Pabst Brewing Company head of brand strategy Zac Nadile confirmed what many old Milwaukee beer drinkers probably hoped they’d never read: Schlitz Premium is being “placed on hiatus.”
As Fox News shared, the beer had become nothing short of Milwaukee’s culture.
Schlitz Premium, a beer brand that traces its roots to Milwaukee in the 1840s and was once among the largest breweries in the country, is being put “on hiatus,” parent company Pabst Brewing Co. confirmed Friday after Wisconsin Brewing Company announced it would brew the brand’s final batch later this month.
“Unfortunately, we have seen continued increases in our costs to store and ship certain products and have had to make the tough choice to place Schlitz Premium on hiatus,” Zac Nadile, Pabst head of brand strategy, said in a statement to Milwaukee Magazine.
“Any brand or packaging configuration that is put on hiatus is still a cherished part of our history and hopefully our future. We continually look for opportunities to bring back beloved brands, and customer feedback is important in shaping those discussions.”
Corporate language always carries a faint shell of bubble wrap, but the meaning is plain enough. The beer that made Milwaukee famous is reaching last call after 177 years.
Wisconsin Brewing Company brewmaster Kirby Nelson will brew one final 80-barrel batch in Verona, Wisc., on May 23, using the 1948 recipe, and give the old name one last pour before the tap runs dry. The AP highlights the dedication Pabst will pour into that final batch.
Kirby Nelson, brewmaster at Wisconsin Brewing Company, said the company wanted to give the historic beer brand a proper farewell after learning production was ending.
“We decided that, Schlitz being what Schlitz was, it deserved a proper sendoff. One with dignity and respect,” Nelson said.
Wisconsin Brewing Company said it plans to brew “the last Schlitz” at its Verona, Wisconsin, brewery on May 23, with a limited release scheduled for June 27. Milwaukee-area bars and breweries are also planning farewell events tied to the final batches.
August Krug opened the original Milwaukee tavern brewery in 1849. Later, Joseph Schlitz took control, married Krug’s widow, Anna Maria Krug, and gave the brewery the name Americans still remember.
The Uihlein family later guided the clan through its long rise, and Schlitz became one of America’s great brewing powers. At its height, the brand stood with the giants and fought Anheuser-Busch for national supremacy. And, as Milwaukee Magazine noted, the brewery’s influence grew outside the city of Milwaukee.
Even though it hasn’t been made in Milwaukee in at least six years, it’s hard to overstate the impact of losing one of Milwaukee’s original beer baron brands. Schlitz began as a tavern brewery in 1849 founded by August Krug. When he died in 1856, a bookkeeper for the company named Joseph Schlitz took over and, two years later, married Krug’s widow, Anna Maria, and renamed the brewery eponymously.
After Schlitz was lost at sea in an 1875 shipwreck off the coast of Cornwall – his body was never recovered, despite the elaborate marker at Forest Home Cemetery – the Uihlein brothers began running and later owning the company, though they kept the name.
During the late 19th and early 20th century period when Milwaukee’s brewing industry grew into the industrial age, Schlitz grew in kind – in part due to its success in Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. In 1934, just after Prohibition ended, Schlitz became the top-selling beer in the world, and it stayed there for decades. It seized on its contribution to Brew City with its long-running slogan, “the beer that made Milwaukee famous.”
Schlitz wasn’t some novelty label waiting for hipsters to rediscover it. It was a workingman’s beer from a working city that once knew how to build, brew, ship, and brag.
Schlitz’s timeline reads like a survey course in American history with a bar tab attached. When Krug started brewing in 1849, the California Gold Rush was pulling dreamers west, Zachary Taylor sat in the White House, and the United States was still a young republic learning how large and relentless it wanted to become. Schlitz later watched the country split during the Civil War, survive Reconstruction, absorb waves of immigrants, and grow into an industrial power. Milwaukee’s breweries weren’t side notes in that story; they were part of the muscle, sweat, and appetite of a nation building itself by the barrel, railcar, and factory whistle.
Schlitz endured the Great Chicago Fire era, the rise of the railroads, two world wars, the Great Depression, and Prohibition, which shut down legal brewing from 1920 to 1933. And, as the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee shared, Schlitz wasn’t standing still.
Under Schlitz’s leadership, the company built a new, larger brewery on Third and Walnut Streets in 1870. The new site allowed for greater immediate production capacity and expanded into a sprawling, multi-block complex by the 1890s.
Like other major Milwaukee brewers, Schlitz benefited immensely from the nearby Chicago market, opening an agency there in 1868. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 temporarily destroyed the local brewing industry, and Schlitz more than doubled sales over the next year.
Schlitz incorporated in 1873, and the Uihlein family (of the Krug line) took over control of the company after Schlitz’s death in a shipwreck in 1875. Retaining the Schlitz name, the Uihleins stayed in control of the company until Robert Uihlein, Jr. died in 1976, three generations later.
The company survived by making other products until Americans regained the legal right to buy a beer without treating the bartender like a bootlegger.
After repeal, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, Schlitz roared back: by the 1950s and 1960s, it stood near the top of the American beer world.
Schlitz returned to its position as a national brewing leader after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, becoming the largest American brewery again by 1947, and remained in either first or second place until the mid-1970s.
The company continued to expand through the 1950s and 1960s. By the late 1960s, Schlitz had added plants in Brooklyn, Kansas City (Missouri), Tampa, San Francisco, Van Nuys (California), and Longview (Texas), as well as affiliates in San Juan (Puerto Rico), and Seville, Barcelona, and Madrid (Spain).
Schlitz developed innovative television marketing campaigns in the 1960s with the slogans, “Real gusto in a great light beer,” and “When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer.” The company continued to make civic contributions to Milwaukee in the 1960s and 1970s, including the downtown Performing Arts Center (with the main Uihlein Hall), the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, the Great Circus Parade, and the Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Bowling alleys, corner bars, union halls, hunting cabins, and Friday fish fries in Wisconsin’s ubiquitous supper clubs formed their own social network long before anybody needed a password.
Schlitz was still part of American life when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1968. It kept going through Vietnam, Watergate, stagflation, the Reagan years, the Berlin Wall’s fall, 9/11, the internet age, smartphones, and every other modern miracle that somehow made life faster and less relaxing.
The fall came slowly, then all at once. Recipe changes, labor trouble, shifting tastes, and corporate sales chipped away at the old giant. Stroh bought Schlitz in 1982, and Pabst acquired the brand in 1999, reviving the classic formula in 2008.
Nostalgia only carries so many cases out of the door. Rising storage and shipping costs finally helped push Schlitz Premium into corporate limbo. Preorders for the final batch begin May 27, with pickup tied to a June 27 celebration in Verona.
Exclusively for our VIPs: Radio Days, Gulf War Families, and the Editor Who Wanted Grief on Tape
For me, growing up as a beer can collector, snagging all the Schlitz Wildlife series cans was fulfilling. There were two versions, steel and aluminum. I was fortunate enough to acquire all versions in all metals.
No beer deserves a state funeral, even in Wisconsin, where some arguments could be made after the third round. Still, Schlitz’s last call feels larger than a product decision. It marks the fading of another American name that once belonged to a city, a workforce, and a shared culture.
Schlitz lived long enough to watch America grow from a rough republic into a superpower and then into a country where old brands became assets, factories became lofts, and memory gets repackaged until the shelves go bare.
The beer that made Milwaukee famous now leaves with one last batch, a raised glass, and a reminder that even famous names run out of road.
Ready for more straight talk that skips the spin and hits the real issues? Join PJ Media VIP today and get 60% off with promo code FIGHT, and click here to lock in your savings now.
