Introducing Bube’s Brewery: A Bit of History
I went to Mount Joy, Pennsylvania (about twenty-five minutes from Hershey) to find the Bube’s Brewery (102 North Market Street in Mount Joy, PA 17552; (717) 653-2056). I wasn’t sure exactly sure how to pronounce the word “Bube.” Was it Boobs? Or, Boobies? Neither of which sounded too likely to me. At the end of our meal, I did ask the waitress and she confirmed that the establishment’s name was indeed pronounced “Boobies.” But there’s nothing else about this place that should conjure up images of Hooters.
The name comes from the surname of the man who founded the original Bube’s Brewery, Alois (ah-low-ees) Bube. Mr Bube was one of the pioneers of the German-style lager revolution that swept the US in the mid 1800s. Prior to that, beer in America was patterned after the English-style ales. The 1860s and the 1990s have something in common, both were decades of great brewing expansion. In the 1860s it was local and regional lager brewers. The 1990s was the brewpub boom (a bubble which has since burst leading the closure of many brewpubs in the early twenty-first century).
Alois Bube began brewing in Germany prior to immigrating to the US. He bought a small brewery in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania in 1876. The brewery continued to operate even after Mr Bube’s death in 1908. According to the tour guide at the Brewery, the reason that the physical structure wasn’t demolished during the Black Decade of Prohibition (1920 to 1932) was that Mr Bube’s house was above the Brewery and members of the Bube family were still living there. According to the Bube’s website, the Brewery stopped production prior to Prohibition. The new Bube’s Brewery (an onsite microbrewery) began producing beers in the fall of 1999.
Today, Bube’s Brewery is a complex bringing together a taproom, a microbrewery, a homebrew shop, a martini bar, two restaurants, an art gallery, a biergarden, and who knows what else. Bube’s Brewery is a veritable beer theme-park. I would recommend at least two visits, but three would be better so you can maximize your experience of this unique beer drinking space.
For more on Bube’s see Inside Bube’s Brewery.
