Schmidt vs Hamm's vs Grain Belt (Breweries)

I kinda liked Special Ex. Tan Death was Buckhorn

 

Heileman had a list of 110 brands at one time. I have files of their old paperwork that nearly was buried when they bulldozed an old bottling house from Gund in the late 80's to get it off their liabilities/tax burdens.

My website is ibuyoldbeer. I'm a geek for the old stuff.

 

It's amazing how Hamm's has been selling outside of Minnesota in the last two years. I can see Grain Belt being a trend beer outside MN, if people drink it I think they would like the sweetness of it. As for Schmidt Im actually amazed its still being brewed. I mean whos buying this? Do people in MN and PA think this is the old beer, because its not.

 

Funny how a few miles makes a huge difference in brand sales. I grew up in the 60's and 70's about an hour East of the cities, in Western Wisconsin. I don't have percentages but the top beers back then in our area were PBR, Old style, Old Milwaukee, Schlitz, Leinenkugel, Schmidt, Miller, Hamm, Grain Belt, and Blatz in decreasing order of popularity. A lot of this had to do with locality of the breweries. Hamm and Grain Belt had a bit of a reputation as headache beers and were polarizing, with folks either loving or hating them. The Packer/Viking rivalry probably also played a part in it, with many Wisconsinites shunning anything Minnesotan.

 

Individual brand stats not available - breweries' WI market share in the same period (according to the Feds):

Top 3 - 1962
Pabst - 27%
Schlitz - 14%
Hamm - 11%

Top 4 - 1972
Pabst - 40%
Schlitz - 19%
Heileman - 11%
AB - 10%

Of those, Old Milwaukee is included in Schlitz' barrelage and Blatz was a Pabst brand in 1962 and a Heileman brand in 1972, as was Schmidt.

Grain Belt and Leinenkugel's market shares for the above period were between 1%-3%. (Leinenkugel was still a local, "under-100k bbl" brewer at the time).

Miller's WI share was 4.4% in '62 but they also owned the #4 brewery in Milwaukee, Gettleman (w/3.5%). Miller in '72 had 5.5% of WI beer sales.

 

Those stats are for the state of Wisconsin

- Pabst's peak year in WI was 1975 with 47% market share. Pretty impressive.

In the US? (Don't off-hand have Wisconsin share figures further back that the 1960s). Schlitz, the brewery, was #1 for some of the years in the post-war-40s > mid 50s.

Well, while the cheapening stories are true, it was only one of a number of other problems the company had the in the late 1970s. Their last full year of 1981 (before being bought out by the much smaller Stroh Brewery in 1982) they still sold over 14 million barrels of beer - yeah, dramatically down from their peak of 24M bbl. only 5 years earlier but somebody was drinking it

They did claimed in 1976 to have more nationally distributed brands than any other brewer at the time - besides flagship Schlitz Beer, they also sold Old Milwaukee, Schlitz Malt Liquor and Schlitz Light coast to coast. Looking at some Stroh stats, I think it'd be fair to say Schlitz Beer and Old Milwaukee each accounted for a bit over 1/3 of Schlitz's barrelage by the end. Still, that's 5M bbl. of Schlitz Beer.

 

Unlike Jacob Schmidt, Hamm’s at one point had a fairly memorable mass media advertising campaign which became entrenched in American popular culture. Something about a bear, some vaguely “native” sounding drums, and something about Sky Beer Waters? And the company owned a couple of good sized regional breweries to provide all the beer for that large-ish, semi-national sales footprint.

It’s a fun thought exercise, but I doubt that Grain Belt would do as well as Hamm’s on a larger, national level. Especially with just one brewery (and their currently small sales team) trying to extend the brand’s reach into new states. Maybe if they brought back GBX, expanded Blu into a year-round beer, and dropped their price about $2 per package at retail (all of which is quite unlikely).

Being the connoisseur if fizzy yellow adjunct lager that I am, I buy a good number of cheap, “price brands” regularly enough to notice shelf prices and how they vary.

In fact, a 30 rack of Hamm’s is $12.99 at my local, making it the lowest priced 30-pack and the cheapest fizzy yellow beer in the cold box (cheaper than Natural Light, Banquet, and High Life). I’ve seen it as low as $10.99 a 30 pack (for the sake of comparison, that’s the same price as a 30-pack of either Mountain Crest or Lost Lake. Personally, I’ll take a Hamm’s over either).

I don’t doubt that some folks who buy the Schmidt of today believe that it’s still being brewed in Saint Paul, over on West 7th. A lot of older folks have fond memories of the place and are unlikely to have remembered all of the details concerning the changes that have happened there, over the past thirty years. On the other hand, I don’t believe that very many people around my age buy it with the belief that it’s the “very same beer” as it was in the 1970s, much less the 1980s. Hell, I’m over the hill, but even I know how to use Google and Wikipedia (and I expect many of my generation possess just as much curiosity and interweb know-how).

