March 18, 2019 • 49 mins
Did the Pabst Blue Ribbon beer really win a blue ribbon prize at the Chicago World's Fair? And how did this award-winning brew become associated with cheap beer? How did hipsters revive and then abandon PBR?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
From county fair to millennial flair. Perhaps tis one a
blue ribbon in many people's hearts, while some others look
on and just wonder why, but love it or hate it,
This affordable lone star has made a name for itself.
Yet in the nineteen seventies they started going flat, and
soon this drink found itself spending years in the brink.
(00:25):
It took a new owner, advice from his kids, and
a new direction for the palatable product to recarbonate this brewery.
This is passed on the brink? Are yes? Throw me an,
(00:47):
I can't do that, Jonathan, And I know I don't.
I don't drink. It's okay, I will drink one for you.
All right. I'm Jonathan Stricklin and I'm Arial Casting. We're
talking about perhapst To. And it's funny because, you know,
this is one of those stories that we thought we'd
look into because of the the semi recent resurgence of
(01:09):
perhapst Uh and the fact that this is a brand
that is more than a century old. Yes, and so
it's it's an interesting story that goes all the way
back to before the Civil War. Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
Perhapst was not even perhapsed when it began. Um, and
(01:31):
people might be like, why aren't you saying perhaps blue ribbon,
because it wasn't perhaps blue ribbon either. That's just one
beers that this brewery would end up making. So this
company story starts in eighteen forty four, although if you
look at their official history, they say eighteen forty nine. Yeah,
it's really weird. When I was looking at their official history,
somethings didn't line up with everybody else's reports. It may
(01:54):
very well be the first five years of making beer
was terrible. That's it's true. It's true. Anyhow, What we
do know is that the company was started by Jacob
Best and his sons, which is already great, right because
you can just say it's the best beer it is
because it's made by the best family you could. I
won't say it is. I'm going to stay impartial. I
am Switzerland in this beer game. It was originally known
(02:17):
as the Empire Company, this brew company, and then it
became Best In Company, and it started in Milwaukee. Yes,
as many breweries do. Yes, and we had not just
Jacob who was the father the potter familius fancy perhaps, yes,
(02:37):
you also had his sons, which included Philip, Charles Jacob Jr.
And Lawns and their first year of making beer, they
made three hundred barrels, eighteen barrels at a time. And
then in the eighteen fifties, as the Potter familius was
(02:58):
getting on in years, he hands over the reins of
the company to his eldest son, Philip. Philip Best takes over. Yes,
so good old phil good old phil Well. In eighteen
fifty nine. Okay, you want me to hit this name
or do you want to give it a shot. I'm
going to try it and then I get it wrong,
you can correct me. A man named Johann Gottlieb Friedrich Oh,
(03:22):
very good pronunciation, thank you? Or Frederick Perhapst married Philip
Best's daughter Maria. He was a steamship Captain Perhapst. The
captain Captain Frederick Papst cap papst Yp and so you
might say, ah, I see where the name comes from.
So he marries Maria, and then just a couple of
(03:44):
years later, in eighteen sixty three, he would take the
money he had accumulated in his various exploits and captain
he has captain ing and purchased fifty of the company
the Best Company, Yes, which was now Philip Best Brewing
and he became vice president of that company. In eighteen
(04:05):
sixty six, Best sold the rest of the company to
another guy, Emil s Yes Emil shan Din. Emil shan Dine,
by the way, was married to Philip Best's other daughter, Lazette.
So now his two sons in law were the two
owners of the Philip Best Brewing Company, and the Perhapst
(04:28):
was the president, and then shan Dine was vice president.
But Shandune passed away in eight and then his wife
took over the vice presidency. YEP. So going back just
a bit, because eight when shan Dine passes away. But
in eighteen seventy four the company would become the largest
brewer in the United States, which is pretty amazing. Now
(04:51):
they would not hold onto that title forever, but it
is interesting to note that at one point, perhaps Perhapst
the Well and then the Best Brewing Company was the
number one largest brewing company in the in America. And
they had a main beer. So, like we said, they
had a lot of different brews, but their main beer,
which was Best Select yep. This was the what would
(05:14):
eventually become Paps Blue Ribbon. Yes, they started offering it
in eighteen seventy five, and they were taking it around
to various beer competitions and fairs, and it was winning. Yeah,
they were winning awards. They had not officially won a
blue ribbon, but to signify that the beer was in
fact winning awards, they got the bright idea of how
(05:35):
about we tie a silk blue ribbon to each bottle, yes,
and indicate this is an award winning beer. Yes, they
started doing that in eighteen eighty two, So they had
been winning awards for a while before they started showing
it off entirely. In eighty nine, they finally changed the
name of the brewery to Paps Brewing Company. And by
(05:56):
the early eighteen nineties, one of the big purchases this
company was making wasn't in hops or barley, it was
in blue silk ribbon. Yeah. It seems like a hefty
investment to me. Yea like silk silk is not cheap, right,
and it would actually become prohibitively expensive a little later.
(06:16):
We'll get there. Yes. So eventually they travel these fair
so I could see travel these beer competitions, and they
come to the Chicago World's Fair. In Now I'm gonna
tell a little story, please do, because this is one
of my favorite events in American history. It's it's a
truly phenomenal gathering, and so much incredible stuff was shown
(06:40):
off at this particular World's Fair, so it was also
known as the World's Colombian Exposition. It was one of
the most elaborate celebrations in American history. So the idea
of winning a Blue ribbon there would have been a
really huge deal. More on that in the second because
it gets a little complicated. So the whole purpose of
this event was to commemor rate the anniversary of Christopher
(07:01):
Columbus's arrival in the New World. This was obviously before
we started to recognize all the negative things that come
with that, because this is a time when people weren't
really thinking about the indigenous population of the United States.
But it's not necessarily what the World's Fair is remembered for. No. Uh.
One of the things that remembered for for this particular
World's Fair was that Chicago, the city had paid to
(07:25):
have an entire section of city built for this. It
was called the White City, and there were these phenomenal
amazing buildings. Only one of those major buildings still exists
in Chicago, and it is currently the Museum of Science
and Industry. And if you ever have a chance, if
you live in Chicago and you've never been, you've gotta go.
And if you live near Chicago, you gotta go. And
(07:47):
if you live far away from Chicago, Planet trip, it's
worth going to. It's a great museum. So this is
the same World's Fair where things like the ferris wheel
first debut. That was the brand new thing. Uh. The
World's Fair was where Westinghouse was able to convince the
United States to use alternating current as opposed to Edison's
(08:08):
direct current. Thomas Edison was actually there too, showing off
the kinetoscope, which was an early motion picture kind of technology.
He was probably also stinging a bit the fact that
a C one out over d C. His presentation might
have been a little salty. Supposedly, Nikola Tesla was there,
shooting off lightning bolts from his hands, you know, as
only superheroes can do. And in other words, this was
(08:31):
an incredibly prestigious and important event. The world's attention was
on Chicago. And if you ever really want a fascinating
description of it. This is just a recommendation I have
for everyone out there. There's a book called The Devil
in the White City. It's by Eric Larson. I highly recommended.
It has two main storylines. One is the preparation and
(08:51):
launch of the Chicago World's Fair. The other, which is
happening at the same time and they alternate chapters, is
a disturbing story about H. H. Holmes, and early serial
killer who was active in Chicago at that same time.
Fantastic book. So this is where Perhaps wins the Blue Ribbon. Right, Okay,
kinda not really, but kind okay. So here's here's the deal.
(09:13):
Perhaps best select the beer that they had been showing
off at all these different festivals and stuff that was
winning awards was there to be judged, and there were
judges to test different beers. Originally, they were supposed to
base their their judgments upon three criteria purity, color, and flavor,
and then each beer was supposed to get a score
(09:34):
between zero and one hundred, and if you scored eighty
or higher you were considered a remarkable beer. You would
get a bronze medal and a certificate. That's it. Any
beer that hit eighty or higher would get this. Eventually,
the judges decided that they didn't like the criteria that
had been laid out, so they made up their own criteria.
I have no idea what it was. Maybe it was
(09:56):
whatever gets you tore up the fastest, who knows, but
they it seems like a criteria to me. Probably the
longer the testing went on, the higher the scores. God,
but it was down to really two beers. There was
the perhaps Best Select and there was an Anheuser Busch Beer,
and Anheuser Busch Beer was ahead by two points until
(10:17):
the final scores came in, and then Perhaps Best Select
technically had the highest score of all the beers. There
was no award for the highest score. It was just
if you had eighty or higher you got the medal
and a certificate. So the judges weren't necessarily saying whoever
gets the highest score quote unquote wins, but perhaps was
(10:38):
saying that he didn't let that stop him, so he said,
this makes our beer the best out of all the
beers at Chicago World's Fair. And that's where the legend
of perhapst Blue Ribbon as an official thing really started
to take off. Even though there was no blue ribbon. Yeah. Well,
in they added blue ribbon to the brand name of
(11:00):
Best Select, and in they changed the entire brand two
Papst blue ribbon. Yes. And by then they were producing
a million gallons or barrels, not even gallants, barrels. Gallons
is thinking too small, Jonathan, barrels of beer. It's okay,
you don't drink Yes. By the early nine hundreds, now
(11:20):
they're ordering, they're still putting silk ribbon on their bottles,
and they're ordering like up to thirty million feet of
the silk ribbon until World War One, because then we
get into a point where the United States government is
withholding certain stuff in order to use it for the
war effort, and silk was one of the materials. So
(11:41):
they weren't able to get silk ribbon during the World
War one era. And then something else happened that was
a little more serious for the beer industry than a
shortage of silk, but it meant that they didn't have
to worry about a silk shortage anymore because prohibition happened.
That would be when they United States passed day an
amendment saying you cannot sell alcohol anymore. Prohibition lasted from
(12:07):
and to survive this time, perhaps decided to make cheese. Yeah.
