Johann Adam Blüm (Blim) was born in Worms, Prussia.  In 1839 he married Magdalena (Lena) Annie Keller.  It was a union that would produce three children. 

The Blüm family emigrated to America on the 23rd of July, 1860 and settled in Iowa.  Upon doing so they anglicized their name from Blüm to Blim.  In 1861 the railroads arrived in Waterloo and with them the Blims.  Adam with his oldest son, 23-year-old Martin, opened a meat market in that town in the summer of 1865.  Waterloo was growing fast in the early 1860s and the Blim and Son Meat Market was growing fast too.  Over then next few years the business was expanded into a grocery and general provisions stand.

Since 1865 Joseph Taylor, an Englishman, had been doing brisk business in Waterloo with an ale brewery.  Certainly to the Germanic Blims this fact was noted, as was the fact that nobody in town was actually making lager.

In 1869 the Blims saw an opportunity and put their resources into a beer brewery on the outskirts of town that had recently been put up by Messrs Fressle & Tschirgi.  The Fressle & Tschirgi firm had been sunk by outstanding debts and the Blims and fellow German emigre Caspar Baro purchased the brewery at a sheriff's auction on August 10th.  They passed one of their first kegs to the editor of the Waterloo COURIOR in December and he claimed it was "equal to the best made anywhere."

Together the Blims and Caspar Baro ran the brewery until 1876, after which Martin became sole proprietor.  Martin then leased the brewery to Julius Goldstein, who later purchased the property after a fire had leveled it in 1880.  Goldstein along with partner George Rainer, ran the firm again for a time, but again ran up debts they could not repay.  Rainer skipped town and the brewery was liquidated.  Growing anti-saloon sentiment in Waterloo assured that it never reopened.  Johann Adam Blim died on the 3rd of March, 1899 at age 81 years of age.

Iowa brewing titan Mathias (Matthew) Tschirgi was born in Heilig Kreuz, St. Gallen Switzerland.  His father was a brewer and with his guidance Mathias learned his father's trade. 

At age 21 Tschirgi boarded the steamer Howard in Rotterdam, Holland and made his way to the United States.  He arrived at the port of New Orleans on the 15th of November 1845.  From there he journed up the Mississippi River to the town of St. Louis, Missouri, found work in the Washington Brewery and became aquainted with American ways.  Here he met Joseph Anton Gehrig, a fellow Swiss immigrant brewer 27 years his senior.  Despite a difference in age of more than a generation, the two became friends.

Tschirgi and Gehrig soon set their sights on Dubuque, Iowa, and after only two months of obtaining his position at the Washington, Tschirgi headed once again up the Mississippi for the 350 mile journey into the Iowa Territory.  Iowa at this time was in the process of becoming a state, and Dubuque, with its lead deposits and situation on the Mississippi, promised to become a boomtown.

Tschirgi and Gehrig landed in Dubuque in the spring of 1846 and the two set up a brewery on Couler and Eagle Point  Streets.  As it turns out this was the first business of its kind in the entire state.  When Gehrig died at the end of August, Tschirgi wrote to Gehrig's daughter Katharina and her fiancee Anton Heeb.  Along with the horrible news was a plea for help in the brewery.

Katharina and Anton were due to get married in November and they had their hands full taking care of his two children from his previous wives, the last of whom died earlier that year.  He wrote back saying he needed some time to get his business closed in St. Louis before he could join Tschirgi in Dubuque.

Meanwhile, Tschirgi persevered.  According to Biographies and Portraits of the Progressive Men of Iowa, Sales were slow due to competition from a more established brewery across the river in Galena, Illinois. Tschirgi, lacking equipment and resources, ground his grain in a coffee mill and distributed his product to customers by wheelbarrow. Eventually sales along the river grew, but Tschirgi later admitted, "I became despondent and wanted to return to the old country, but could not get my money out of the brewery so I remained."

Heeb eventually arrived in Dubuque.  Heeb was a newlywed, a family man, and at age 37 years had a lifetime of experience on the 24 year old bachelor, Tschirgi.  Nonetheless, Heeb became junior partner to Tschirgi.  The brewery was Christened the Dubuque Brewing and Malting Company.

 In 1848 Mathias Tschirgi married Miss Kathrina Zollicoffer.  Their union produced 8 children.  This was also the year Tschirgi claimed to have sold the first beer in Minnesota.

In 1850 Tschirgi left the Dubuque Brewing and Malting Company to Anton Heeb and set up a stand of his own on Main Street in town.  After four years he sold out to Kurtz & Welder and built a new, larger faclity made of brick at the corner of Delhi and Julien.  He found a new partner in John Schwind.  The two named the brewery the Western, and ran it together until Schwind's death in 1881.  Tschirgi leased the Western to Schwind's sons after that, then sold the business and retired in 1892.

Mattias Tschirgi died on November 11th, 1903, at 79 years of age.  The Dubuque Brewing and Malting Company he founded had long ago eclipsed the Galena brewers in sales, but ultimately succumbed to growing Pohibition forces in the state and closed in 1896. His Western Brewery suffered the same fate, and also closed in 1896.

The Waterloo Courier reports that The Goldstein and Rainier Brewery has just ordered a 4½hp Bookwalter Steam Engine to power their brewery.

Martin Blim was born in Hesse, Germany.

Mathias Tschirgi tries to reclaim some losses in the brewery in Waterloo he helped finance by selling a half share in said brewery in an auction.  It does not sell.

Tschirgi's Waterloo Iowa brewery once again goes under the auctioneer's hammer in a forced sale to settle debts.  It was purchased by brothers Adam and Martin Blim, and Caspar Baro.

The Waterloo (Iowa) Courier reports that Johann Adam Blüm (Blim) has sold his brewery to Julius Goldstein & George Rainer.

The Decatur (Illinois) Daily Republican bids local music store owner Julius Goldstein well wishes as he leaves town to run a brewery in Waterloo Iowa.

The Waterloo Courier reported that Martin and Adam Blim's brewery burned to the ground.