The owner of the once-prominent Schlitz brand is ending production of “the beer that made Milwaukee famous.”
Pabst Brewing Company — another former Milwaukee brewing institution — relaunched Schlitz in 2008 but has made the decision to stop making it after nearly two decades, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
Schlitz began as a tavern brewery just three years after Milwaukee was incorporated and grew to become the largest of the city’s four major brewers — and occasionally overtook Anheuser-Busch as the nation’s largest. Beginning the 1970s, however, the slumping company was ultimately doomed by an accounting scandal, labor troubles, a botched reformulation of its namesake beer, and other issues. It was acquired — and moved out of Milwaukee — in the early 1980s.
The beer’s original formula returned with Pabst’s relaunch, but the now-San Antonio-based company will not be the one to send the iconic brand off. Instead, Wisconsin Brewing Co., located near Madison, will reportedly begin selling the final batch late next month.