They pivoted, just like online content has pivoted from articles
to video. Perhaps pivoted from beer to cheese. Yes, they
more accurately cheese food. Cheese food. They called this cheese
like substance paps debt, which just rolls off the tongue,
(12:31):
and they were actually really successful. They did quite well
during the prohibition because of this. They made eight million
pounds with PEPs debt. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, they were
so successful that Craft fought them over copyright issues, feeling
that papst was infringing upon their copyright for cheese. And
then once prohibition was Overcraft bought pops debt. Yeah, so
(12:54):
paps debt would eventually make its way over to Craft.
It's funny because I actually found some old radio ads
for phaps debt, so I listened to them, and you'll
be glad to know you could get it. In the end.
This is a quote familiar round package or in a
two pound economy loaf. Well, geez, if I can get
it into two pound loaf and it's economical, you you
(13:15):
save money that way. They referred to it as cheese food,
and they said it was the kind you could melt
down into sauces to really make leftover sing. That's another quote,
so basically velvita. Yeah. And they also said it was
an excellent source of food energy. So there's another thing
we need to remember, which is that Prohibition wasn't the
(13:36):
only thing going on, Especially towards the end of Prohibition
from nine nine you're talking also about the Great Depression.
So that's an era where it becomes more and more
important to be able to stretch your dollar as far
as it will go, So that stretch your cheese, yeah,
or that again it tells you making your leftovers more palatable. Well,
(13:57):
it was more economic to you be able to have
dover's then to keep buying more food. So so the
next thing that happens in Perhaps History is actually something
I had a difficult time finding the exact details on
because it says in two Harris pearl Stein became president
of Perhaps Brewing Company. He was named president by fred Papst,
(14:19):
But Frederick Papst had passed away by that time already.
So was it like on Christmas Eve and it's just
Herechristine Ship ghost of Christmas past Um listen we're gonna
be a little tipsy. Frederick perhaps had a son, Frederick Jr.
So what I have garnered from my research is that
(14:42):
it was probably fred Jr. Who took over the company,
and then he was the one who named pearl Stein
the the president. So pearl Stein, his company, Premier Malt Products,
had merged with Papst and he became president as a
result of that um And this was right at the
just before four prohibition was to come to an end.
(15:03):
So as soon as prohibition is over, In perhaps says
we're going to double down. We we miss making beer,
so we're gonna make extra beer. And they open it
in Illinois brewery and they already still had the one
in Milwaukee. Uh. And then they start in switching over
to a brand new type of packaging. So up to
(15:25):
this point they've been using bottles, and they've been using
embossed bottles because they really there was no easy way
to print labels for quite some time, so that's why
they had to tie the actual ribbon to the bottles
because they couldn't print a label the head ribbon on it.
But in they switched to something else because the American
Can Company finally figured out how the can beer without
(15:49):
it blowing up. And that's actually true. They tried originally
in nineteen o nine too, can beer, but the carbonation
would cause the cans to explode and not good so
much of an alcohol fowl. Yeah. But one of the
other benefits of canning PBR supposed to bottling it is
that they could print the label the ribbon on the label,
(16:12):
so they no longer had to hand tie ribbons onto bottles.
Also would have been weird to try and figure out
how to tie it to a can a little tab.
There's no tab on the early ones. But yeah, so
it worked. And it's funny because I actually looked into this,
I wanted to learn more about the American Can Company
at The very first beers to get canned were from
(16:33):
the Gottfried Krueger Brewery, reminding us that Germany, of course
is the home of beer and uh. The first two
types of beer from the Gottfried Krueger Brewery to get
canned where cream Ale and Krueger's Finest Beer, and rapidly
other beer companies followed suit. So this is the very
first year the American Can Company had been able to
(16:55):
do it, and perhaps was on board from the beginning. Yes, yes,
in ninety perhaps was doing pretty well, so they started
buying other beer companies. Yeah, this is actually spoiler alert
for the rest of the episode. As we did this research,
neither of us, I think, had an appreciation for how
crazy the beer industry is as far as acquisitions and
(17:18):
mergers and sales. No, because when I think of something
like perhapst Blue Ribbon or Cores or bud Light or
anything like that, they've just been around as long as
I can remember. So I assume that they all started
independently and remained independently success like they were all silos.
But in fact, in a lot of cases, you're talking
about one brewery that ends up licensing its recipe and
(17:42):
it's it's trademark to another company to actually produce all
the stuff, which to me would be like if McDonald's
were to license the Big Mac to Burger King. Like
you go to a Burger King, but you would buy
an a McDonald's Big Mac and it would come into
McDonald's rapper, be a McDonald's Big Mac, but you would
buy it at a Burger King. To me, that that's
almost the same thing, and it's crazy. Yeah, but anyway
(18:05):
that I digress. We'll get more into it as the
show goes on. Yes, by nifty they're completely done with ribbons.
They're completely into cans. It's all printed. Sales were at
their peak. And this is again where the history gets
a little cloudy. It says Fred Paps retired and if
it was Fred Paps Jr. He died shortly after he
(18:28):
retired from life. Yeah, they say on the perhaps website
under our timeline. Once Fred Paps retired, their sales started
to decline, like they had reached a peak. And then
he retired and things started to go downhill. And they
tried a bunch of campaigns to booster sales, and the
(18:48):
campaigns were okay, Like they stopped they stopped the decline,
but they also didn't improve sales of Plateau. Yeah. Yeah,
they were stable by seven again. But then they lured
their prices and they came up with a really good
like nickname for themselves, the premium Beer at a Popular Price. Yeah,
that became their trademarked marketing slogan for a long time.
(19:11):
People would later say much later that this move would
ultimately hurt them because they became known as a bargain beer,
and so people people started to forget that this was
a beer that had been held in high esteem, and
they just thought of it, Oh, that's the cheap stuff
you can get if you want to, if you want
to tie one on. But at the onset of calling
(19:34):
themselves the premium beer at a popular price, it did
work because people are coming off they remember the recession
and all that. Yeah, and they remember it's an award
winning beer, and it hasn't distanced itself from its previous
history far enough for people to start thinking that. So
they're still sales start going up again by which is
a big jump in time. We don't want to take
(19:54):
you through every year. They're up to eighteen million barrels
a year that they were making. Yeah, so from three
point nine million in and then the next year nine
again they reached their peak. They just as they had
peaked in the nineteen fifties before, perhaps had retired or
passed on, or however you want to define it. Maybe
(20:15):
that's just the way perhaps defines passing away when you retire.
But but anyway, night they hit another peak. And then
we're getting to a big braink moment. Yes, yes, the
Mountain range were start about to start the decline. Yeah.
So in nineteen seventy nine, just a year after they
(20:36):
hit new Heights, pearl Ston retired and as far as
we know, he actually just retired, yes, and then things
took a sharp decline. It seems to be a theme
too that we see someone in authority from the company
stepped down and then we see a drop in the business.
To be fair with perhaps we're gonna discuss a little
(20:56):
bit of what was the trouble immediately following this, But
you know what I'm getting I'm getting parched talking about
all this delicious beverage. I'm gonna go get myself something
to drink. And while I do, why don't we take
a moment to thank our sponsor. Was that tasty, Jonathan? Yes,
(21:28):
my imaginary drink was delicious. I'm glad. After pearl Ston retired,
a corporation of people tried to acquire Paps. They tried
to buy Paps Ruin Jacobs and like three other investors,
they were part of a company j MSL acquiring corps.
And the pretty much tells you everything they were doing
right acquiring corps. That they were out in the business
(21:50):
of buying other companies and they tried to buy papsed in. Yeah,
So why would you want to get a company that
wasn't doing so well? What was it about this one
company that was like you know, we see failing companies
all the time, most people don't say, oh, I want
to swoop in and buy that. Well. I mean one
thing they liked about perhaps is perhaps had remained debt free.
(22:13):
If you if you think back just so long ago
when we were talking about the history of the company,
they didn't take out a bunch of loans. They didn't
they didn't put themselves into huge amount of debts like
so many companies we see on the brink. They had
made some acquisitions, but they did so in a way
that didn't put them in deep debt to creditors. Which
means if this acquisition company could buy perhaps they could
(22:37):
resell it without any strings attached, or with fewer strings attached,
I should say, yeah. And they had a plan already.
H Irwin Jacobs wanted to purchase this company and then
sell half of its capacity to another brewing company called
the g Heilerman Brewing Company. And the idea was not
(22:57):
to sell like of perhaps ownership, but rather literally two
of the breweries, two of the physical factories. They wanted
to sell it to Heilerman. So the story gets really
kind of juicy and complicated. So I'm going to backtrack
for just a second between one that was that period
(23:18):
we were talking about of the decline, right, perhaps went
through four CEOs in that time. That's four years, four
CEOs in four years. So to say that there was
problem at the management level is being very generous. You know,
you can't really form a strategy and you can't really
(23:40):
stabilize a company if you're constantly changing leadership. No, you can't.
And and maybe the leaders coming in I thought they
had great ideas and when they failed, were immediately booted
instead of It's a sign also of a board of
directors that has a very short, a very small amount
of patients. Right, so Jacob said acquired about ten of
all the outstanding shares with the company by nighte And originally,
(24:05):
because he was the largest individual shareholder, you know, he
didn't have controlling interest, but he had a lot of shares,
he originally demanded that he be made chairman of the
board and that in turn the board of directors open
up four seats for his associates to also be on
the board of directors. Yeah, but it sounds like if
going through four CEO s that the board of directors
(24:28):
had no patience for stuff like this. No, they were not.
He was often called an interloper, like he was some
outsider who was muscling his way in just because he
had the temerity to own a lot of money, and
so Jacobs was not able to get what he wanted.
He did get one seat on the board, so he
he was on the board of directors. Then he was
(24:50):
trying to get the company to buy another brewing company,
specifically the Schlitz Brewing Company, but that wouldn't work out.
