A former American beer aisle mainstay is about to vanish. Pabst Brewing has shut down Schlitz after a 177-year run, ending the brand once known as the country's biggest brewer and "the beer that made Milwaukee famous," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. To mark the exit, Wisconsin Brewing Co.'s Kirby Nelson will cook up one last 80-barrel batch on May 23 in Verona, using Schlitz's 1948 recipe, which he calls a return to its "glory days," when it was the nation's top-selling beer.
Nelson tells Milwaukee magazine that he decided to give the beer a fitting send-off after a distributor told him that it had been quietly discontinued. "Things change, but Schlitz deserves better than just to be swept under the rug," Nelson says. "It really needs to go out with dignity and respect." Preorders for the final run open May 27 on the brewery's website, with pickup starting June 27 at a public celebration; the beer will also pour at Old World Wisconsin's July 4 anniversary event.
Schlitz's story stretches from its 1849 founding as a Milwaukee tavern brewery, through decades as a corporate powerhouse and civic sponsor, to a fall triggered by cost-cutting recipe changes, labor strife, and plant closures. Sold off in the 1980s and relaunched by Pabst in 2008, Schlitz never fully reclaimed its former footprint. Stroh Brewing shifted Schlitz brewing operations out of Milwaukee after it bought the brand in 1982 and Nelson says it's "flattering" to be able to brew the final batch of Schlitz in the city where it began. The brew, he says, "is Wisconsin Brewing Company's love letter to our state."
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