San Francisco's First Beer Bottle 1877

When the question arises who was the first brewery to bottle beer in San Francisco, the answer is invariably I have no clue as some enterprising forty-niner brewed some beer and bottled it, but the bottles were never embossed so if would be impossible to confirm any claim. But if you refine the question as to who was the first to bottle beer in their own embossed bottles, we can narrow it down to three possibilities as follows: The Swan Brewery is listed as an operating a Brewery in San Francisco from 1874-1881, it is listed under bottlers in 1875, 1877 and again in 1881. The Wilmot Brewing Company is only listed as being in the Brewery Business from 1877-1880 with no additional listings under bottlers. The final potential candidate is Feldman & Co. an extremely rare bottle listed under bottlers in 1877 only. I am not sure anyone can say with certainty that the Swan Brewery was the first to bottle in their own embossed bottles, but I can say with certainty it was one of these three companies.

San Francisco Stock Brewery 1868-1898

The San Francisco Stock Brewery was in business on the South East Corner of Powell and Francisco Streets and is first listed in City Directories in 1868 and last listed in 1898. It remained at this location for its entire time. Shown here are a couple of early advertisements taken from early periodicals including the Wasp and the California Demokrat. The officers of the Company are listed as F. Bruns, President, George Bruns, Secretary and Charles Willmot, Brewer.

S.F.Stock Brewery Advertisment 1893

This next image is from the California Demokrat , Tuesday May 30, 1893 a periodical focused on the German community and published in the native tongue. The S.F.Stock Brewery produced a Vacuum Beer, a method of lager beer manufacture which proved to be very popular. There exists a broken piece of an old 1880's applied top beer with a similar image of the State Seal with part of the Bottlers Name, which may have originated from this Brewery. It makes sense as this was the Trade Mark of the Brewery.

S.F. Stock Brewery Advertisment 1888

This ad for the San Francisco Stock Brewery was taken from my copy of "The Wasp" of Saturday, July 21, 1888 a periodical of the time that made satirical comments on the politics of the day. What a great image of the brewery with its fermentation and bottling rooms.

San Francisco Brewery History Blog

This blog is being constructed for the purpose of exchanging information among collectors and historians of San Francisco Beer Bottles and Advertising. It is hoped we can illuminate the history and individuals behind these early enterprises which have been with San Francisco since the time of the Gold Rush. Our focus will be to concentrate on the bottling of beer in embossed bottles and the advertising which accompanied these products starting in the late 1870's until Prohibition brought about the closure of these early breweries. I am just a guy who enjoys old glass and San Francisco History, from my earliest days digging bottles in the redevelopment areas to today. It's nice to build a collection of Breweriana and share it with fellow collectors, but in this way I sincerely hope we can expand our audience to historians and all those who wish to contribute to this knowledge base. As a friend of mine once said, "knowledge is of no use, unless shared with others". For those of you who would like to contribute stories, facts, please reach out to me at joneill@croins.com and I am happy to share with you the password to this site to let you add your contributions.