Perhaps when after Schlitz, but at the time Schlitz said,
we see your offer, but we're not really interested. We're
more interested in an offer from the g. Heilerman Brewing Company,
the same one that Jacobs would later want to try
and sell half of PHAPS two and so Heilerman that
(25:15):
company looked like they were going to get Schlitz. Ultimately
they didn't get it either. Another brewery this gets so complicated,
called Strow Brewery would end up buying Schlitz. Keep in
mind Strow Brewery is gonna come back up in our story, Lader.
So this beer business gets super messy. So perhaps didn't
buy Schlitz in the eighties, it ultimately would acquire Schlitz.
(25:37):
But that's we're gonna hit that later. So Jacobs resigns
his board seat in because he's not getting what he wants,
and he says, well, if I can't get it this way,
I'm going to get it from outside the board. I'm
taking my ball, I'm going home, and then I'm coming
back with all my friends and we're gonna rough you up.
I'm making this sound way more petulant than it's very exciting.
(26:01):
Jonathan continue. So he goes and he buys up more
and more shares, and then he tries to make the
move to acquire Paps shares and sell this half capacity
to the Ghilerman Brewing Company. And the whole point of
this approach was that he wanted to sidestep some antitrust laws,
the Sherman antitrust laws. What that says is that you
(26:23):
can't create a monopoly or even a regional monopoly, right,
you have to have competition within the same industry. And
the fear was that if Heilerman the brewing company, where
to go after paps directly. Then the government would say, no,
you can't do that, because they're both pretty vague at
this point. So Jacob's idea was, well, if I can
go in and buy up these shares and then turn
(26:46):
around and sell this stuff to Heilerman, it's sidesteps that
whole issue. They get the brewing facilities, but they don't
buy the company. Technically, there's still two companies there, there's
still competition. This also is an indication of how crazy
things were in the seventies and eighties, which we kind
of touched on in some other episodes of I grew
up in that era. I was fortunately a child, so
(27:09):
I did not have a full understanding of how insane
it was. So, uh, this is all his plan, and
it again does not quite work, but it wasn't all
the whole plan. There was another element too. Write there
was another brewing company that that perhaps was looking at acquiring,
perhaps wanted to merge with Olympia Brewing Company. They were
(27:31):
also struggling at the time, so perhaps thought was that
they could combine their forces and be stronger together, while
Jacobs thought that they would kind of drag each other down.
Perhaps had offered seventy million dollars in cash for Olympia stock,
and Olympia was also known as kind of like a
bargain beer label, so yeah, this was a fear. Jacobs
(27:54):
was like, no, this is like a rock tying itself
to an anchor. But perhaps really did not on Jacob's
too to hostily take them over. So they spent eleven
million dollars to fight Jacob's attempts at acquisition. And apparently
he wasn't the only one interested in getting hold of
the company either. No, they also got bids from Schmitten's
(28:17):
Son Brewery or Schmidt and Sons Brewery for and fifty
cents per share. Jacobs was offering it at four dollars
per share, and perhaps the note of that one too,
but it was like a gentler No, it was like,
if you come back to us with a cash offer,
we might consider. Yeah. We often see this where companies
will say, you know, I would rather take cash than
(28:40):
a stock offering because there's no telling if that what
you are offering is going to be worth the same
amount once the transaction is complete. But neither Jacobs nor
Schmitten's Sons got passed. Instead, a guy named Paul Kalmanowitz,
who was in charge of a holding company called SMP Company,
would purchase this. S and P Company would later become
(29:03):
the kal Manovits Charitable Trust, and it was a nonprofit,
which would become an issue. But that was and they
did it for sixty three million dollars. So it's actually
a lower price than what was looked at earlier. Yeah,
but I don't think there was as much bad blood Necessarily.
It also wasn't looked as an outsider because cal Manowitz
(29:25):
was already owner of a brewing company. In fact, he
owned a couple, the first of which was the Meyer
Brewing Company. Yeah. Now that being said, him buying perhaps
was considered an aggressive takeover. Yeah, it was hostile to
say the least. So you wonder what these hostile takeovers mean.
It essentially means that rather than go through the board
(29:47):
of directors of a company, and to be fair, the
board of directors for PERHAPST was kind of like seen
as being a little unruly. Uh. Instead of doing that,
you go directly to the shareholders and you either offer
to buy shares from the shareholders or you convinced shareholders
to vote for the acquisition and that was how they
(30:08):
were able to leverage this and turn it into a
sale and things chug along. Yeah, and then Calmanowitz would
die and then guess what when people leave the company,
the company's profits tank. Yes, so from perhaps did not
turn a profit all right, ugly ugly thing to see
(30:32):
like a company losing money year over year for for
essentially seven years. Then we get into one of those
situations I was talking about before about a beer company
licensing out its product to a different brewery. Right, Yeah,
all of perhaps beer production was contracted out to Strow
(30:54):
Brewing Company, which Jonathan pronounces better than I do. But
it's the one that ended up purchasing Schlitz back in
ninety one, I think, um, And that's same here the
original Paps brewery in Milwaukee and Milwaukee, after a hundred
and fifty two years in business, was shut down, and
(31:16):
that upset Milwaukee locals. Have pub stopped carrying their their
beer and people started boycotting, and the brewers union was
suing because that was a huge loss of jobs. Yeah,
and also we learned a valuable lesson that brewer is
a hard word to say. Yes, it's very difficult. As
(31:38):
we go on, I was like, oh yeah, I have
trouble with brewery and brewer so many times it has
been edited out. But this is also when Perhaps would
become what a lot of people would refer to, and
this this is not unique to Papst, but would become
a virtual brewery, the idea that it's a company still
it still owns intellectual property, that being the recipe and
(32:00):
designs of Perhaps. They're not creating the product, they're having
another brewery actually brew the beer. But interesting turn of
events in Perhaps acquired stro Yeah, so they they had
been licensing it out to Strow and then they buy
the company, which is how Perhaps became the owner of Schlitz,
another bargain price beer. Yes, and then they sold the
(32:24):
actual Strow Brewery to another company, City Brewing Company, and
then they contracted all of their brewing to the Miller
Brewing Company in two thousand one. This is what we
were talking about when we said this, I feel like
we almost need a wall with a bunch of pieces
of paper red string in between all of Yes, yes,
(32:45):
it's it's like a CSI case. Doesn't really work great
for audio podcasting, but it will help us understand what's
going on. No, so perhaps kind of said, oh, we're
going to stay a virtual brewery. And now by this
time they're based in San Antonio. Also another note, I
know I keep doing this. I don't think I've ever
seen a company change its headquarters as frequently as perhaps has,
(33:09):
because we're just now we're talking about Milwaukee to San Antonio. Really,
but pay attention because it jumps around a little bit.
But things were actually starting to improve at this point, right,
like they were starting to slowly see some upward creep
of important numbers. Yes, and in two thousand and three
they were actually named the best tasting domestic beer in
(33:32):
the Hipster Handbook and they were very, very popular in
organ at that time. And the reason why is because
they were selling sponsorships to bike messengers, but the bike
messengers didn't have to wear attacky logos, and so the
bike messengers liked him. The bike messengers started drinking the beer,
and it kind of developed this like organic growth word
(33:53):
of mouth, hence the hipster millennial trend. Yeah, and uh,
I like that. You have this other nice theory here
that ties into another topic that we've covered on the brink, Saracha. Yes,
you have this this nice little uh, kind of symmetry
thing going here. Yeah, because they they stopped buying outright advertising.
(34:17):
I mean, they were sponsoring bake messengers, but they were
lying so much on grassroots approach. Yes, yes, growing organically,
which did work really well for Huifang Foods in Saracha. Yeah.
I actually watched a short video about this where the
guy who was in charge of that that whole marketing
thing right around that time, where he talked about this,
(34:37):
and at one point he talked about how he went
in essentially dressed as a bike messenger to a bar.
And this was already when this is already starting to happen, right,
and he noticed that there was a counter culture that
was developing. It was people who were kind of their
identity was based partly on the idea of being in
the outsider, right. They like the things that aren't really popular,
(34:58):
they're not mainstream. That was really a lot of the
identity of hipster was what you were not, and that
it was you were not mainstream. And perhaps Blue Ribbon
at this point, despite the fact that it had been
an award winning beer and had been around for more
than a century, was thought of as not mainstream, and
it started to get popularity and why. He tells the
story about he goes into a bar. He stressed his
(35:21):
bike messenger, his whole bunch of perhaps swag in his
in his messenger bag, and he goes to the bartender.
He introduces himself and he specifically says, you know what,
don't tell anyone I'm here, but I represent Perhaps Blue Ribbon.
I'm just just here to, you know, hang out. And
of course the bartender starts telling people, which was what
(35:42):
the guy had planned in the first place. He manipulated
the hipsters, and then soon enough people are coming up
to him talking to them and getting their hands in
that sweet, sweet perhaps swag, and that was an example
of this grassroots approach. They started going to music festivals
and kind of handing out stuff there. They were essentially
(36:03):
going to the places where the hipsters were going, and
the hipsters were taking it as word of mouth, and
they became the counter culture beer Yeah. And then there
there is another theory as to what helped its growth,
and and that is that the people who did still
like paps, who didn't swear it off when they closed
down in Milwaukee, who were still drinking it on the
regular because it's what they grew up with and liked,
(36:24):
we're worried about it going out of business because now
it's longer popular. So as it starts getting word of mouth,
they're like, oh, yes, yes, let's support this. I want
to keep my PAPST. Now we get to another complication.
I mentioned earlier that the SMP company became the nonprofit group,
but that would end up being a problem in two
(36:47):
thousand five because the i R S said that the
organization could not own a for profit company and still
maintain its nonprofit status. They were told essentially, you've gotta
sell PAPSED or you're going to have to you're gonna
lose your nonprofit and then you're gonna get taxed a lot.
