Philip Lewis Zorn was born in Wurzburg, Bavaria, Germany.  His father Johann was a brewer in Wurzburg, but died when Philip was only twelve.  Philip obtained his basic education in Germany after which he studied at the Agricultural College in in Nurnberg.

In 1854, at age 17 he emigrated to America, and for a year resided in New York City.  He then pressed west to the booming city of Chicago, Illinois.  He met Sophia Miller there, and the two were married the following year. At that time he also took up his late father's occupation and became employed by the Busch & Brand Brewery in Blue Island.  It was a firm in which over the next 25 years he would rise to the position of Brewery Foreman.

After the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 the city was devastated. Zorn was 33 now and a family man with six children including a nine-month-old girl.  The decision was made to leave the city and make a new home across the lake in Michigan City, Indiana.

Zorn established a brewery on East 9th St & York Street in that town, and possibly took for brewing water from Trail Creek, which runs into the great Lake Michigan.  From the upper floors of his brewhouse Zorn could watch as his old city of Chicago literally rise from the ashes of the Great Fire to the iconic skyscrapers of Louis Sullivan.  

He ran the brewery in Michigan City for another 41 years, and expanded it several times.  Philip Lewis Zorn died on January 5th, 1912 at the age of 74 years.  The brewery that bore his name continued until Indiana Prohibition laws shut its doors six years later.  The brewery came back under the same name after Prohibition's repeal in 1933, but finally went out of business in 1938.