As with Hamm’s (and Special Export, and others which had roots in “the Great Northwest”) I’d bet many are buying it based on nostalgia, because they’re cheapskates, of even buying it to collect the new can designs. An easy twenty tells me it’s a combination of all of those factors:

 

From my youth, the Chicago area was a huge market for MN and WI brewed beers in the 1960’s and 70’s so that should be considered. Schlitz (the beer that made Milwaukee famous), Hamms (Cubs sponsor), and Old Style were really big in Chi Town area. PBR also was pretty popular as well as the local favorite, Meister Brau.

My mom always bought the cheapest beers so I had steady diet of Hamms and Gluek in college. Red White & Blue was bought one time for $0.79/ six pack when in college. Would buy 10 cases at a time and haul back to school.

My Dad called Gluek Stite Malt Liquor the “green death” for those who go way back.

 

Well, they shouldn't since the beer name is missing an apostrophe. The Philly beer was Schmidt's.

Cheers!

 

As I understand, Pabst has owned the rights to both Jacob Schmidt of Saint Paul and Schmidt’s of Philadelphia for years, most likely since G. Heileman went out of business. For few years (circa 2000 - 2006) they marketed thirty packs and maybe a couple of other canned formats under the catch-all brand name is “Schmidt’s”, which was confusing because we never saw the Schmidt’s of Philadelphia brand in this market (although the local City Club brand was marketed as “Schmidt’s City Club”).

A quick Google image search turns up the Schmidt’s Light can from around the early 2000s, but finding images of the non-light can from the same era takes a deep search.

 

Pabst owns both brands and last I heard they merged them into one beer. Im not sure if its even sold in Philadelphia. Id maybe buy some Schmidt again but I dont want 30 of them.

 

In 1992, Heileman "merged" the Schmidt/Schmidt's brands, which they'd owned since, respectively, 1972 (when they bought the St. Paul brewery and the brand along with others when Associated Brewing Co. went out of business) and 1987 (when they bought most of Philadelphia's C. Schmidt & Sons brands when that brewery closed).

Here's the strange thing, tho'. Heileman brewed the brand(s) in La Crosse - they'd sold the St. Paul brewery to start-up Minnesota Brewing Co. along with the Grain Belt label* - and Baltimore - for the northeast Schmidt's market, at the former Carling brewery- and claimed that while the packaging and names were combined the beers' "tastes" (recipes) remained different . I guess it makes sense. That's according to a 1992 article in your local Star Tribune.

The same article noted that Schmidt was still Heileman's top seller in MN and had been the best selling beer in MN "for several years" until 1985.

*Also noted was that Minnesota Brewing Co. was also offered the Schmidt brand but refused because the price was too high but had the right of first refusal if it was sold (not sure how that worked when Stroh bought all of Heileman a few years later).

I haven't seen it in years (but I'm in central Jersey which was never a real big Schmidt's market since that "popular priced" segment was dominated by the large NJ and NY brands), but I do remember the "merged" red packaging (like Chaz's post above) around at some point in the 1990s-early 2000s and thinking, "WTF! That ain't Schmidt's of Phila., that the old Minnesota brand." Haven't been beer shopping in PA for several years and don't recall seeing Schmidt but I wouldn't have been looking for it (Straub's, maybe). Here's one PA retail distributor that lists it - ZIG'S BEVERAGES and there are BA reviews that suggest they bought it locally in PA or other northeast/mid-atlantic states.

Of course, even new owner Pabst gets 'em confused (screen shot from a previous version of Pabst's website for the merged brand):

 

Send me a private “beer mail” message and I’ll send you some beer. I’m pretty sure I have a few cans left in the ‘dbf’.

 

If folks are wondering, "Gee, I wonder if there was some overlap in the marketing of the beers somewhere in the Great Lakes region..." Well, in the 1930s and 1940s, at least, it was even more confusing thanks to:

The confusion extents to industry beer writers, as noted in this "snip" from an article about former Schmidt of Phila. brewmaster, Bill Moeller, from a 2014 AMERICAN BREWER magazine (maybe that apostrophe confused them?).

 

Digging around some more...

Looks like "Schmidt Beer" in 1991 was Heileman's 4th largest brand (behind Old Style, Colt 45 and Rainier) somewhere around 1M bbl., 25% of which was sold in Minnesota [BMI]. That was still about twice what some of Heileman's other big regional brands like Carling Black Label (well, sources differ dramatically for this one), Lone Star and Blatz were selling.

Also for 1991, another source [Beverage Industry] estimated Heileman was selling around 400k bbl of the ex-Phila. Schmidt's.

(The figures include all beers under the brand name - so "light" "red" and "dry" versions, where applicable.)

 

Schmidt beer is available for sale at my local Retail Beer Distributor. I have never bought it since I am not generally speaking an AAL beer drinker. Plus the lack of an apostrophe is 'unappealing' for me.

I was gifted a single can of Hamm's. I discussed this beer in a New Beer Sunday thread:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/new-beer-sunday-week-670.552604/#post-5799290

Cheers!

 

Some of the Hamm's beer commercials are on YouTube if anyone is nostalgic for them.

From the Land of Sky Blue Waters [(Echo) Waters]
Comes the water best for brewing,
Hamm's the Beer Refreshing,
Hamm's the Beer Refreshing,
Hamm's!