Schlitz returns, drums up nostalgic drinkers

Before it vanished, the beer changed — for the worse. According to Jurgensen, considered by Pabst to be the foremost "Schlitzstorian": First, brewery control shifted from immediate family members to more distant relatives, who wanted to expand the business. With demand high, the new owners wanted to make more, so they shortened the fermenting process. And they let customers know it through heavy marketing. There were also quality control issues for barley, so the beer went flat quickly. Customers associated the flatness with the quickened brewing time, and they weren't pleased. To fix the flat problem, the brewers added a seaweed extract to give the beer some foam and fizz. But after sitting on the shelf for three or four months, the extract turned into a solid, meaning drinkers got chunky mouthfuls.

And then, the biggest of errors.

"They decided not to pull their product off the shelf," Jurgensen said. "They decided to weather the storm and sell that product. That's the worst possible mistake they could have made."

Floaters? Flat beer? It was all too much for drinkers to swallow.

And by 1981 the Schlitz brewery closed. The owners sold the brand to the Stroh Brewery Co. in Detroit in 1982, which eventually sold some of its lines to Pabst.

The Schlitz revival is bittersweet for the former brewing capital of the U.S., which has seen its heritage slip away.

Beer was once brewed at about 100 places in Milwaukee, Jurgensen said. The city was home to names like Pabst, Blatz and Miller Brewing. Those first two are long gone, their former breweries now an abandoned site awaiting redevelopment and a condo complex.

And Miller is leaving too. This summer it became MillerCoors LLC in a joint venture with Molson Coors Brewing Co. The headquarters will move about 90 miles south to Chicago, though Miller says it'll keep jobs and breweries in Milwaukee.

Miller, coincidentally, brews Schlitz for Pabst under a contract at its east coast facilities. Kotecki said he hopes to eventually have the brand brewed back in Milwaukee, once some changes at breweries in the city are made.

Kotecki wouldn't disclose sales figures for Schlitz but said they are considerably smaller than for the company's top-seller, Pabst Blue Ribbon. In Milwaukee, it's at about 75 locations, including bars and liquor stores, though that'll grow when more is made.

John Thielmann, 55, of Milwaukee, says his first sip of the new Schlitz sent him back decades. He remembered being a teenager — drinking underage, he noted — spending summers with family on Druid Lake, about an hour from Milwaukee.

But when the formula changed, he started getting headaches after two or three sips, so he stopped drinking Schlitz.

Thielmann, who works at a liquor store in suburban Elm Grove, said he was confident the new formula wouldn't fail him. He figured Pabst had put in enough effort that they'd get the old formula back.

They did.

"That first sip was like 'I remember this. This is right,'" he said.

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