(37:07):
But there was a problem. They could not find a
buyer for it at market price right. So then they
are like, hey, can we get like maybe a little
deferral on this, and the I R S said, toads, bra,
you get five years. I guess the I R S
like PAPS as well. Don't quote me on that. In
two thousand six, col Chuck resigned a CEO and Kevin
(37:29):
Koteci took over and now perhaps moves to Illinois. So
now when Milwaukee, San Antonio, Illinois. At least Illinois makes
sense because they had a brewery there. And also, I
mean that's where the World's Fair was, So yes, there's
that too. And in two thousand seven they re release
can I can I just say when you were saying
(37:50):
paps schwag, I really wanted it to be schlitz schwag.
I gotta be real careful here, because the more I
say these words, the more I'm absolutely certain something is
going to slip through the You know what, I got
a sober up after my virtual fake beer that I
took at the last break. I'm gonna take another break
and have a virtual fake coffee. That's good, virtual fake coffee.
(38:25):
I'm glad you enjoyed it. Jonathan. Alright, we're back. So
what happens next? So in May two the company sold
to deem Metropulas it's a Greek name, Pulastpas, it's not metropolis.
There's are you in there? Who reinvigorated the company and
the brand. He had help of his son, so they
(38:47):
they really doubled down on this. Let's appeal to hipsters,
let's appeal to millennials. Thing um millennials like affordable products,
and they also like products that promote experience over I
guess purchase right. And also again they often thought, oh
it's outside the mainstream, there's something kind of cool about it.
There there's there's some overlap in the Venn diagram of
(39:10):
hipster and millennial, not entirely, but they bought the company
for two hundred and fifty million dollars. The next year,
two eleven, they moved to l A. Okay, so wait
wait wait Milwaukee, San Antonio, Illinois, Los Angeles, um. And
then they started, like I said, marketing to millennial. So
they used Will Ferrell to sell not perhaps Blue Ribbon,
(39:32):
but Old Milwaukee, which was another brand they were selling.
That that commercial alone, it only showed in three markets,
but it got four million views on YouTube and three
d and thirty nine million media impressions across the country.
So again it ended up being you know, they pay
for a regional local, uh marketing campaign, but because the Internet,
(39:57):
it gets broadcast over the entire world. But they also
they do make one decision and while it didn't hurt
the company, some people were not very fond of it.
They allowed the Milwaukee Brewery to be slated to be
turned into mixed use development. Yeah, that's something that we
see a lot here in Atlanta and a lot of
places in the United States where old. In fact, we're
recording in an old facility that is no longer used
(40:19):
for what it was, but then a lot of factories
and warehouses and stuff that got turned into lofts and
mixed use development. By two thousand and twelve, PBR was
selling ninety two million gallons of beer. And I wonder
how that translates to barrels. I don't know. I think
it's four hands high and a cubit um, but no,
(40:42):
it's a ninety two million gallons of beer. So, just
to give you an idea of how big a change
this was, twelve years earlier, in two thousand, they sold
less than one million gallons, So they went from less
than one million gallons and twelve years later they're selling
ninety two million gallons. At you could say that's a
great return from the brain. It really is, it really is.
(41:03):
In two thousand thirteen, they start brand partnerships, so they're
kind of ditching the no advertising, but they're still taking
a creative route to it. They partner up with companies
like Vans and Santa Cruz Skateboards, and they even hold
their very own music festival. Yeah, just to appeal to folks.
So many jokes that I can make right now, but
I'm not gonna So why don't you tell us what
happens next? Then? All right? Well, in two thousand fourteen,
(41:24):
they sold to Blue Ribbon Intermediate Holdings ll C for
a whopping seven hundred million dollars. So they bought it
for two fifty sold it for seven hundred. News flash,
business owners, that's how you want to do it. Yes,
you definitely want the perhaps Blue Ribbon approach of buying
for to fifty and selling for seven hundred. The holding
(41:45):
company was acquired by another company. Because that's all the
way the way these things seem to work. In the
beer industry, Chairman Eugene cashpur and partnership with TSG Consumer Partners,
and then they opened their HQ in Los Angeles in
two thousand fifteen. Perhaps decides to take an old church
that was a part of the original brewery and turn
(42:06):
it into a tap room and micro brewery, and then
they completed that in two thousand seventeen. So recently that
opened up and you can go there and you can
take a tour, and you can even try out some
of the discontinued beers that Perhaps has made throughout its
history but no longer produces in large amounts, but you
can you can try them there at that brewery. Did
(42:28):
you know that, uh, perhaps is also popular in China?
I did not know that. Uh. Well, one they they
brew a Chinese beer that I'm assuming is the the
popular beer in an affordable price for China. It's ah
sing Tao, but you can also get and I'm not
sure if it's malt laquer because perhaps brewing company does
(42:50):
malt liquors as well, or if it's a beer it
is called perhaps Blue Ribbon eighteen forty four, which is
why I think they might have started in eighteen forty
four and eighteen forty nine. And it runs at a bottle. Wow,
that's not your beer anymore, right, No, all of their
beers are still brewed over by Miller Coors now. That
so there's still a virtual brewery in that sense. They
(43:12):
own the recipes, they own the trademarks, but other breweries
are actually making the beer. And that includes all of
their their beers, including like not just perhaps Blue Ribbon,
but Schlitz Old Milwaukee. Also Cult forty five. We got
through this whole thing without talking about Lando Calrissian. Yeah,
but Cult forty five as well. And let's take a
(43:35):
look at some other little facts and figures that kind
of brings us up to what's going on today. But
we've got a little bit more to share before we
sign off. Yeah, so you know, perhaps Sprewing Company, they
spent a lot of time in the break they came out.
They really had a resurgence. In two thousands sixteen they
were ranked third overall and in two seventeen fifth overall
(43:56):
for sales volume. So they've definitely been misplaced. One of
the one of the things that has happened, uh, and
it's sort of to the detriment. Actually, two things that
kind of have led to a little bit of a
dip in their their sales with the markets that they
were doing so well in. One was, and this is
one of the things that makes me go crazy about hipsters,
is that once the beer storty getting popular, hipsters didn't
(44:18):
want to drink it anymore because it was becoming mainstream. Yeah,
that's irritating. But the other thing was that, uh, people
started to discover microbreweries so breweries that were only making
small batches of beers. They're very hyper local type beers.
You started seeing more of a focus on that, especially
among both hipsters and millennials. I know in Atlanta, like
(44:41):
micro breweries are almost as prevalent as waffle houses. Oh yeah, No,
you can't throw a rock without hitting someone brewing beer,
which I don't recommend doing because the fermentation process is
kind of explosive. And we were looking at a potential
other brink moment for the past just very recently, right
before recording this is there contract with Miller Cores was
(45:04):
supposed to be up in and perhaps I wanted to
extend the contract to which they were saying they had
the right to do. But Millard Cours wanted to make
their own products. They were saying they didn't have the
capacity to do that, and they wanted to end the
contract in so there's been a little bit of a
(45:24):
legal battle, which just recently got resolved. Yeah, there was
actually fear also that Miller Cores might even make a
beer that would have been in direct competition with and
that was why it wasn't necessarily That was one of
the arguments that wasn't necessarily capacity, but rather that Miller
Coors wanted to to go after that same mark. Perhapst
was saying that Miller Coors was making their decisions in
bad faith. Yeah, but that's going to now continue for
(45:49):
a little longer. PBR will still be made through this
virtual brewery arrangement, So it's not going yet. It did, however,
actually go all the way to trial. Yes, yeah, and
the childhood nine days it was supposed to be. The
decision was supposed to be made by a jury, and
then before the jury can make a final decision, Papst
in Miller Cores came to an agreement. Yeah, this frequently
(46:13):
happens before a jury can actually come to a decision
that is irreversible. You'll find settlements where companies are kind
of hedging their bets. So, um, we've got a couple
more a little fun facts, one of which is how
everyone knows Paps Blue Ribbon, but they may not know
that obviously. There there are other Schlitz in Old Milwaukee.
(46:37):
So how many different types are we talking about here?
Brands of beer and malt laquers, So that does include
their malt liquors as well. That's a lot though. Yeah,
I did not know that. Also, what's up Canada A
In two thousand seventeen, Uh, you could buy a can
(47:00):
case a PBR and presumably a cart to carry it
out in well, you know that same year PBR did
sell a jacket that was also a beer cooler, not
necessarily just in Canada, but like it had all these
pockets and you could put your yeah, so while you're
chilling outside says you're bear yes, which is kind of
(47:21):
fun that they made a six pack coat because it's
rumored that Papst invented the six pack, which wouldn't surprise
me since they were the first beer essentially to do canning. Yeah,
first widely known one, certainly, and they're at their brewery
tours in Milwaukee. They used to offer something that all
(47:41):
the college students thought was the best thing ever, which
was bottomless beer. Oh my god, I can't imagine. Also,
before we recorded this show, I mentioned to Ariel a
certain classic cinema that she has yet to see, so
we're gonna have to watch that at some point in
(48:02):
the future. I am, of course talking about the live
action Disney classic Midnight Madness. It was in the era
where Disney was first kind of exploring non family films
really for the things that weren't documentaries or like you know,
Davy Crockett or anything like that. And in it, it's
(48:23):
got a group of of different contestants who are all
going on this citywide scavenger hunt that has all these
different puzzles they have to solve and one uh and
it's in Milwaukee and one of the important elements, one
of the important places they have to go to is
the Perast Blue Ribbon Brewery and they have a whole
song about it with an angelic choir and light coming
(48:46):
down because one of the teams is a bunch of
jocks who are really into beer. So that is something
I'm gonna have to show Ariel because I have to
complete her Disney education. You've really sold me on it, Jonathan.
In fact, we should go do that now. Yeah, we're
gonna ago and watch some Disney movies, but we will
be back to talk about more companies and these pivotal
(49:06):
moments in their history where things are really dark and
either they get bright again or they all fall apart. Yep.
But if you want to catch up on more episodes
of The Brink, you can look us up at our
website which is at the Brink Podcast dot show. Ye
the Brink Podcast dot show. And if you have ideas
(49:28):
for future episodes or you just want to chime in,
chime in. You know, we like talking with folks. You
can email us at Feedback at the Brink podcast dot show. Yeah,
we look forward to hearing from you and until next time.
