Most Prohibition tales normally revolve round mobs and speakeasies. The story of Minnesota 13, the moonshine produced by the farmers in Stearns County, Minn., some 90 minutes northwest of downtown Minneapolis, is just not considered one of these tales. It’s higher than that.
A daring assertion? Most likely. On the very least, it’s one of many wildest rides in Prohibition lore. The Minnesota 13 story is an account of survival and resilience, but it surely’s additionally a story involving bootlegging clergymen hiding illicit whiskey behind altars and a moonshining Benedictine monk named Brother Justus. It nearly appears too fantastical to be true, but it surely makes a shocking quantity of sense if you dig in.
When Life Provides You Corn, Make Moonshine
In 1893, the College of Minnesota developed a hearty hybridized corn seed that would produce a sugar-rich grain with a faster yield, making it preferrred for the state’s shorter rising season. It categorized the corn seed Minnesota 13, and through World Battle I, the farmers in Stearns County cities like Holdingford, Avon, and Melrose grew the hybridized grain in abundance to fill a worldwide market hole — a method considerably initiated by a nationwide request by President Woodrow Wilson to assist American allies.
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“Plenty of the troops from Western Europe have been additionally these younger, able-bodied males that would do farm work and develop grain,” explains Phil Steger, founder and CEO of Brother Justus Whiskey Firm in Minneapolis. “The farmers grew the heck out of the Minnesota 13 corn to make up for the dearth of European manufacturing.”
When World Battle I ended and the Western Europeans went again to their fields, demand for U.S. grain dropped dramatically, and Stearns County farmers discovered themselves with a surplus of corn they immediately couldn’t promote. Farmland costs additionally declined sharply after the battle, and this stifled their skill to unload land to assist pay their mortgages and the money owed they incurred by buying tools to ramp up manufacturing throughout the battle effort. This one-two punch created a disaster sufficiently big to be a precursor to the Nice Despair, and it put farmers in survival mode.
Prohibition’s passage in 1920 immediately offered farmers with a singular approach to revenue from their corn surplus — and a way more environment friendly approach to offer for his or her households and keep away from dropping their farms. They dove into distilling moonshine, they usually named their juice Minnesota 13 after the corn that acquired them there.
There was a giant downside, although: They’d no thought what they have been doing. This inexperience led to horrific occasions just like the occasional home getting burned down, and it made for some harmful hooch. The fledgling moonshiners long-established stills of galvanized tin taken from their roofing and soldered them with lead, and excessive concentrations of that lead and zinc from the tin would leech into the liquid. Additionally they added lye to the system to duplicate whiskey’s signature burn. These poisonous components may trigger critical hurt to imbibers’ brains and our bodies.
“I knew a person that drank that outdated moonshine as soon as,” says Marvin Trettel, Brother Justus’ grandnephew. “He instructed me that after he drank it, he couldn’t see for a number of days.”
The brand new moonshiners’ hearts have been in the fitting place, however their expertise weren’t. They wanted assist, and they’d quickly obtain it from an unlikely denouncer of the 18th Modification.
Holy Intervention
Stearns County’s farmers hated Prohibition, and in contrast to the puritanical Protestants pushing the nationwide Temperance motion, so did the native Catholic church.
For the farmers, their disdain was a cultural factor. Most of them have been German, Polish, or Slovenian immigrants, and ingesting beer moderately was a part of their id. The county church noticed Prohibition as an affront to its longstanding custom of brewing and distilling practices — a sentiment significantly harbored by the Benedictine monks residing in St. John’s Abbey in close by Collegeville Township, who have been identified keepers of stated custom. A lot of the county’s farmers have been additionally training Catholics who loved a tipple on Sundays.
“Brother Justus felt that if the legislation prevents you from making a residing, it’s important to break the legislation. However it’s important to be held to the next normal. Your success can not come on the expense of your neighbor’s well being.”
“Each city had a church and a bar earlier than Prohibition, normally throughout the road from one another,” says David Trettel, Marvin’s brother. “Everybody supported everybody else. The church buildings supported the bars. It constructed neighborhood.”
