The History of Point Special Beer
- John Harry
- May 6
- 5 min read
Updated: May 7
It might seem surprising nowadays, but Point Special was not always the flagship beer of the Stevens Point Brewery. And even more surprising, Point Special was first sold as a nonalcoholic beer during the dark days of prohibition when the brewery was fighting for its existence. This blog post is a deep dive into the beer that at one time was ranked the number one beer in America and helped put Stevens Point on the map.
Early Point Brewery
Point Brewery didn't start out being called Point Brewery, but rather until the brewery incorporated as the Stevens Point Brewing Company in 1901, the brewery name usually followed whoever owned the brewery at the time, with the first owners being George Ruder and Frank Wahle in 1857, and then Wahle continuing on his own until 1867 when he sold to Jacob Lutz who was joined in business by his brother Andrew a few months later brother Jacob who were farmers from the Almond, WI area. This was an area that hops were grown in for a time, so its possible that the Lutz's interest in the brewery also benefitted their farming operation.
There is little we know about the beer's style and flavor profile from these early years, apart from what was popular nationally, pilsner lager beer, and what was advertised. In the early days of the brewery Ruder and Wahle were brewing lager and stock ale, a British style. Unfortunately, the records of the brewery from pre-prohibition have so far been lost to time.
"Special Beer"
While we might feel "special" that the flagship beer is called "Point Special", that moniker used to be more common across the board for breweries in the United States. According to Oshkosh Beer Historian Lee Reiherzer, "starting in the late 1800s and running up to Prohibition, there were dozens of Wisconsin-made beers that carried either the “Select” or “Special” designation on their bottled beer labels. Some breweries used those terms interchangeably. The appearance of “Select” or “Special” coincided with the smaller breweries acquiring bottling equipment and producing their own bottled beer."
We know that prior to prohibition Andrew Lutz was producing beer labeled at Lutz's Special as late as 1897, the year he sold the brewery to Gustav Kuenzel. While there is a gap in advertisements until 1901, it appears that Kuenzel abandoned the Special name altogether. With the brewery then owned as the incorporated Stevens Point Brewing Company by various shareholders and officers from 1901 to 1924, it took Prohibition to bring back the Special name.
The Birth of a Flagship Brew
The brewery sold in 1924 to a brewery supplies salesman from Milwaukee named Ludwig Korfmann, betting that he could get a great price on a brewery while waiting out Prohibition. Relief didn't come quickly for Point Brewery. By the late 1920s the brewery was operating with a skeleton staff and trying to stave off closure.
In 1929, the brewery launched Point Special Beverage, a non-alcoholic beer. According to Reiherzer, there was a revival of the 'Special" name during Prohibition when breweries were trying to tie their non-alcoholic beer to the days before Prohibition. Indeed, Point Brewery's advertisements when launching their new NA beer stated that it "Tastes like pre-war lager."
When Prohibition ended in 1933, while most breweries in the state ditched the "Special" name not wanting to have their product confused for nonalcoholic beer, Point Brewery simply changed their labels from Beverage to Beer. Until the craft era, Point Special and the seasonal Point Bock were really the only beers that Point Brewery made, with a few exceptions (blog posts to come later!).
The Best Beer in America
After Prohibition, the challenges for small regional breweries didn't cease, if anything, they became more prevalent. In 1933, the year prohibition was repealed, there were 750 breweries still remaining in the United States. By 1973, there were only 65 left. Massive consolidation had taken hold in the industry as large breweries, with the assistance of their distributors in the new post-prohibition three tier systems, undercut small breweries on price making business unsustainable in the long term.
When 1973 rolled around for Point Brewery, times were the toughest they'd been since Prohibition. Some estimates were that the brewery had only months to survive. Everything changed from an unlikely source: Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko.
Royko, whose column was syndicated across the country, wrote that American beer as it stood then, tasted "as if it was passed through a horse." What Royko was pointing to was that the industry consolidation that had taken place was homogenizing the tastes of beer available to the American public. All of the large breweries only really offered light lagers with little variation of flavor. After Royko wrote that column the American people, and especially the large American breweries, were upset at what they considered a personal affront and bad industry PR. So, Royko put American beer to the test.
In July of 1973, Royko conducted a blind taste test in Chicago with people of various age and ethnic backgrounds, with normal beer drinkers and non-drinkers alike, featuring whatever beer brands he could get his hands on. The winner, perhaps not surprisingly was a beer from Germany called Wurzburger. However, the second place beer, and top American beer was Point Special.
This provided a marketing boon to the brewery with nationwide exposure. The tricky part was servicing all of these new incoming requests. The brewery knew they couldn't keep up with the sudden increased demand and still help the people of Central Wisconsin enjoy Point Special. The brewery management drew a line - if you want Point Special, you need to come to Stevens Point to buy it. The slogan became: If You're Out of Point, You're Out of Town.
The Royko taste test very much saved the brewery and helped them sustain operations until the craft era took hold in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the brewery had to adapt to changing market trends.
Today, Point Special is still the flagship beer of Point Brewery. Over the years, the brewery has released the beer in various commemorative cans including for the 125th anniversary of the city of Stevens Point, in 1976 for the nation's bicentennial, and now again for America's 250th birthday in 2026.
If you'd like to learn more about Point Brewery, make sure to purchase the book I wrote on the brewery's history at the Point Brewery Gift Shop, the PCHS General Store, or in our online store! Another option is to take a Point Brewery History Tour. This one hour tour is a deep dive into the Brewery's past and includes samples and a free history gift! Buy your tickets HERE.
