Free Republic

MILWAUKEE 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 a century and a half ago. Schlitz was the top-selling beer for much of the first half of the 20th century, but recipe changes and a series of foul-ups 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,...

When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer, according to an old ad campaign. And, as Milwaukee-area beer lovers are discovering, a lot of places are out of Schlitz, at least in the bottled form. Within days of the Schlitz 1960s formula being brought back to Milwaukee, the beer was largely sold out - snapped up by both older guys who remember the beer from back in the day, and younger drinkers curious about the fuss. A new shipment is coming to liquor stores and taverns beginning Wednesday, but it will be relatively small, said Mike Merriman, president of...

I can’t wait! This is the beer I was raised on, long before certain people at Schlitz got greedy, leading to Schlitz beer becoming known as “Schitz” beer. The downfall of Schlitz, combined with a bottler’s strike at Anheuser-Busch in 1976 allowed Old Style, a sleeper brand that had been in Chicago since the early 1900s, to take over the Chicagoland beer market. OS distributors took their battle for supremacy to neighborhood taverns, bottle by bottle and case by case until the brand dominated more than 40% of the local beer market. The problems of the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company...

Beer historian explores what happened to famous brews like Schlitz, Rainier, Schmidt and National. Chicago, IL (PRWEB) September 8, 2006 -- Using Chicago as a backdrop, leading beer historian Bob Skilnik delves into the reasons why once favorite national and regional beer brands have faded in popularity, some banished to obscurity. BEER: A History of Brewing in Chicago ($24.95, Hardcover, 416 pages, Barricade Books, ISBN 1569803129), proves to be more than a regional history book as it also details the downfall of national breweries like Schlitz and Pabst, to once powerhouse regionals with their flagship brands such as Seattle’s Rainier,...