership changes over the remainder of the century, eventually falling into the hands of the Miller Brewing Company in 1999. Now, courtesy of a string of acquisitions and mergers, Hamm’s is owned by Molson Coors and brewed at the conglomerate’s Milwaukee Brewery. The original Hamm’s St. Paul brewery is now home to a distillery and micro brewery, with the remaining vacant space expected to be turned into an apartment complex in the near future.

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