Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, BEER!

Really, really bad beer, mind you.

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. Sit down and grab a beer, friends — preferably a cheap one, definitely one made in a brewery instead of a factory. One of the icons of American beer died this week, and the epic crash and burn that brought this brewing empire down deserves a proper wake. Friends, Americans, Wonketeers. I come to bury Schlitz, not to praise it. Here’s the … recipe? Whatever. No reason to break with tradition.

Beer

Open a can or bottle of classic American beer. The colder the better. Pour into a glass if you’re feeling fancy. Drink.

I want to begin this article with a firm caveat: American beer, as a style, is not a bad thing. It’s a very mild style of beer, with a slight malt taste and not much else, but not every beer needs to be a chewy flavor bomb. An ice-cold American beer on a hot day is refreshing, pleasant, and laden with nostalgia. If it’s made by a brewer who cares what he’s doing and makes beer that tastes good, it’s a treat. Trouble happens when a corporation cranks out as much beer as possible, as fast as possible, and actual flavor becomes an afterthought.

Such was the case with the Schlitz Brewing Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, once one of the largest breweries in America. From the onset, Schlitz was more of a marketing concept than a beer. The brewery was founded in 1849 by August Krug, a German immigrant to the newly minted state of Wisconsin. In 1858, Krug’s bookkeeper, Joseph Schlitz, bought the company and renamed it after himself. A combination of solid distribution and ruthless marketing practices kept Schlitz riding high until the 1950s.

In 1953, 7,000 Milwaukee brewhouse workers went on strike, demanding a 25-cent-an-hour wage raise. The strike dragged on for 76 days, until the Blatz brewery finally cracked and gave in to the workers’ demands. The corporate overlords of Milwaukee were less than pleased by the end of the strike. The president of Schlitz at the time, Erwin C. Uihlein, had this to say at the company’s Christmas dinner that year:

“Irreparable harm was done to the Milwaukee brewery industry during the 76-day strike of 1953, and unemployed brewery workers must endure ‘continued suffering’ before the prestige of Milwaukee beer is re-established on the world market.”

If that sounds a bit tone-deaf, it might be because Erwin had no idea what he was doing. Joseph Schlitz died in 1875 while returning from an overseas trip to Germany, and ownership of the company fell to the four Uihlein brothers, August (father of the above Erwin), Henry, Alfred, and Edward. The Uihleins came into the Schlitz lineage via August Krug’s widow Anna Maria, who had married Joseph Schlitz. The brothers spent more time backstabbing each other than learning how to brew beer. By the 1960s, Robert Uihlein Jr. was the president of the company. He didn’t know much about brewing beer, either. (He was a dandy polo player, mind you.)

The reason that I can say so very decisively that the Uihlein family had no idea how to brew beer is that Schlitz sold literal garbage in 1976.

Anheiser-Busch had taken the #1 share of the beer market in America. To catch up, Schlitz decided to make as much beer as they could, as quickly as they could. They replaced the malted barley in their beer with corn syrup. To keep the adulterated beer from getting cloudy, they added a chemical called “chillgarde” to the brew. The chillgarde and the can liner didn’t exactly cooperate. If you were lucky, you’d open a can of Schlitz in 1976 and see a layer of white flakes floating on top of your beer. If you were unlucky, you’d get a mouthful of chemical snot.

Schlitz assured customers that the beer was perfectly safe to drink. Customers were unamused. Schlitz ended up recalling thousands of cases and suffered immense damage to its reputation. They needed to recover in the public eye, and they needed to do it quickly. The Uihlein family hired Chicago advertising magnate Leo Burnett to turn things around. Burnett unleashed a series of ads proclaiming that Schlitz was “the beer with gusto.” The public nicknamed the ad campaign “Drink Schlitz or I’ll Kill You.” The ads themselves need to be seen to be believed.

From there, it was all downhill. Market share had fallen by 75% by 1981. Shady accounting practices and another strike made things worse. True to form, the Uihleins laid off 6,000 employees and sold the whole thing to Stroh Brewery Company in 1982. The brand limped along on nostalgia until a few weeks ago, when Stroh (now owned by Pabst Brewing Company) pulled the plug. The last batch of Schlitz is being brewed tomorrow.

I really, really wish that I could point to this as a tale of corporate comeuppance, a morality story about how making shitty beer and trampling workers’ rights has consequences. But no. The Uihlein family walked away from the whole thing with a ton of money. Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein are currently worth 5.8 billion. They are, unsurprisingly, hardcore Trump supporters.

A few blocks down from Hemingway’s, there’s a fantastic brewery called Wrecking Crew Brew Works. The Velociraptor Hood Ornament IPA is pretty awesome. Come join me after a shift at Hemingway’s sometime. Let’s remember what the good stuff tastes like.

My home bar is Hemingway’s Underground, the hottest cocktail bar in pretty little Medina, Ohio. I’m behind the stick Wednesday-Saturday, 4-10. Last call’s at midnight. Swing on by, and I’ll make a drink for you… or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette. We’ll make it through this together.

OPEN THREAD!