I have been Jonathan's Trickland and I have been aerial
casting
From county fair to millennial flair. Perhaps tis one a
blue ribbon in many people's hearts, while some others look
on and just wonder why, but love it or hate it,
This affordable lone star has made a name for itself.
Yet in the nineteen seventies they started going flat, and
soon this drink found itself spending years in the brink.
(00:25):
It took a new owner, advice from his kids, and
a new direction for the palatable product to recarbonate this brewery.
This is passed on the brink? Are yes? Throw me an,
(00:47):
I can't do that, Jonathan, And I know I don't.
I don't drink. It's okay, I will drink one for you.
All right. I'm Jonathan Stricklin and I'm Arial Casting. We're
talking about perhapst To. And it's funny because, you know,
this is one of those stories that we thought we'd
look into because of the the semi recent resurgence of
(01:09):
perhapst Uh and the fact that this is a brand
that is more than a century old. Yes, and so
it's it's an interesting story that goes all the way
back to before the Civil War. Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
Perhapst was not even perhapsed when it began. Um, and
(01:31):
people might be like, why aren't you saying perhaps blue ribbon,
because it wasn't perhaps blue ribbon either. That's just one
beers that this brewery would end up making. So this
company story starts in eighteen forty four, although if you
look at their official history, they say eighteen forty nine. Yeah,
it's really weird. When I was looking at their official history,
somethings didn't line up with everybody else's reports. It may
(01:54):
very well be the first five years of making beer
was terrible. That's it's true. It's true. Anyhow, What we
do know is that the company was started by Jacob
Best and his sons, which is already great, right because
you can just say it's the best beer it is
because it's made by the best family you could. I
won't say it is. I'm going to stay impartial. I
am Switzerland in this beer game. It was originally known
(02:17):
as the Empire Company, this brew company, and then it
became Best In Company, and it started in Milwaukee. Yes,
as many breweries do. Yes, and we had not just
Jacob who was the father the potter familius fancy perhaps, yes,
(02:37):
you also had his sons, which included Philip, Charles Jacob Jr.
And Lawns and their first year of making beer, they
made three hundred barrels, eighteen barrels at a time. And
then in the eighteen fifties, as the Potter familius was
(02:58):
getting on in years, he hands over the reins of
the company to his eldest son, Philip. Philip Best takes over. Yes,
so good old phil good old phil Well. In eighteen
fifty nine. Okay, you want me to hit this name
or do you want to give it a shot. I'm
going to try it and then I get it wrong,
you can correct me. A man named Johann Gottlieb Friedrich Oh,
(03:22):
very good pronunciation, thank you? Or Frederick Perhapst married Philip
Best's daughter Maria. He was a steamship Captain Perhapst. The
captain Captain Frederick Papst cap papst Yp and so you
might say, ah, I see where the name comes from.
So he marries Maria, and then just a couple of
(03:44):
years later, in eighteen sixty three, he would take the
money he had accumulated in his various exploits and captain
he has captain ing and purchased fifty of the company
the Best Company, Yes, which was now Philip Best Brewing
and he became vice president of that company. In eighteen
(04:05):
sixty six, Best sold the rest of the company to
another guy, Emil s Yes Emil shan Din. Emil shan Dine,
by the way, was married to Philip Best's other daughter, Lazette.
So now his two sons in law were the two
owners of the Philip Best Brewing Company, and the Perhapst
(04:28):
was the president, and then shan Dine was vice president.
But Shandune passed away in eight and then his wife
took over the vice presidency. YEP. So going back just
a bit, because eight when shan Dine passes away. But
in eighteen seventy four the company would become the largest
brewer in the United States, which is pretty amazing. Now
(04:51):
they would not hold onto that title forever, but it
is interesting to note that at one point, perhaps Perhapst
the Well and then the Best Brewing Company was the
number one largest brewing company in the in America. And
they had a main beer. So, like we said, they
had a lot of different brews, but their main beer,
which was Best Select yep. This was the what would
(05:14):
eventually become Paps Blue Ribbon. Yes, they started offering it
in eighteen seventy five, and they were taking it around
to various beer competitions and fairs, and it was winning. Yeah,
they were winning awards. They had not officially won a
blue ribbon, but to signify that the beer was in
fact winning awards, they got the bright idea of how
(05:35):
about we tie a silk blue ribbon to each bottle, yes,
and indicate this is an award winning beer. Yes, they
started doing that in eighteen eighty two, So they had
been winning awards for a while before they started showing
it off entirely. In eighty nine, they finally changed the
name of the brewery to Paps Brewing Company. And by
(05:56):
the early eighteen nineties, one of the big purchases this
company was making wasn't in hops or barley, it was
in blue silk ribbon. Yeah. It seems like a hefty
investment to me. Yea like silk silk is not cheap, right,
and it would actually become prohibitively expensive a little later.
(06:16):
We'll get there. Yes. So eventually they travel these fair
so I could see travel these beer competitions, and they
come to the Chicago World's Fair. In Now I'm gonna
tell a little story, please do, because this is one
of my favorite events in American history. It's it's a
truly phenomenal gathering, and so much incredible stuff was shown
(06:40):
off at this particular World's Fair, so it was also
known as the World's Colombian Exposition. It was one of
the most elaborate celebrations in American history. So the idea
of winning a Blue ribbon there would have been a
really huge deal. More on that in the second because
it gets a little complicated. So the whole purpose of
this event was to commemor rate the anniversary of Christopher
(07:01):
Columbus's arrival in the New World. This was obviously before
we started to recognize all the negative things that come
with that, because this is a time when people weren't
really thinking about the indigenous population of the United States.
But it's not necessarily what the World's Fair is remembered for. No. Uh.
One of the things that remembered for for this particular
World's Fair was that Chicago, the city had paid to
(07:25):
have an entire section of city built for this. It
was called the White City, and there were these phenomenal
amazing buildings. Only one of those major buildings still exists
in Chicago, and it is currently the Museum of Science
and Industry. And if you ever have a chance, if
you live in Chicago and you've never been, you've gotta go.
And if you live near Chicago, you gotta go. And
(07:47):
if you live far away from Chicago, Planet trip, it's
worth going to. It's a great museum. So this is
the same World's Fair where things like the ferris wheel
first debut. That was the brand new thing. Uh. The
World's Fair was where Westinghouse was able to convince the
United States to use alternating current as opposed to Edison's
(08:08):
direct current. Thomas Edison was actually there too, showing off
the kinetoscope, which was an early motion picture kind of technology.
He was probably also stinging a bit the fact that
a C one out over d C. His presentation might
have been a little salty. Supposedly, Nikola Tesla was there,
shooting off lightning bolts from his hands, you know, as
only superheroes can do. And in other words, this was
(08:31):
an incredibly prestigious and important event. The world's attention was
on Chicago. And if you ever really want a fascinating
description of it. This is just a recommendation I have
for everyone out there. There's a book called The Devil
in the White City. It's by Eric Larson. I highly recommended.
It has two main storylines. One is the preparation and
(08:51):
launch of the Chicago World's Fair. The other, which is
happening at the same time and they alternate chapters, is
a disturbing story about H. H. Holmes, and early serial
killer who was active in Chicago at that same time.
Fantastic book. So this is where Perhaps wins the Blue Ribbon. Right, Okay,
kinda not really, but kind okay. So here's here's the deal.
(09:13):
Perhaps best select the beer that they had been showing
off at all these different festivals and stuff that was
winning awards was there to be judged, and there were
judges to test different beers. Originally, they were supposed to
base their their judgments upon three criteria purity, color, and flavor,
and then each beer was supposed to get a score
(09:34):
between zero and one hundred, and if you scored eighty
or higher you were considered a remarkable beer. You would
get a bronze medal and a certificate. That's it. Any
beer that hit eighty or higher would get this. Eventually,
the judges decided that they didn't like the criteria that
had been laid out, so they made up their own criteria.
I have no idea what it was. Maybe it was
(09:56):
whatever gets you tore up the fastest, who knows, but
they it seems like a criteria to me. Probably the
longer the testing went on, the higher the scores. God,
but it was down to really two beers. There was
the perhaps Best Select and there was an Anheuser Busch Beer,
and Anheuser Busch Beer was ahead by two points until
(10:17):
the final scores came in, and then Perhaps Best Select
technically had the highest score of all the beers. There
was no award for the highest score. It was just
if you had eighty or higher you got the medal
and a certificate. So the judges weren't necessarily saying whoever
gets the highest score quote unquote wins, but perhaps was
(10:38):
saying that he didn't let that stop him, so he said,
this makes our beer the best out of all the
beers at Chicago World's Fair. And that's where the legend
of perhapst Blue Ribbon as an official thing really started
to take off. Even though there was no blue ribbon. Yeah. Well,
in they added blue ribbon to the brand name of
(11:00):
Best Select, and in they changed the entire brand two
Papst blue ribbon. Yes. And by then they were producing
a million gallons or barrels, not even gallants, barrels. Gallons
is thinking too small, Jonathan, barrels of beer. It's okay,
you don't drink Yes. By the early nine hundreds, now
(11:20):
they're ordering, they're still putting silk ribbon on their bottles,
and they're ordering like up to thirty million feet of
the silk ribbon until World War One, because then we
get into a point where the United States government is
withholding certain stuff in order to use it for the
war effort, and silk was one of the materials. So
(11:41):
they weren't able to get silk ribbon during the World
War one era. And then something else happened that was
a little more serious for the beer industry than a
shortage of silk, but it meant that they didn't have
to worry about a silk shortage anymore because prohibition happened.
That would be when they United States passed day an
amendment saying you cannot sell alcohol anymore. Prohibition lasted from
(12:07):
and to survive this time, perhaps decided to make cheese. Yeah.
