The 1893 World’s Fair bar is stocked with a new brew. Columbia Bock from Chicago-based Conrad Seipp Brewing joins Revolution Brewing’s “Fist City” beer, Temperance Beer Company’s “All the World is Here” beer, Virtue Cider’s Southcider, Journeyman Distillery’s Field Gin, and the long line of Columbian Exposition themed products from Few Spirits.

Columbia Bock from Chicago-based Conrad Seipp Brewing.

The German-style lager is an attempt to recreate the company’s original 1893 recipe based on a contemporary description of it being “very dark in color and of unusual strength” in the company’s promotional souvenir for the 1893 World’s Fair. The newly revived Conrad Seipp Brewing characterizes their 2021 special release bock as being “malt forward with a rich body and dry finish.”

Seipp’s Columbia was brewed in 1893 especially for the World’s Fair in Chicago.

Conrad Seipp Brewing Company was the largest brewery in Chicago from 1854 to 1933. William Conrad Seipp served as a member of the original “committee of one hundred” Chicago citizens appointed by Mayor Dewitt C. Cregier in 1899 to secure the Columbian Exposition for this city. Thies J. Lefens, secretary and treasurer of the Conrad Seipp Brewing Company, served on the Board of Directors of the World’s Columbian Exposition Corporation and sat on the Committee on Agriculture.

A Director’s medal from the 1893 World;s Columbian Exposition, presented to Thies J. Lefens. Lefens was the secretary and treasurer of the Conrad Seipp Brewing Company and served on the Board of Directors of the Exposition. [Image from the Numismatic Guaranty Corporation.]

Columbia Bock comes as a six pack of 12-ounce bottles and is available in select locations in Chicagoland and Wisconsin.

Some information for this article came from Joshua Riley’s story “Conrad Seipp brews again” in the Chicago Reader.