Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

When we last left off we were entering the 1970s and we were two weeks from flattening the curve.  (Reading comments on Part 3 while prepping this were depressing.  The good news is we were all right.)

I will start by repeating a chart from the previous article:

Top 10 U.S. Brewers. Year: 1970

RANK BREWER BARRELAGE
1 Anheuser-Busch, Inc. 22,201,811
2 Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. 15,129,000
3 Pabst Brewing Co. 10,517,000
4 Adolph Coors Co. 7,277,076
5 F & M Schaefer Brewing Co. 5,749,000
6 Falstaff Brewing Corp. 5,386,133
7 Miller Brewing Co. 5,150,000
8 Carling Brewing Co. 4,819,000
9 Theo. Hamm Brewing Co. 4,470,000
10 Associated Brewing Co. 3,750,000

Total Barrelage Of All U.S. Brewers in 1970: 121,861,000 barrels.
Top 10 Brewers’ Percentage of Total U.S. Barrelage: 69 percent.

The Beer Wars this series was created to discussed lasted from roughly 1975 through 1995.  Both end points are vague at best.  In some ways it was just a continuation of the consolidation that was covered in part 3.  But, more so that in the past, this was fought on the airwaves.  Commercial advertising would make or break the winners.  And it wasn’t at all clear who those would be.

Schaeffer was one of the breweries that grew by buying up regional breweries.  In 1972, they opened a new plant in Allentown, PA.  It originally had a capacity of 1.1MM barrels.  They expanded it to 2.5MM in 1974 and to 5MM in 1975.  With this, they closed most of their smaller breweries.  They were out of the top 10 by 1980 and in 1981, they would sell out to Stroh (see 1980 chart below).  Their Allentown brewery would be bought by Diageo (Smirnoff Ice was produced there) and then later sold to Sam Adams in 2008.

Carling would also fall out of the top 10 by 1980 due to Canadian reasons.  They eventually merge with Molson in 1989.

 

Hamm was acquiring by Heublein in 1965.  In 1973, it was sold to a group of Hamm’s distributors, which seems to violate lots of stuff from part 2.  In 1975, Olympia (see below again) would buy them.  Of course, Pabst would have to get involved, because, Pabst eventually owns or is owned by everyone in the beer industry.  In 1983, Pabst buys Olympia and trades Hamm’s St Paul brewery to Stroh.  It closed in 1997 after a 137 year run.  Hamm’s is still produced today by Molson Coors, but that is a few episodes down the line.

Associated Brewing was exactly what it sounded like, a merger of many smaller regional breweries that were struggling.  By 1972, they were done.  Heileman (see below) bought their assets from bankruptcy.

 

 

 

 

Top 10 U.S. Brewers. Year: 1980

RANK BREWER BARRELAGE
1 Anheuser-Busch, Inc. 50,200,000
2 Miller Brewing Co. 37,300,000
3 Pabst Brewing Co. 15,091,000
4 Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. 14,900,000
5 Adolph Coors Co. 13,800,000
6 G. Heileman Brewing Co. 13,270,000
7 Stroh Brewery Co. 6,161,255
8 Olympia Brewing Co. 6,091,000
9 Falstaff Brewing Co. 3,901,000
10 C. Schmidt & Sons 3,625,000

 

Total Barrelage Of All U.S. Brewers in 1980: 176,311,699 barrels.
Top 10 Brewers’ Percentage of Total U.S. Barrelage: 93 percent.

 

And we reach 1980.  You can see the consolidation that has happened.  The top 10 has gone from 69% of the market to 93%.  A-B has more than doubled in ten years.  Miller has gone up 7 fold.  You have to be big and have a big advertising budget to compete.

What else was going on in the 70s?  Lite beer.  We mentioned Gablinger trying it in the late 60s, but Miller made it work.  Meister Brau in Chicago created Meister Brau Lite from the Gablinger recipe, then sold out to Miller in bankruptcy in 1972.  “Less Filling.  Tastes Great” was the result.

Everything was fizzy and yellow by now.  The beer world was almost all the same.  But there was one bright spot.  Fritz Maytag (yes, from that family) bought Anchor Brewery in the 1960s.  He reformulated Anchor Steam and in 1975 Anchor Liberty Ale was released.  It was a hoppy pale ale.  Maybe, just maybe, there was hope.

And as in other parts, I have to cover what was happening to Falls City in this time frame.  The answer is “a lot”.  In 1975, they would be the first brewery to use Sta-Tab openers instead of pop tops.  In 1977, they would create Billy Beer for Billy Carter.  It was licensed to three other regional breweries so that it could be sold nationally.  It was a quick fad, and production stopped in 1978.  Also in 1978, Falls City would post its first ever financial losses.  It would cease production and sold out to Heileman.  It would eventually be owned by Pittsburg Brewing.  For a while, Iron City and Falls City were identical beers, put in separate cans.  After Pittsburg’s bankruptcy, the name returned home and is a small craft brewery in Louisville.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5APOrMribc

 

 

And some music, that wouldn’t seem to be on topic, but kind of is.