When Prohibition hit and farmers started to wrestle, the native clergy seen and acquired concerned. Whereas they acknowledged moonshining was an unlawful observe, it was not an immoral one as a consequence of surrounding circumstances. Clergymen bootlegged jugs of hooch, bailed moonshining offenders from the native jail, and even hid product behind the church’s altars as a result of they knew federal brokers wouldn’t look there. When somebody would admit to moonshining throughout confession, the clergymen would wave it off as no huge deal.
However for a younger monk named Brother Justus, Minnesota 13’s lack of high quality was an enormous deal.
A Monk With a Mission
Born William Trettel, Brother Justus joined St. John’s Abbey in 1907 when he was 17. Throughout his tenure there, he constructed a sterling fame for being a blacksmith and a distiller. He acknowledged that illicit distilling was a chaotic-good observe that offered a chance to assist farmers generate income and pull them out of poverty. However the native moonshine’s poor high quality didn’t sit effectively along with his spiritual conviction.
“When farmers or households acquired caught repeatedly, they usually misplaced their farm. People who didn’t get caught would purchase up these farms. This brought about dangerous blood that also exists to at the present time. There are some households that have a look at different households round right here and say, ‘These are the sons-of-bitches that purchased our farm when Pa was in Leavenworth.’”
“Brother Justus felt that if the legislation prevents you from making a residing, it’s important to break the legislation,” Steger says. “However it’s important to be held to the next normal. Your success can not come on the expense of your neighbor’s well being.”
This private dogma turned the monk into an educator. He leaned on his blacksmithing talent set and connections throughout the church to safe copper and construct stills for the farmers. He traveled to cities across the county and taught them correct distilling strategies like stripping out methanol, reducing the heads and tails, and barrel growing old. He additionally requested the farmers he aided to unfold the distilling gospel by instructing others as he instructed them. The one factor he requested in return for this benevolent work was a whiskey tithe: a small jar of the farmers’ completed product.
There was a leap of religion required when doing issues the Brother Justus approach, significantly when it got here to barrel growing old. Whereas among the farmers would age the whiskey for only a few days, most would usually sit on their juice for a month, and a handful would wait a yr earlier than sending it out. This growing old time is lightning fast in comparison with at this time’s requirements, after all, but it surely was sufficient time to theoretically enhance the danger of farmers getting busted by the feds — and it might be the feds, as native legislation enforcement not often acquired concerned and have been even prospects. This compelled farmers into creating inventive methods to transform their religion into motion, together with strategies found a long time after the very fact.
“We’ve a household farm owned by my nice grandparents up in Holdingford, they usually have been moonshiners,” says Gina Holman, founding accomplice and distiller of J. Carver Distillery in Waconia, Minn., about 88 miles from the guts of Stearns County. “My aunt and uncle have been doing a bed room rework some time again. In the course of the rework, they discovered this secret door, and there have been keg strains behind it. They knew it was the place they have been stashing their shine. It not solely saved the shine hidden, but it surely additionally saved it heat so it may age higher.”
Even when farmers got here up with intelligent hiding spots — piles of horse manure was a well-liked selection — they knew getting caught result in dire penalties. The primary offense would end in native jail time, and repeat offenders have been despatched to Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas. Whereas there have been a number of authorized loopholes in place that made it simpler to truncate jail sentences, a visit to the large home probably introduced monetary spoil and, in some circumstances, long-lasting enmity among the many farming neighborhood.
“For the households that distilled, [distilling during Prohibition] was a second of satisfaction and a second of disgrace.”
“When farmers or households acquired caught repeatedly, they usually misplaced their farm,” explains Chris Schellinger, founder and govt director of the Avon Hills People College in Avon, Minn., an establishment dedicated to preserving conventional expertise and craftsmanship within the face of expertise. “People who didn’t get caught would purchase up these farms. This brought about dangerous blood that also exists to at the present time. There are some households that have a look at different households round right here and say, ‘These are the sons-of-bitches that purchased our farm when Pa was in Leavenworth.’”
