The Independent Brewing Company of Pittsburgh was a conglomerate of breweries, formed by the merger of fifteen Pittsburgh breweries in 1905.
History
Around the turn of the century, there were a total of fifty-eight breweries involved in mergers across Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Central Brewing Company accounted for twelve breweries in Luzerne and Lackawana Counties, the Consumers Brewing Company in Philadelphia accounted for six, and the Erie Brewing Company for four. Most breweries in the western Pennsylvania area coalesced into two competing groups, forming either the Pittsburgh Brewing Company or the Independent Brewing Company of Pittsburgh. The company was incorporated on January 7, 1905, with capital of $10,000. Unlike the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, whose breweries were located primarily in the city itself, the Independent Brewing Company of Pittsburgh's breweries were in towns surrounding the city. By 1907, the company had capital of $13,500,000. In 1916, the company claimed a capacity of 1,200,000 barrels. After Prohibition, however, only five branches of IBC and three of the PBC remained. The Duquesne Brewery, which had always been the foremost of the IBC's branches, was the only to return in 1933, operating under the Independent Brewing Company's name. It had already obtained a permit to brew the new 3.2-percent beer allowed by the Cullen–Harrison Act by March 1933; the company sent a case of the beer to President Franklin Roosevelt on April 5, 1933, as a gift. A crowd of 25,000 jubilant people gathered at the IBC's plant in Pittsburgh's South Side as legal beer was allowed to flow "unlicensed and uncontrolled" at 12:01 a.m. on April 7. Before 1934 would arrive, the name was changed back to the Duquesne Brewing Company of Pittsburgh, and the IBC would be no more until 2013, when the Kurzweg brothers revitalized the name. Matthew Kurzweg purchased an independent bar in the Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh, and his brother Peter runs the establishment, where they are devoted to the service of western Pennsylvanian craft beers. As of February 15, 2014, the "Indy" opened its doors with a music pairing of James Brown, an untraditional happy hour based on the duration of the album, and Four Season's Get DownBrown ale. The Independent Brewing Company is reinvigorating the focus on small batch, local beers, to off-set the usual big brewery conglomerates that can be found in just about any bar.
Branches
The following breweries operated under the auspices of the Independent Brewing Company of Pittsburgh:
