Brewery Hosts
Minhas Brewery will be hosting the Business After Hours from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday. The event is an opportunity to network with other area businesses, tour the new brewery and enjoy hors d'oeuvres and cocktails. RSVP by calling Minhas Brewery at 325-3191.
MONROE - History is on display at the Minhas Craft Brewery.
More than 800 people already have seen the new display of historic printer plates found in the basement of the brewery this past fall. Some of the plates may be from the 1930s.
Tami Hoesly and Kathy Jones said the new owners of the brewery, Ravinder and Rajit Minhas, wanted to create a brewery memorabilia display.
"They told us we could look everywhere," said Hoesly, who was just new on the job at the time.
"We went to the basement and were digging around, and found a box buried in the back among tap handles and old signs," Jones said.
The women pulled out an old box about 12 by 15 inches, with 40 print plates, or cuts, stacked inside.
Several of the plates are only a couple inches tall, but others are about 6 or 7 inches.
The back room of the old brewery basement is not a fine place to store company antiques. Hoesly said the basement is dark, damp and has no lights.
Jones, who has been with the brewery for 17 years, said the front basement room had been used as storage for old tables and signs for years.
"But nobody looks in the back room," she said.
Hoesly and Jones brought the box upstairs and started to unpack it, and realized the significance of the items.
"We ran to get everybody and said, 'Come look at our treasure,'" Hoesly said.
Used at one time to print labels at the brewery, the latest additions to the Minhas Brewery memorabilia room are cleaned and laid out in display cases. Now visitors to the room can see the plates that were used to make the labels on some of the bottles on display.
"Moni, the father of the owners, said we should see if we could get them reprinted for a sample," Hoesly said.
In March, Hoesly searched for a printer who would agree to do reprints from the cuts. The Monroe Times had just the equipment and printer for the job.
Ron Johnson has been in the printing business for 50 years and came in to do the special request job.
One prominent label cut is "Golden Glow" beer ... or non-alcoholic beer. Golden Glow was marketed as "double dry" -- no sugars or flavors, no starches and non-fattening.
Hoesly said the brewery never went out of business since it opened in 1845, even during the Great Depression. Golden Glow "near-beer" helped keep the workers on the job.
Among the other treasures the women found are advertisement calendars from 1947 to 1954, found rolled up in the back of a desk.
Jones said they had to carefully unroll them because the paper was so brittle.
Also on display are hand-written accounting books from the 1940s through the 1970s and wooden crates of beer bottles; one from the 1970s still has full bottles.
The memorabilia room has a full collection of bottles, an antique air compressor, a hand-operated can crimper and wooden kegs.
More than 29,000 visitors have toured the Brewery Memorabilia Room since it reopened in Nov. 2001. Normal tour hours are Fridays at 1 p.m. and Saturdays at 1 and 3 p.m.
More than 800 people already have seen the new display of historic printer plates found in the basement of the brewery this past fall. Some of the plates may be from the 1930s.
Tami Hoesly and Kathy Jones said the new owners of the brewery, Ravinder and Rajit Minhas, wanted to create a brewery memorabilia display.
"They told us we could look everywhere," said Hoesly, who was just new on the job at the time.
"We went to the basement and were digging around, and found a box buried in the back among tap handles and old signs," Jones said.
The women pulled out an old box about 12 by 15 inches, with 40 print plates, or cuts, stacked inside.
Several of the plates are only a couple inches tall, but others are about 6 or 7 inches.
The back room of the old brewery basement is not a fine place to store company antiques. Hoesly said the basement is dark, damp and has no lights.
Jones, who has been with the brewery for 17 years, said the front basement room had been used as storage for old tables and signs for years.
"But nobody looks in the back room," she said.
Hoesly and Jones brought the box upstairs and started to unpack it, and realized the significance of the items.
"We ran to get everybody and said, 'Come look at our treasure,'" Hoesly said.
Used at one time to print labels at the brewery, the latest additions to the Minhas Brewery memorabilia room are cleaned and laid out in display cases. Now visitors to the room can see the plates that were used to make the labels on some of the bottles on display.
"Moni, the father of the owners, said we should see if we could get them reprinted for a sample," Hoesly said.
In March, Hoesly searched for a printer who would agree to do reprints from the cuts. The Monroe Times had just the equipment and printer for the job.
Ron Johnson has been in the printing business for 50 years and came in to do the special request job.
One prominent label cut is "Golden Glow" beer ... or non-alcoholic beer. Golden Glow was marketed as "double dry" -- no sugars or flavors, no starches and non-fattening.
Hoesly said the brewery never went out of business since it opened in 1845, even during the Great Depression. Golden Glow "near-beer" helped keep the workers on the job.
Among the other treasures the women found are advertisement calendars from 1947 to 1954, found rolled up in the back of a desk.
Jones said they had to carefully unroll them because the paper was so brittle.
Also on display are hand-written accounting books from the 1940s through the 1970s and wooden crates of beer bottles; one from the 1970s still has full bottles.
The memorabilia room has a full collection of bottles, an antique air compressor, a hand-operated can crimper and wooden kegs.
More than 29,000 visitors have toured the Brewery Memorabilia Room since it reopened in Nov. 2001. Normal tour hours are Fridays at 1 p.m. and Saturdays at 1 and 3 p.m.