It's the beer that made Milwaukee famous. Now Schlitz is making the city nostalgic.
That beer with the old-time mystique is back on shelves in bottles of its original formula in the city where it was first brewed more than 150 years ago.
Schlitz was the top-selling beer for much of the first half of the 20th century. But recipe changes and a series of missteps made the beer -- in many a drinker's opinion -- undrinkable, turning what was once the world's most popular brew into little more than a joke.
But after decades of dormancy, the beer is back.
Schlitz's owner, Pabst Brewing Co., is re-creating the old formula, using notes and interviews with old brewmasters to concoct the pilsener again. The maker of another nostalgic favorite, Pabst Blue Ribbon, it hopes that baby boomers will reach for the drink of their youth, otherwise known as "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous." They also want to create a following among younger drinkers who want to know what grandma and grandpa drank.
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"We believe that Schlitz is, if not the, one of most iconic brands of the 20th century," said Kevin Kotecki, the president of Pabst Brewing Co., which bought the brand that dates to 1849 from Stroh's in 1999. "And there's still a lot of people who have very positive, residual memories about their experience. For many of them it was the first beer they drank, and we wanted to give it back to those consumers."
The company also had a presence in Winston-Salem. The Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. built a plant in Winston-Salem in 1969. It closed in 1999, by then operating under the Stroh Brewery Co. label.
In Milwaukee, the comeback is creating a buzz. Stores are depleted of their stock within days, they are taking names for waiting lists, and they are limiting customers to just a few six- or 12-packs each.
People such as Leonard Jurgensen say that the beer reminds them of better days. Jurgensen, 67, who grew up on the edge of the brewery downtown, said that decades ago it seemed that everyone in the city either worked for the brewery or knew someone who did. If there was a special occasion, you drank Schlitz. Jurgensen had it on his wedding day 45 years ago.
"For many years the product was associated with happy times, especially to people my age," said Jurgensen, who's writing a book on Milwaukee's breweries. "As we all know, the world is not the best it can be today. We used to think those were hard times and when we look back on them, those were the good old days."
Schlitz's comeback has been slow, just like its fall from the top. It was tested in a few markets and is available in Minneapolis, Chicago and western Florida, besides Milwaukee.
Its ties to the city are deep. Schlitz began its life at a brewery founded by August Krug in 1849. Joseph Schlitz took over and opened the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. several years later.
Nostalgia could prove a driving factor in sales, Kotecki said. Pabst is certainly using it in its marketing, reusing its '60s-era advertisements urging drinkers to "Go for the Gusto" and simple maroon and gold packaging, marked with fanciful script.
The company is based in Woodridge, Ill., but wants the brew to go national. It is taking a slow approach, reintroducing it first in such places as the Midwest where the beer was popular.
Hearing from Schlitz-thirsty consumers prompted Pabst to revive the brand, Kotecki said. A malt-liquor form of Schlitz has been available for years in cans. But fans say that it's not the same.
The brew became a top-seller, Jurgensen said, after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 wiped out its competitors. It was the world's best-selling beer from 1903 until Prohibition in 1920, and regained the crown in 1934 until the mid-1950s. That's when a strike by Milwaukee brewery workers interrupted production and made way for others, such as St. Louis' Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc., to eat into Schlitz's market share. That company, which makes Budweiser and Bud Light, has held the top spot to this day.
Before it vanished, the beer changed -- for the worse. According to Jurgensen, considered by Pabst to be the foremost "Schlitzstorian."
First, brewery control shifted from immediate family members to more distant relatives, who wanted to expand the business. With demand high, the new owners wanted to make more, so they shortened the fermenting process. And they let customers know it through heavy marketing. There were also quality-control issues for barley, so the beer went flat quickly. Customers associated the flatness with the quickened brewing time, and they weren't pleased. To fix the flat problem, the brewers added a seaweed extract to give the beer some foam and fizz. But after sitting on the shelf for three to four months, the extract turned into a solid, meaning drinkers got chunky mouthfuls.
And then, the biggest of errors.
"They decided not to pull their product off the shelf," Jurgensen said. "They decided to weather the storm and sell that product. That's the worst possible mistake they could have made."
Floaters? Flat beer? It was all too much for drinkers to swallow.
And by 1981 the Schlitz brewery closed. The owners sold the brand to the Stroh Brewery Co. in Detroit in 1982, which eventually sold some of its lines to Pabst.
The Schlitz revival is bittersweet for Milwaukee, the former brewing capital of the United States, which has seen its heritage slip away.
Beer was once brewed at about 100 places in Milwaukee, Jurgensen said. The city was home to such names as Pabst, Blatz and Miller Brewing. Those first two are long gone, their former breweries abandoned, awaiting redevelopment and a condo complex.
And Miller is leaving, too. This summer it became MillerCoors LLC in a joint venture with Molson Coors Brewing Co. The headquarters will move about 90 miles south to Chicago, though Miller says it will keep jobs and breweries in Milwaukee.
Miller, coincidentally, brews Schlitz for Pabst under a contract at its East Coast facilities. Kotecki said he hopes to eventually have the brand brewed back in Milwaukee, once some changes at breweries in the city are made.
In Milwaukee, Schlitz is at about 75 locations, including bars and liquor stores, though that will grow when more is made.
John Thielmann, 55, of Milwaukee, said that his first sip of the new Schlitz sent him back decades. He remembered being a teenager -- drinking underage, he noted -- spending summers with family on Druid Lake, about an hour from Milwaukee.
But when the formula changed, he started getting headaches after two or three sips, so he stopped drinking Schlitz.
Thielmann said he was confident that the new formula wouldn't fail him. He figured Pabst had put in enough effort that they would get the old formula back.
They did. "That first sip was like ‘I remember this. This is right,'" he said.