They pivoted, just like online content has pivoted from articles
to video. Perhaps pivoted from beer to cheese. Yes, they
more accurately cheese food. Cheese food. They called this cheese
like substance paps debt, which just rolls off the tongue,
(12:31):
and they were actually really successful. They did quite well
during the prohibition because of this. They made eight million
pounds with PEPs debt. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, they were
so successful that Craft fought them over copyright issues, feeling
that papst was infringing upon their copyright for cheese. And
then once prohibition was Overcraft bought pops debt. Yeah, so
(12:54):
paps debt would eventually make its way over to Craft.
It's funny because I actually found some old radio ads
for phaps debt, so I listened to them, and you'll
be glad to know you could get it. In the end.
This is a quote familiar round package or in a
two pound economy loaf. Well, geez, if I can get
it into two pound loaf and it's economical, you you
(13:15):
save money that way. They referred to it as cheese food,
and they said it was the kind you could melt
down into sauces to really make leftover sing. That's another quote,
so basically velvita. Yeah. And they also said it was
an excellent source of food energy. So there's another thing
we need to remember, which is that Prohibition wasn't the
(13:36):
only thing going on, Especially towards the end of Prohibition
from nine nine you're talking also about the Great Depression.
So that's an era where it becomes more and more
important to be able to stretch your dollar as far
as it will go, So that stretch your cheese, yeah,
or that again it tells you making your leftovers more palatable. Well,
(13:57):
it was more economic to you be able to have
dover's then to keep buying more food. So so the
next thing that happens in Perhaps History is actually something
I had a difficult time finding the exact details on
because it says in two Harris pearl Stein became president
of Perhaps Brewing Company. He was named president by fred Papst,
(14:19):
But Frederick Papst had passed away by that time already.
So was it like on Christmas Eve and it's just
Herechristine Ship ghost of Christmas past Um listen we're gonna
be a little tipsy. Frederick perhaps had a son, Frederick Jr.
So what I have garnered from my research is that
(14:42):
it was probably fred Jr. Who took over the company,
and then he was the one who named pearl Stein
the the president. So pearl Stein, his company, Premier Malt Products,
had merged with Papst and he became president as a
result of that um And this was right at the
just before four prohibition was to come to an end.
(15:03):
So as soon as prohibition is over, In perhaps says
we're going to double down. We we miss making beer,
so we're gonna make extra beer. And they open it
in Illinois brewery and they already still had the one
in Milwaukee. Uh. And then they start in switching over
to a brand new type of packaging. So up to
(15:25):
this point they've been using bottles, and they've been using
embossed bottles because they really there was no easy way
to print labels for quite some time, so that's why
they had to tie the actual ribbon to the bottles
because they couldn't print a label the head ribbon on it.
But in they switched to something else because the American
Can Company finally figured out how the can beer without
(15:49):
it blowing up. And that's actually true. They tried originally
in nineteen o nine too, can beer, but the carbonation
would cause the cans to explode and not good so
much of an alcohol fowl. Yeah. But one of the
other benefits of canning PBR supposed to bottling it is
that they could print the label the ribbon on the label,
(16:12):
so they no longer had to hand tie ribbons onto bottles.
Also would have been weird to try and figure out
how to tie it to a can a little tab.
There's no tab on the early ones. But yeah, so
it worked. And it's funny because I actually looked into this,
I wanted to learn more about the American Can Company
at The very first beers to get canned were from
(16:33):
the Gottfried Krueger Brewery, reminding us that Germany, of course
is the home of beer and uh. The first two
types of beer from the Gottfried Krueger Brewery to get
canned where cream Ale and Krueger's Finest Beer, and rapidly
other beer companies followed suit. So this is the very
first year the American Can Company had been able to
(16:55):
do it, and perhaps was on board from the beginning. Yes, yes,
in ninety perhaps was doing pretty well, so they started
buying other beer companies. Yeah, this is actually spoiler alert
for the rest of the episode. As we did this research,
neither of us, I think, had an appreciation for how
crazy the beer industry is as far as acquisitions and
(17:18):
mergers and sales. No, because when I think of something
like perhapst Blue Ribbon or Cores or bud Light or
anything like that, they've just been around as long as
I can remember. So I assume that they all started
independently and remained independently success like they were all silos.
But in fact, in a lot of cases, you're talking
about one brewery that ends up licensing its recipe and
(17:42):
it's it's trademark to another company to actually produce all
the stuff, which to me would be like if McDonald's
were to license the Big Mac to Burger King. Like
you go to a Burger King, but you would buy
an a McDonald's Big Mac and it would come into
McDonald's rapper, be a McDonald's Big Mac, but you would
buy it at a Burger King. To me, that that's
almost the same thing, and it's crazy. Yeah, but anyway
(18:05):
that I digress. We'll get more into it as the
show goes on. Yes, by nifty they're completely done with ribbons.
They're completely into cans. It's all printed. Sales were at
their peak. And this is again where the history gets
a little cloudy. It says Fred Paps retired and if
it was Fred Paps Jr. He died shortly after he
(18:28):
retired from life. Yeah, they say on the perhaps website
under our timeline. Once Fred Paps retired, their sales started
to decline, like they had reached a peak. And then
he retired and things started to go downhill. And they
tried a bunch of campaigns to booster sales, and the
(18:48):
campaigns were okay, Like they stopped they stopped the decline,
but they also didn't improve sales of Plateau. Yeah. Yeah,
they were stable by seven again. But then they lured
their prices and they came up with a really good
like nickname for themselves, the premium Beer at a Popular Price. Yeah,
that became their trademarked marketing slogan for a long time.
(19:11):
People would later say much later that this move would
ultimately hurt them because they became known as a bargain beer,
and so people people started to forget that this was
a beer that had been held in high esteem, and
they just thought of it, Oh, that's the cheap stuff
you can get if you want to, if you want
to tie one on. But at the onset of calling
(19:34):
themselves the premium beer at a popular price, it did
work because people are coming off they remember the recession
and all that. Yeah, and they remember it's an award
winning beer, and it hasn't distanced itself from its previous
history far enough for people to start thinking that. So
they're still sales start going up again by which is
a big jump in time. We don't want to take
(19:54):
you through every year. They're up to eighteen million barrels
a year that they were making. Yeah, so from three
point nine million in and then the next year nine
again they reached their peak. They just as they had
peaked in the nineteen fifties before, perhaps had retired or
passed on, or however you want to define it. Maybe
(20:15):
that's just the way perhaps defines passing away when you retire.
But but anyway, night they hit another peak. And then
we're getting to a big braink moment. Yes, yes, the
Mountain range were start about to start the decline. Yeah.
So in nineteen seventy nine, just a year after they
(20:36):
hit new Heights, pearl Ston retired and as far as
we know, he actually just retired, yes, and then things
took a sharp decline. It seems to be a theme
too that we see someone in authority from the company
stepped down and then we see a drop in the business.
To be fair with perhaps we're gonna discuss a little
(20:56):
bit of what was the trouble immediately following this, But
you know what I'm getting I'm getting parched talking about
all this delicious beverage. I'm gonna go get myself something
to drink. And while I do, why don't we take
a moment to thank our sponsor. Was that tasty, Jonathan? Yes,
(21:28):
my imaginary drink was delicious. I'm glad. After pearl Ston retired,
a corporation of people tried to acquire Paps. They tried
to buy Paps Ruin Jacobs and like three other investors,
they were part of a company j MSL acquiring corps.
And the pretty much tells you everything they were doing
right acquiring corps. That they were out in the business
(21:50):
of buying other companies and they tried to buy papsed in. Yeah,
So why would you want to get a company that
wasn't doing so well? What was it about this one
company that was like you know, we see failing companies
all the time, most people don't say, oh, I want
to swoop in and buy that. Well. I mean one
thing they liked about perhaps is perhaps had remained debt free.
(22:13):
If you if you think back just so long ago
when we were talking about the history of the company,
they didn't take out a bunch of loans. They didn't
they didn't put themselves into huge amount of debts like
so many companies we see on the brink. They had
made some acquisitions, but they did so in a way
that didn't put them in deep debt to creditors. Which
means if this acquisition company could buy perhaps they could
(22:37):
resell it without any strings attached, or with fewer strings attached,
I should say, yeah. And they had a plan already.
H Irwin Jacobs wanted to purchase this company and then
sell half of its capacity to another brewing company called
the g Heilerman Brewing Company. And the idea was not
(22:57):
to sell like of perhaps ownership, but rather literally two
of the breweries, two of the physical factories. They wanted
to sell it to Heilerman. So the story gets really
kind of juicy and complicated. So I'm going to backtrack
for just a second between one that was that period
(23:18):
we were talking about of the decline, right, perhaps went
through four CEOs in that time. That's four years, four
CEOs in four years. So to say that there was
problem at the management level is being very generous. You know,
you can't really form a strategy and you can't really
(23:40):
stabilize a company if you're constantly changing leadership. No, you can't.
And and maybe the leaders coming in I thought they
had great ideas and when they failed, were immediately booted
instead of It's a sign also of a board of
directors that has a very short, a very small amount
of patients. Right, so Jacob said acquired about ten of
all the outstanding shares with the company by nighte And originally,
(24:05):
because he was the largest individual shareholder, you know, he
didn't have controlling interest, but he had a lot of shares,
he originally demanded that he be made chairman of the
board and that in turn the board of directors open
up four seats for his associates to also be on
the board of directors. Yeah, but it sounds like if
going through four CEO s that the board of directors
(24:28):
had no patience for stuff like this. No, they were not.
He was often called an interloper, like he was some
outsider who was muscling his way in just because he
had the temerity to own a lot of money, and
so Jacobs was not able to get what he wanted.
He did get one seat on the board, so he
he was on the board of directors. Then he was
(24:50):
trying to get the company to buy another brewing company,
specifically the Schlitz Brewing Company, but that wouldn't work out.
Perhaps when after Schlitz, but at the time Schlitz said,
we see your offer, but we're not really interested. We're
more interested in an offer from the g. Heilerman Brewing Company,
the same one that Jacobs would later want to try
and sell half of PHAPS two and so Heilerman that
(25:15):
company looked like they were going to get Schlitz. Ultimately
they didn't get it either. Another brewery this gets so complicated,
called Strow Brewery would end up buying Schlitz. Keep in
mind Strow Brewery is gonna come back up in our story, Lader.
