Oge began writing blog post in 2017 after finishing his Secondary Education at Saint Patrick's Secondary School Enugu. He attended Zhejiang University of science and technology at the department of Digital Media Technology also currently schooling at Enugu State University of science and technology (ESUT) In the department of Geology and Minning. Oge Ebube has many works in Music and he is currently writting a short novel 'Je suis Prisoner: I'm a Prisoner'.
Email: ogeebube@validnewstoday.com
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The History of Beer and Brewing in Chicago, Volume II
by Bob Skilnik
“Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
The Old…
This latest edition to the saga of beer and brewing in Chicago picks up from the lastchapter of author Bob Skilnik’s award winning first book about the old Chicago brewingindustry. His follow-up to The History of Beer and Brewing in Chicago, 1833-1978 takes,perhaps, a less heady approach to the effects of @{beer}@ and @{brewing}@ in Chicago. That’sunderstandable, however. Volume II deals with an entirely different world. Gone arethe days that the first book detailed, when one could argue that every local neighborhoodor ethnic group had its own brewery. More importantly, perhaps, those forgotten powerfuland influential men who led these businesses scores ago are long gone, their descendantsoften surprisingly ignorant of past circumstances that have placed them in their currentpositions of power and wealth.
What’s now left behind is a nationwide brewing oligarchy, run by what many believe tobe faceless corporations, but that is a simplistic argument. Behind the corporate logos,the saturation advertising and the successes and failures demonstrated at yearlystockholder meetings are real men and women who make the decisions that ultimatelyinfluence what brand of beer sits in you refrigerator today.
Ithas to be conceded, however, that just twenty-five short years ago, it was easier to put aface or name on a popular brewery or brand of beer. Two family names that had a profoundeffect on beer drinking Chicagoans in the 1970s and ‘80s were Uihlein and Cleary.
The Uihleins had been in control of the Milwaukee-based Joseph Schlitz Brewing Companysince somewhat after the death of Joseph Schlitz in 1875. Three generations of Uihleinscontinued to lead the brewery to prominence in future years, locked in perpetual battlewith rival Anheuser-Busch for national sales supremacy.
But under the watch of Robert Uihlein, Jr., the fourth and last generation of Uihleins toreign at Schlitz, the brewery ignored the growing seeds of self-destruction.Uihlein’s flawed business plan took the brewery’s Schlitz brand from asuccessful national presence, perched in 1976 to possibly depose A-B’s Budweiser fromthe number one national sales position, to an ineffectual label in the portfolio of amid-sized regional brewery, just six short years later.
Even after the sudden death of CEO Uihlein in 1976, the year of Schlitz’s greatestsales figures, the brewery’s management continued the disturbing policies andpractices set in place by Uihlein that had been strongly indicating future failure.It’s interesting to speculate if Robert Uihlein, Jr. would have had the sense toreverse this damaging course and possibly save the business had he lived.
The first three chapters of The History of Beer and Brewing in Chicago, Volume IIare probably the most detailed narration ever of the problems leading to the fall of theJoseph Schlitz Brewing Company.
The problems faced by G. Heileman and its CEO, Russell Cleary, were less dependent on theactions (or inactions) of the brewery’s management than at Schlitz. After patchingtogether a quilt-work industry of failed or dying regional breweries and breathing lifeback in to them, Heileman attempted to achieve first-tier status as a national brewer byacquiring the embattled Schlitz Brewing Company. Cleary and his board of directors,however, were forced to back down from threats by the federal government to institute anantitrust suit if the merger proceeded. This move not only signaled the beginning of theend for the G. Heileman Brewing Company but is also strongly responsible for the landscapeof today’s American brewing industry.
Russ Cleary’s motives in buying up under funded and dying regional brewing operationsare often misunderstood by those with little knowledge of United States brewing historyduring the 1970s and ’80s. Rather than Cleary being applauded for saving thesebusinesses, albeit for only a short number of years, critics often question these mergersas possibly part of a sinister plot to disrupt the small brewery movement in the U.S., andin doing so, lead the brewing industry to its current state of oligarchy. Nothing could befurther from the truth. Though sometimes considered a “rag picker,”Cleary’s numerous acquisitions helped save any number of dying regional breweriesduring the 1970s and early 1980s.
Today, the House of Heileman is only a memory. Old Style, its most successful brand, nowfinds itself in the portfolio of Pabst but brewed by Miller as Pabst assumes a position inthe U.S. brewing industry as a “virtual” brewer. Later this year, Pabst willclose its last operating brewery and become a brewery by name only.
But what relationship do these breweries have with Chicago? As with the theme of the firstbook of @{Chicago}@ beer and brewing history, I have looked for representative examples ofevents, persons or things that have affected the Chicagoland populace and its relationshipto beer either economically, politically or socially.
As the chapters unfold, however, the reader should also recognize that the closer thisstory draws to the present era, the more obvious it becomes that Chicago has become aglobal market. As a result, any attempt to segregate the effects of beer and brewing inChicago from the rest of the U.S. beer market becomes more difficult. As goes Chicago, sogoes the nation.
Chicago was the largest market for the flagship brands of both breweries. Schlitz and G.Heileman’s Old Style each controlled over forty percent of the retail market inChicago at various times in their existences. Heileman actually moved their headquartersfirst to Chicago and later to neighboring Rosemont, Illinois in an attempt to be closerand more attentive to its most lucrative market. As a financial and business center,Chicago has also witnessed brewery stockholders’ and trade meetings and is still homefor some of the most influential ad agencies responsible for some great, and not so great,beer advertising in the last few decades.
…And The New
After a less than stellar local brewing epiphany in thelate 1980s to mid-1990s, Chicago today is home to one lone regional brewery. But with theWindy City recognized today as part of a global economy with a diverse market of beerdrinkers, two suburban and one out-of-state breweries have also laid claim to Chicago astheir home market.
I have attempted to analyze the problems that befell the now defunct Chicago BrewingCompany and the Elmhurst, Illinois-based Pavichevich Brewing Company by making comparisonsbetween similar problems faced by local breweries of one hundred years or so and theChicagoland breweries of the 1980s and ‘90s. History does repeat itself, at leastwithin the context of the brewing industry in greater Chicago.
I am not a brewery consultant nor a practicing commercial brewer but feel that thecontemporary problems that ended the short runs of the Chicago Brewing Company and thePavichevich Brewing Company have run eerily parallel with those problems that forced theclosing of scores of pre and post-Prohibition breweries in Chicago.
Keep in mind readers, that my approach to examining the last twenty-five to thirty yearsof beer and brewing in Chicago is a representative one, in terms of the industry today,often anecdotal. Certainly there will be readers, I can be quite certain, who willquestion my choices used as examples and my subsequent analyses and interpretations ofthem.
There is never an end to research but due to time and space limitations, I would defer toany reader’s argument that more examples could have been included. At some point inthe future, a revised and expanded combination of The History of Beer and Brewing inChicago, 1833-1978 and The History of Beer and Brewing in Chicago, Volume II,will be published. At the time, this is an open-ended project. As a result, I invite theinterested reader to come forward with any additional information, illustrations andpictures that can be included in this future work.
The legacy of beer andbrewing in Chicago is a rich and continually evolving history that deserves furtherattention.
Prozit!
Bob Skilnik