The Future, Distilled Down
Brother Justus’s work left an indelible affect. Minnesota 13’s fame as high quality hooch skyrocketed, ultimately spreading out effectively past the area. In her e book “Minnesota 13: Stearns County’s ‘Moist’ Wild Prohibition Days,” late creator Elaine Davis famous that most of the farmers distributed to crime syndicates in St. Paul and Chicago, and the juice ultimately popped up in speakeasies in New York and San Francisco. And whereas the mob acquired a style for Minnesota 13, they by no means actually infiltrated Stearns County, largely due to the neighborhood’s construction.
“Stearns County was a really insular, German-Catholic neighborhood,” Schellinger says. “Everybody’s first language was German, and it remained that approach for some households till the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies. This made it tough for outsiders to penetrate.”
Brother Justus transferred to a distinct abbey in Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1924. David and Marvin Trettel say he left as a result of he felt the world round St. John’s Abbey was getting too constructed as much as be a viable agricultural space, whereas some outdoors the household circle imagine the abbey moved him as a result of the feds caught on and have been closing in on him.
In accordance with Davis’s e book, it’s estimated that some 1,200 Stearns County farmers made Minnesota 13 throughout Prohibition. As soon as the twenty first Modification repealed the Volstead Act, manufacturing principally stopped save for a scant few rebels. Put up-Prohibition rules and economics made it too tough for farmers to develop the infrastructure wanted for reputable distilling, however there might have additionally been one thing extra private in play.
“Germans drank beer. Arduous liquor wasn’t their custom,” Schellinger notes. “They have been additionally religious, God-fearing Catholics. They most likely felt dangerous or responsible about moonshining, and as soon as it was now not mandatory for them to distill, they have been executed.”
“For the households that distilled, [distilling during Prohibition] was a second of satisfaction and a second of disgrace,” Holman provides.
Minnesota wouldn’t see its first reputable distillery till 2012, when Panther Distillery opened its doorways in Osakis simply northwest Stearns County. There are almost 40 legit distilleries all through the state at this time. And whereas Minnesota 13 most likely wasn’t nice by fashionable requirements, the state’s award-winning spirits scene means that the farmers had strong agricultural components at their disposal as soon as Brother Justus taught them what to do.
“Minnesota 13’s story exhibits that American whiskey will be a lot greater than Kentucky and Tennessee,” Steger states. “Minnesota has the grain. We’ve peat. We’ve limestone water from the Mississippi. We make barrels for lots of different distilleries. It’s tremendous if American whiskey is basically outlined by Kentucky and Tennessee, however Minnesota is elite whiskey nation, too.”
Brother Justus’s Legacy
David and Marvin recall Brother Justus dropping down from Saskatchewan to go to their household once they have been youngsters rising up in Stearns County. Their uncle would speak about his religion and present community-building efforts, however his Prohibition-era distilling days by no means got here up. “He handled distilling as a factor he did up to now,” Marvin says.
Brother Justus’s reluctance to convey his aspect undertaking wasn’t essentially a shared sentiment throughout the Trettel household. David remembers his father having a jar of Minnesota 13 tucked away in a cupboard, able to be pulled out and proven off when folks came visiting. The household additionally gave Steger their blessing to call his distillery after Brother Justus when he launched the distillery in 2014, they usually acknowledge that such branding (together with cross-emblazoned bottles) retains his legacy alive. Steger pushes the legacy ahead by way of distinctive merchandise such because the clear Irish poitin-like silver whiskey and improvements resembling its “cold-peated” whiskey, by which they use Minnesota peat to complete the juice as a substitute of smoking malted barley.
Because the individuals who have been round to see Brother Justus’s distilling handiwork are gone for probably the most half, the accounts of precisely how he helped Minnesota 13 rise to prominence throughout Prohibition are more and more anecdotal. But one core aspect stays fixed: the facility of neighborhood throughout tough occasions. It will not be as flashy of a Prohibition story because the tales involving mob bosses and speakeasies, but it surely’s one which feels way more relatable.