So this beer business gets super messy. So perhaps didn't
buy Schlitz in the eighties, it ultimately would acquire Schlitz.
(25:37):
But that's we're gonna hit that later. So Jacobs resigns
his board seat in because he's not getting what he wants,
and he says, well, if I can't get it this way,
I'm going to get it from outside the board. I'm
taking my ball, I'm going home, and then I'm coming
back with all my friends and we're gonna rough you up.
I'm making this sound way more petulant than it's very exciting.
(26:01):
Jonathan continue. So he goes and he buys up more
and more shares, and then he tries to make the
move to acquire Paps shares and sell this half capacity
to the Ghilerman Brewing Company. And the whole point of
this approach was that he wanted to sidestep some antitrust laws,
the Sherman antitrust laws. What that says is that you
(26:23):
can't create a monopoly or even a regional monopoly, right,
you have to have competition within the same industry. And
the fear was that if Heilerman the brewing company, where
to go after paps directly. Then the government would say, no,
you can't do that, because they're both pretty vague at
this point. So Jacob's idea was, well, if I can
go in and buy up these shares and then turn
(26:46):
around and sell this stuff to Heilerman, it's sidesteps that
whole issue. They get the brewing facilities, but they don't
buy the company. Technically, there's still two companies there, there's
still competition. This also is an indication of how crazy
things were in the seventies and eighties, which we kind
of touched on in some other episodes of I grew
up in that era. I was fortunately a child, so
(27:09):
I did not have a full understanding of how insane
it was. So, uh, this is all his plan, and
it again does not quite work, but it wasn't all
the whole plan. There was another element too. Write there
was another brewing company that that perhaps was looking at acquiring,
perhaps wanted to merge with Olympia Brewing Company. They were
(27:31):
also struggling at the time, so perhaps thought was that
they could combine their forces and be stronger together, while
Jacobs thought that they would kind of drag each other down.
Perhaps had offered seventy million dollars in cash for Olympia stock,
and Olympia was also known as kind of like a
bargain beer label, so yeah, this was a fear. Jacobs
(27:54):
was like, no, this is like a rock tying itself
to an anchor. But perhaps really did not on Jacob's
too to hostily take them over. So they spent eleven
million dollars to fight Jacob's attempts at acquisition. And apparently
he wasn't the only one interested in getting hold of
the company either. No, they also got bids from Schmitten's
(28:17):
Son Brewery or Schmidt and Sons Brewery for and fifty
cents per share. Jacobs was offering it at four dollars
per share, and perhaps the note of that one too,
but it was like a gentler No, it was like,
if you come back to us with a cash offer,
we might consider. Yeah. We often see this where companies
will say, you know, I would rather take cash than
(28:40):
a stock offering because there's no telling if that what
you are offering is going to be worth the same
amount once the transaction is complete. But neither Jacobs nor
Schmitten's Sons got passed. Instead, a guy named Paul Kalmanowitz,
who was in charge of a holding company called SMP Company,
would purchase this. S and P Company would later become
(29:03):
the kal Manovits Charitable Trust, and it was a nonprofit,
which would become an issue. But that was and they
did it for sixty three million dollars. So it's actually
a lower price than what was looked at earlier. Yeah,
but I don't think there was as much bad blood Necessarily.
It also wasn't looked as an outsider because cal Manowitz
(29:25):
was already owner of a brewing company. In fact, he
owned a couple, the first of which was the Meyer
Brewing Company. Yeah. Now that being said, him buying perhaps
was considered an aggressive takeover. Yeah, it was hostile to
say the least. So you wonder what these hostile takeovers mean.
It essentially means that rather than go through the board
(29:47):
of directors of a company, and to be fair, the
board of directors for PERHAPST was kind of like seen
as being a little unruly. Uh. Instead of doing that,
you go directly to the shareholders and you either offer
to buy shares from the shareholders or you convinced shareholders
to vote for the acquisition and that was how they
(30:08):
were able to leverage this and turn it into a
sale and things chug along. Yeah, and then Calmanowitz would
die and then guess what when people leave the company,
the company's profits tank. Yes, so from perhaps did not
turn a profit all right, ugly ugly thing to see
(30:32):
like a company losing money year over year for for
essentially seven years. Then we get into one of those
situations I was talking about before about a beer company
licensing out its product to a different brewery. Right, Yeah,
all of perhaps beer production was contracted out to Strow
(30:54):
Brewing Company, which Jonathan pronounces better than I do. But
it's the one that ended up purchasing Schlitz back in
ninety one, I think, um, And that's same here the
original Paps brewery in Milwaukee and Milwaukee, after a hundred
and fifty two years in business, was shut down, and
(31:16):
that upset Milwaukee locals. Have pub stopped carrying their their
beer and people started boycotting, and the brewers union was
suing because that was a huge loss of jobs. Yeah,
and also we learned a valuable lesson that brewer is
a hard word to say. Yes, it's very difficult. As
(31:38):
we go on, I was like, oh yeah, I have
trouble with brewery and brewer so many times it has
been edited out. But this is also when Perhaps would
become what a lot of people would refer to, and
this this is not unique to Papst, but would become
a virtual brewery, the idea that it's a company still
it still owns intellectual property, that being the recipe and
(32:00):
designs of Perhaps. They're not creating the product, they're having
another brewery actually brew the beer. But interesting turn of
events in Perhaps acquired stro Yeah, so they they had
been licensing it out to Strow and then they buy
the company, which is how Perhaps became the owner of Schlitz,
another bargain price beer. Yes, and then they sold the
(32:24):
actual Strow Brewery to another company, City Brewing Company, and
then they contracted all of their brewing to the Miller
Brewing Company in two thousand one. This is what we
were talking about when we said this, I feel like
we almost need a wall with a bunch of pieces
of paper red string in between all of Yes, yes,
(32:45):
it's it's like a CSI case. Doesn't really work great
for audio podcasting, but it will help us understand what's
going on. No, so perhaps kind of said, oh, we're
going to stay a virtual brewery. And now by this
time they're based in San Antonio. Also another note, I
know I keep doing this. I don't think I've ever
seen a company change its headquarters as frequently as perhaps has,
(33:09):
because we're just now we're talking about Milwaukee to San Antonio. Really,
but pay attention because it jumps around a little bit.
But things were actually starting to improve at this point, right,
like they were starting to slowly see some upward creep
of important numbers. Yes, and in two thousand and three
they were actually named the best tasting domestic beer in
(33:32):
the Hipster Handbook and they were very, very popular in
organ at that time. And the reason why is because
they were selling sponsorships to bike messengers, but the bike
messengers didn't have to wear attacky logos, and so the
bike messengers liked him. The bike messengers started drinking the beer,
and it kind of developed this like organic growth word
(33:53):
of mouth, hence the hipster millennial trend. Yeah, and uh,
I like that. You have this other nice theory here
that ties into another topic that we've covered on the brink, Saracha. Yes,
you have this this nice little uh, kind of symmetry
thing going here. Yeah, because they they stopped buying outright advertising.
(34:17):
I mean, they were sponsoring bake messengers, but they were
lying so much on grassroots approach. Yes, yes, growing organically,
which did work really well for Huifang Foods in Saracha. Yeah.
I actually watched a short video about this where the
guy who was in charge of that that whole marketing
thing right around that time, where he talked about this,
(34:37):
and at one point he talked about how he went
in essentially dressed as a bike messenger to a bar.
And this was already when this is already starting to happen, right,
and he noticed that there was a counter culture that
was developing. It was people who were kind of their
identity was based partly on the idea of being in
the outsider, right. They like the things that aren't really popular,
(34:58):
they're not mainstream. That was really a lot of the
identity of hipster was what you were not, and that
it was you were not mainstream. And perhaps Blue Ribbon
at this point, despite the fact that it had been
an award winning beer and had been around for more
than a century, was thought of as not mainstream, and
it started to get popularity and why. He tells the
story about he goes into a bar. He stressed his
(35:21):
bike messenger, his whole bunch of perhaps swag in his
in his messenger bag, and he goes to the bartender.
He introduces himself and he specifically says, you know what,
don't tell anyone I'm here, but I represent Perhaps Blue Ribbon.
I'm just just here to, you know, hang out. And
of course the bartender starts telling people, which was what
(35:42):
the guy had planned in the first place. He manipulated
the hipsters, and then soon enough people are coming up
to him talking to them and getting their hands in
that sweet, sweet perhaps swag, and that was an example
of this grassroots approach. They started going to music festivals
and kind of handing out stuff there. They were essentially
(36:03):
going to the places where the hipsters were going, and
the hipsters were taking it as word of mouth, and
they became the counter culture beer Yeah. And then there
there is another theory as to what helped its growth,
and and that is that the people who did still
like paps, who didn't swear it off when they closed
down in Milwaukee, who were still drinking it on the
regular because it's what they grew up with and liked,
(36:24):
we're worried about it going out of business because now
it's longer popular. So as it starts getting word of mouth,
they're like, oh, yes, yes, let's support this. I want
to keep my PAPST. Now we get to another complication.
I mentioned earlier that the SMP company became the nonprofit group,
but that would end up being a problem in two
(36:47):
thousand five because the i R S said that the
organization could not own a for profit company and still
maintain its nonprofit status. They were told essentially, you've gotta
sell PAPSED or you're going to have to you're gonna
lose your nonprofit and then you're gonna get taxed a lot.
(37:07):
But there was a problem. They could not find a
buyer for it at market price right. So then they
are like, hey, can we get like maybe a little
deferral on this, and the I R S said, toads, bra,
you get five years. I guess the I R S
like PAPS as well. Don't quote me on that. In
two thousand six, col Chuck resigned a CEO and Kevin
(37:29):
Koteci took over and now perhaps moves to Illinois. So
now when Milwaukee, San Antonio, Illinois. At least Illinois makes
sense because they had a brewery there. And also, I
mean that's where the World's Fair was, So yes, there's
that too. And in two thousand seven they re release
can I can I just say when you were saying
(37:50):
paps schwag, I really wanted it to be schlitz schwag.
