Monday, August 05, 2024
The Schlitz Mistake: The Rise and Fall of Schlitz Brewing Co.
Those interested in the companies fall will find a summery of events from it's founding until it's eventual fall in the early 1980s. This video also delves into the Hawaiian Beer Primo that was brought by Schlitz and could have served as a warning.
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As US Marine during my deployment for 12 months and 29 days in Vietnam, the beer assortment that we were allowed to drink: Schlitz, Hamms, Olympia, Carling Black Label and Papst Blue Ribbon. All totally disgusting beers. Schlitz came in steel cans that needed a church key to open...and the cans were rusty.
ReplyDeleteDad came back accompanying a coffin packed full of San Miguel Dark.
DeleteI remember as a kid, " When yer out of Schlitz, yer out of beer."
ReplyDeleteI remember, "Hey, Mabel, Black Label!"
DeleteThe best TV beer commercial. Picture a motorcycle going through the gears up a mtn road into the distance.
DeleteRaaaaaaaainnnnnnnn ieererrreee beeeeerrrr
Sorry Rick, I gotta go with the Old Milwaukee Swedish Bikini Team for the win.
Delete(With Strohs' Alex the Dog a close second)
-lg
I liked the Henry Weinhart's (Portland) ad of the two guys driving their beautiful blue company Pete cabover through a California city, when one guy says "Wow, L.A. sure is a big place, isn't it?" and his partner replies "This is Modesto".
DeleteYeah, I remember Schlitz. "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer!" yeah, cause it was usually the last beer in the cooler.
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather's favorite beer. Always kept a short frozen beer glass that held half a beer can. Drank it myself until I learned better in college around 1980. Although the party barge in Memphis, The Schlitz Belle , was a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteThe jingle I recall from either the late 70's or early 80s was "Behind every Schlitz is a man who knows his beer." But yeah, now that I think about it, after those commercials went off the air, I don't recall seeing any other commercials for that brand anymore.
ReplyDeleteSchlitz made a beer, I forget the name, Schmaltz or something like that. I bought it in Michigan. Dang, that was a mighty fine beer. Smooooth and quiet a buzz.
ReplyDeleteSchlitz Malt Liquor! Fuck yea! A six-pack of 16 ouncers for $1.49.
DeleteThat was the go-to beer when I was in HS, cheap high-octane thrills. I preferred to get kegs of Michelob.
DeleteWhat do you call 24 bottles of bad beer? A terrible case of the Schlitz.
ReplyDeleteWe used to say, "when you're outta Schlitz then you get the shits."
DeleteWhat people call "bad beer" is likely just improperly stored beer. Skunked beer is the fault of the trucking company or the local distributor. To get beer from the middle of the U.S. to Vietnam 55 years ago and have it taste good?? I'd say that was damn near impossible.
ReplyDeleteI always thought PBR was pretty good!
ReplyDeleteI like it too, as does Larry the Cable Guy.
DeleteAnd thank you for having the courage to admit that you like it. That takes sand.
I live in Milwaukee. The demise of Schlitz was through pure greed.
ReplyDeleteThe darling little "woke" snowflakes use "greed" for what the rest of the real-world calls making money.
DeleteI was so drunk and sick from drinking this one night in 1988. Was a kid in high school living at home. Threw up in my room's trash can all night. Anyhow next morning Mom wakes me up shaking a six pack of Carling Black Label in my face. "Get up, get up! What's wrong, are you sick?" Then Dad parks the loudly running lawnmower under my window and just leaves it there. And that's how that day began.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason those would be the mornings for cutting and splitting wood. Go figure.
DeleteInteresting documentary, but the narrator's awful cockney accent and how quickly the captions are snatched off the screen are annoying. As for Schlitz, I remember it being cheap swill that only old men and broke teenagers drank.
ReplyDeleteThat's not a Cockney accent, it's RP with some twang from his native accent that I couldn't place. That said, what irked me were his attempts to "properly" pronounce the Germanic names of some of the beers. "Straws" for Stroh's was the worst. Whilee doing research he cou;ld have easily found the American pronunciations.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. It's not hard to find out that it is "Ee-lyne" (although that doesn't give you the best umlaut sound.) And his statement that Schlitz 'couldn't afford' to give their workers a raise is highly questionable. It's more likely that they didn't want to, because they had lower-cost brew operations in three or four other States.
DeleteFinally: Schlitz made a tender offer to buy Stroh--a fact he doesn't mention. As part of the due diligence, Stroh got a look at Schlitz's books, and flipped the deal nearly overnight so they wound up as the successor (purchaser) in the transaction. It was considered to be highly unethical.
I liked black label. Also Koehlers, and Duquesne Bavarian.
ReplyDeleteGraduated to brewing my own and moved on to ales and stouts.
Now I'll drink an IPA occasionally, but cold bourbon is the norm.
Schlitz had already gone to hell by the time I started buying my own beer. I put it into the same category as Blatz, which my grandfather bought occasionally...he used to sprinkle salt into it to generate a head. It worked, but it didn't improve the flavor of the beer.
ReplyDeleteThere used to be a lot of good small local beers; in my hometown it was Kohler. During the 70's and 80's Miller and AB bought all of them and shut them down. If you had no other choice and nothing to compare it to, Budweiser tasted fine. It was ruthless. In the case of Kohler they smashed the side of the building open and took out all the beautiful brewing vats, and sold them for scrap. Then they left the ruins of the building as they were for decades.
Budweiser left a bad taste in my mouth long before the whole Dylan Mulvaney debacle.
My dad used to drink Schlitz back in the day. A couple of his friend drank Falstaff.
ReplyDeleteRight after I retired and came home, I bought a house 1 street over from my folks. Robert lived three houses down from me, and was the only other veteran on the street. He was WWII Navy, I was USCG from late 70's on to 98. After I marched with the Legion on whatever holiday called for it, I'd come home, change clothes and walk down to his place. We'd drink some beer (I drink Hudepohl, PBR and Strohs, he drank Carling Black Label) and we'd tell sea stories and laugh until our bellies hurt. When he got to where he couldn't drive anymore, he added a basket to the back of his riding mower, and would motor down the block to the local drive through carry out, and have them slide a case or two of Carling Black Label into his basket. They were the only place for miles around that carried it, and from what I can tell, he was the only person who drank it. The carry out changed hands, some relative of Apu has it now. No more Black Label. Robert passed several years ago. I sure miss him. Every 4th of July, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, I'll crack one open for him, and remember some of those stories.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in New England. Piels Lite was maybe 5-6 bucks for a case. If you wanted to get seriously plastered it was Hafenreffer Private Stock, otherwise known as the Green Death. Came in 20 green bottles, tasted like watered down Miller Lite and was 12+% alcohol. Truly amazing hangover afterwards.
ReplyDeleteCoelacanth
And the reason girls can't drink beer on the beach? They'll get sand in their Schlitz. I'll be here all week.
ReplyDeleteI remember as a kid during 'vacations' in Schenectady NY, drinking many Schlitz tall boys. 24 oz. cans! They were from a place called Uncle Fuzzy's.
ReplyDelete