Who invented the 30 Pack?

30 packs of Stroh’s in the classic navy blue cans are readily available at Meijer stores. $20.99.

 

I wondered the same thing. I don’t know if there is some ‘outside’ reason that the standard packs and cases have become standard, or if it is just the fact that it has been that way for so long that they are standard. I know a couple craft breweries here tried to differentiate themselves by offering 9-packs of 12 ounce bottles and 4 packs of 620ml bottles rather than the ‘normal’ assortments. Neither lasted in that format for more than a few years.

 

Pre-Prohibition, in the US brewing industry the standard case of beer contained 24 bottles. It was pretty easy math to divide that by 4 into 6 packs and there is some anecdotal evidence that, after Repeal when the industry was re-adjusting to new marketing opportunities, that six bottles (and then cans) were the easiest for consumers to handle, especially female buyers in states with grocery store alcoholic beverage licenses, etc.

I've seen many breweries claim to have "invented" the sixpack, but they are, at best, dubious claims. Even before Repeal, Schlitz was putting Old Milwaukee near beer six to a box.

As shown above-right, some brewers (like Falstaff) just gave retailers bags and other combinations were also used - 8 packs (above in post #31), 10 &12 packs and, especially after the creation of the 16 oz. cans in the 1950s, 3 packs and 4 packs. (Only "2 pack" I've even come across were two quarts ).

 

Of course, a much cooler 8 pack was Oshkosh's "Straight Eight Party Package" - Those ovals were on the outside were die-cut coasters that could be punched out and used when entertaining. Probably wouldn't be much use if you were driving, though, kept sliding off the dashboard.

 

Six (and multiples thereof) is an extremely useful quantity for selling things in general, as it's so easy to evenly divide up as needed.

 

The ad for Straight Eight Party Package for some reason strikes me as so damn
funny. i don't know why.

 

Classic!? I'd say the classic Stroh's Beer can looked like this (below, left) - All those who agree with me, raise a can! (2 out of 3, a clear majority).


It appears that, coincidentally or not, Stroh changed the label and packaging in 1989 - a bad year for the company (not that worse ones wouldn't come along in the next decade). They tried to sell the company to Coors but Coors backed out after their legal team determined (probably rightly so) that the Dept. of Justice would not allow the deal to go through over anti-trust concerns, although together the #3 and #4 US brewers at the time would have about the same market share as #2 Miller , about ~20%.

Coors wound up with just the Schlitz-built Memphis brewery Stroh's owned at the time.

During that period, there were all sorts of proposed deals - Pabst's owner S&P Corp. wanted to buy any brands that Coors didn't want, Guinness was interested in some Stroh assets and some outfit called "Interbrew" made offers both before and after Coors' to buy Stroh's.

Yeah, right. Some Belgian company with no real presence in the USA is going to buy an American icon? What's the chance of that ever happening?

The head of Interbrew at the time might have become familiar with the Detroit-based* brewer from his previous job - Chairman of American Motors. * Stroh's headquarters was still in Detroit, but they'd closed the flagship Detroit brewery a few years earlier.

 

Strohs 30 pack was the first I saw and that was around 1985/6. A guy I knew then thought it was the coolest thing and drank them for a while. I was not a fan of Strohs, there was just something in the taste I did not like.

Enjoy

 

“In 1971, Schlitz opened a large brewery on Raines Rd in Southeast Memphis. About 10 years later, Stroh bought out Schlitz and took over their brewery.

In 1990, Coors found that Memphis water was just as good as Colorado water and purchased the brewery. They survived until 2007 when the brewery was bought out by City Brewing, a Wisconsin based brewery.”

Do you know why Coors sold the brewery in 2007? Did the merger with Molson in 2005 make this brewery unnecessary?

Cheers!

 

Don't know where that info comes from - but it is incorrect. Coors sold the Memphis brewery in 2006 to the Hardy Bottling Company, which was founded by the former Coors' plant manager there, Carol Hardy. I don't think they ever contract-brewed any beer there (maybe they had no brewing license?) but did bottle other beverages, like Arizona Ice Tea. At some point, the brewery was heavily damaged by a tornado

City Brewing Co. bought it in 2011, after Yuengling had at first announced the purchase only to passed on it the year before.

The "water" comment, well, sounds like typical PR. As I recall, Coors never brewed Coors (Banquet) Beer there but they did brew some other their other brands (Killians, Zima, Keystone, even contract-brewed the infamous Mississippi Mud - the one time it was brewed near the Mississippi River).

Besides the merger with Molson, around that time Coors had converted their Virginia plant to a full brewery, too (previously just a packaging facility where they added water to concentrated Coors-branded high gravity beer from Colorato for the East Coast).

 

I've always thought that a 7-can "honeycomb pack" would be cool, if not an engineering and logistical pain in the ass. And I'm still waiting for someone to come out with "Tu-Pac" and "Biggie" packaging. (Disclaimer: I am not a professional, and that is probably not a bad thing in this case.)

That was the taste of misspent youth. YMMV.

 

Not to get too far off-track, but wasn't AMC based in Kenosha, WI?*

Maybe a Detroit brewery was as close to the big auto boys as the chairman could get.

*I see HQ was in Southfield, MI -- maybe it was just the factory** that was in Kenosha.

**Further research shows it was the engine factory -- they sure always had a ton of new cars in that parking lot!

 

Yeah, I wondered about that, too. But Jose Dedeurwaerder (who came from Renault, when they owned AMC*) must have been the most famous AMC executive ever. Well, except for that Mormon guy with the kid who ran for president.

* Supposedly, when Daimler-Benz bought Chrysler, all the Chrysler people were thrilled and optimistic about the future. Except for the Jeep guys who were still with the company and had lived through the AMC/Renault era. They knew some conflicts might come up trying to merge US and European auto company cultures...

 

Doh! I forgot to add the link:

https://unearthedmemphis.com/2021/04/25/season-2-episode-four-history-of-memphis-breweries/

So it was sold in 2006 vs. 2007. Why?

Is "Coors had converted their Virginia plant to a full brewery" the reason?

Cheers!

 

Well, the point was they didn't sell it to City at that time (a deal fell through), as the linked story claimed "They survived until 2007 when the brewery was bought out by City Brewing, a Wisconsin based brewery.”

Molson Coors did not specify the reason for closing Memphis other than post-merger "cost cutting". With the Virginia brewery coming online and their many Canadian breweries, they were likely over capacity. At the time of the Molson Coors merger, combined they had 15 breweries.

For a time some Blue Moon sold in the US was being brewed at Molson's Toronto brewery.

(Molson supposedly brewed clones of some of the BM beers, marketed in Canada using their "Rickards" brand, and also one just called "Belgium Moon" to avoid conflicts with Labatt Blue.)

 

As Tom Petty sang, "...with one foot in the grave, and one foot on the pedal" .

 

I got your point but my question to you was more about why the brewery was sold.

It would have been 'better' I suppose if I did not include that quoted stuff.

Cheers!

 

I figured "Since 1775" was a classic.

 

Well, I'll concede that the "1775" date is especially impressive, since the skills involved are more than simply those of a masterbrewer. I mean, to found a brewery nearly half a century before one's birth - damn.

 

Yes, indeed.

The article cited may have been reflecting on then-recent sales trends in the Chicagoland area, but further afield it never really left. I sold it (“warm”, on display pallets) twenty years ago, and I definitely bought some — in high school — throughout the greater Minneapolis area.