I gotta be real careful here, because the more I
say these words, the more I'm absolutely certain something is
going to slip through the You know what, I got
a sober up after my virtual fake beer that I
took at the last break. I'm gonna take another break
and have a virtual fake coffee. That's good, virtual fake coffee.
(38:25):
I'm glad you enjoyed it. Jonathan. Alright, we're back. So
what happens next? So in May two the company sold
to deem Metropulas it's a Greek name, Pulastpas, it's not metropolis.
There's are you in there? Who reinvigorated the company and
the brand. He had help of his son, so they
(38:47):
they really doubled down on this. Let's appeal to hipsters,
let's appeal to millennials. Thing um millennials like affordable products,
and they also like products that promote experience over I
guess purchase right. And also again they often thought, oh
it's outside the mainstream, there's something kind of cool about it.
There there's there's some overlap in the Venn diagram of
(39:10):
hipster and millennial, not entirely, but they bought the company
for two hundred and fifty million dollars. The next year,
two eleven, they moved to l A. Okay, so wait
wait wait Milwaukee, San Antonio, Illinois, Los Angeles, um. And
then they started, like I said, marketing to millennial. So
they used Will Ferrell to sell not perhaps Blue Ribbon,
(39:32):
but Old Milwaukee, which was another brand they were selling.
That that commercial alone, it only showed in three markets,
but it got four million views on YouTube and three
d and thirty nine million media impressions across the country.
So again it ended up being you know, they pay
for a regional local, uh marketing campaign, but because the Internet,
(39:57):
it gets broadcast over the entire world. But they also
they do make one decision and while it didn't hurt
the company, some people were not very fond of it.
They allowed the Milwaukee Brewery to be slated to be
turned into mixed use development. Yeah, that's something that we
see a lot here in Atlanta and a lot of
places in the United States where old. In fact, we're
recording in an old facility that is no longer used
(40:19):
for what it was, but then a lot of factories
and warehouses and stuff that got turned into lofts and
mixed use development. By two thousand and twelve, PBR was
selling ninety two million gallons of beer. And I wonder
how that translates to barrels. I don't know. I think
it's four hands high and a cubit um, but no,
(40:42):
it's a ninety two million gallons of beer. So, just
to give you an idea of how big a change
this was, twelve years earlier, in two thousand, they sold
less than one million gallons, So they went from less
than one million gallons and twelve years later they're selling
ninety two million gallons. At you could say that's a
great return from the brain. It really is, it really is.
(41:03):
In two thousand thirteen, they start brand partnerships, so they're
kind of ditching the no advertising, but they're still taking
a creative route to it. They partner up with companies
like Vans and Santa Cruz Skateboards, and they even hold
their very own music festival. Yeah, just to appeal to folks.
So many jokes that I can make right now, but
I'm not gonna So why don't you tell us what
happens next? Then? All right? Well, in two thousand fourteen,
(41:24):
they sold to Blue Ribbon Intermediate Holdings ll C for
a whopping seven hundred million dollars. So they bought it
for two fifty sold it for seven hundred. News flash,
business owners, that's how you want to do it. Yes,
you definitely want the perhaps Blue Ribbon approach of buying
for to fifty and selling for seven hundred. The holding
(41:45):
company was acquired by another company. Because that's all the
way the way these things seem to work. In the
beer industry, Chairman Eugene cashpur and partnership with TSG Consumer Partners,
and then they opened their HQ in Los Angeles in
two thousand fifteen. Perhaps decides to take an old church
that was a part of the original brewery and turn
(42:06):
it into a tap room and micro brewery, and then
they completed that in two thousand seventeen. So recently that
opened up and you can go there and you can
take a tour, and you can even try out some
of the discontinued beers that Perhaps has made throughout its
history but no longer produces in large amounts, but you
can you can try them there at that brewery. Did
(42:28):
you know that, uh, perhaps is also popular in China?
I did not know that. Uh. Well, one they they
brew a Chinese beer that I'm assuming is the the
popular beer in an affordable price for China. It's ah
sing Tao, but you can also get and I'm not
sure if it's malt laquer because perhaps brewing company does
(42:50):
malt liquors as well, or if it's a beer it
is called perhaps Blue Ribbon eighteen forty four, which is
why I think they might have started in eighteen forty
four and eighteen forty nine. And it runs at a bottle. Wow,
that's not your beer anymore, right, No, all of their
beers are still brewed over by Miller Coors now. That
so there's still a virtual brewery in that sense. They
(43:12):
own the recipes, they own the trademarks, but other breweries
are actually making the beer. And that includes all of
their their beers, including like not just perhaps Blue Ribbon,
but Schlitz Old Milwaukee. Also Cult forty five. We got
through this whole thing without talking about Lando Calrissian. Yeah,
but Cult forty five as well. And let's take a
(43:35):
look at some other little facts and figures that kind
of brings us up to what's going on today. But
we've got a little bit more to share before we
sign off. Yeah, so you know, perhaps Sprewing Company, they
spent a lot of time in the break they came out.
They really had a resurgence. In two thousands sixteen they
were ranked third overall and in two seventeen fifth overall
(43:56):
for sales volume. So they've definitely been misplaced. One of
the one of the things that has happened, uh, and
it's sort of to the detriment. Actually, two things that
kind of have led to a little bit of a
dip in their their sales with the markets that they
were doing so well in. One was, and this is
one of the things that makes me go crazy about hipsters,
is that once the beer storty getting popular, hipsters didn't
(44:18):
want to drink it anymore because it was becoming mainstream. Yeah,
that's irritating. But the other thing was that, uh, people
started to discover microbreweries so breweries that were only making
small batches of beers. They're very hyper local type beers.
You started seeing more of a focus on that, especially
among both hipsters and millennials. I know in Atlanta, like
(44:41):
micro breweries are almost as prevalent as waffle houses. Oh yeah, No,
you can't throw a rock without hitting someone brewing beer,
which I don't recommend doing because the fermentation process is
kind of explosive. And we were looking at a potential
other brink moment for the past just very recently, right
before recording this is there contract with Miller Cores was
(45:04):
supposed to be up in and perhaps I wanted to
extend the contract to which they were saying they had
the right to do. But Millard Cours wanted to make
their own products. They were saying they didn't have the
capacity to do that, and they wanted to end the
contract in so there's been a little bit of a
(45:24):
legal battle, which just recently got resolved. Yeah, there was
actually fear also that Miller Cores might even make a
beer that would have been in direct competition with and
that was why it wasn't necessarily That was one of
the arguments that wasn't necessarily capacity, but rather that Miller
Coors wanted to to go after that same mark. Perhapst
was saying that Miller Coors was making their decisions in
bad faith. Yeah, but that's going to now continue for
(45:49):
a little longer. PBR will still be made through this
virtual brewery arrangement, So it's not going yet. It did, however,
actually go all the way to trial. Yes, yeah, and
the childhood nine days it was supposed to be. The
decision was supposed to be made by a jury, and
then before the jury can make a final decision, Papst
in Miller Cores came to an agreement. Yeah, this frequently
(46:13):
happens before a jury can actually come to a decision
that is irreversible. You'll find settlements where companies are kind
of hedging their bets. So, um, we've got a couple
more a little fun facts, one of which is how
everyone knows Paps Blue Ribbon, but they may not know
that obviously. There there are other Schlitz in Old Milwaukee.
(46:37):
So how many different types are we talking about here?
Brands of beer and malt laquers, So that does include
their malt liquors as well. That's a lot though. Yeah,
I did not know that. Also, what's up Canada A
In two thousand seventeen, Uh, you could buy a can
(47:00):
case a PBR and presumably a cart to carry it
out in well, you know that same year PBR did
sell a jacket that was also a beer cooler, not
necessarily just in Canada, but like it had all these
pockets and you could put your yeah, so while you're
chilling outside says you're bear yes, which is kind of
(47:21):
fun that they made a six pack coat because it's
rumored that Papst invented the six pack, which wouldn't surprise
me since they were the first beer essentially to do canning. Yeah,
first widely known one, certainly, and they're at their brewery
tours in Milwaukee. They used to offer something that all
(47:41):
the college students thought was the best thing ever, which
was bottomless beer. Oh my god, I can't imagine. Also,
before we recorded this show, I mentioned to Ariel a
certain classic cinema that she has yet to see, so
we're gonna have to watch that at some point in
(48:02):
the future. I am, of course talking about the live
action Disney classic Midnight Madness. It was in the era
where Disney was first kind of exploring non family films
really for the things that weren't documentaries or like you know,
Davy Crockett or anything like that. And in it, it's
(48:23):
got a group of of different contestants who are all
going on this citywide scavenger hunt that has all these
different puzzles they have to solve and one uh and
it's in Milwaukee and one of the important elements, one
of the important places they have to go to is
the Perast Blue Ribbon Brewery and they have a whole
song about it with an angelic choir and light coming
(48:46):
down because one of the teams is a bunch of
jocks who are really into beer. So that is something
I'm gonna have to show Ariel because I have to
complete her Disney education. You've really sold me on it, Jonathan.
In fact, we should go do that now. Yeah, we're
gonna ago and watch some Disney movies, but we will
be back to talk about more companies and these pivotal
(49:06):
moments in their history where things are really dark and
either they get bright again or they all fall apart. Yep.
But if you want to catch up on more episodes
of The Brink, you can look us up at our
website which is at the Brink Podcast dot show. Ye
the Brink Podcast dot show. And if you have ideas
(49:28):
for future episodes or you just want to chime in,
chime in. You know, we like talking with folks. You
can email us at Feedback at the Brink podcast dot show. Yeah,
we look forward to hearing from you and until next time.
I have been Jonathan's Trickland and I have been aerial
casting
Business on the Brink News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Ariel Kristen Kasten
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