pre-prohibitonbeerads

After 40 plus years of brewing ales, porter and stout and being maltsters (one of the very few in New Jersey), the Ballantine family bought a lager beer brewery less than two miles away in the Down Neck section of Newark, to take advantage of the growing demand for lager beer- the Schalk Brothers Lager Beer Brewery .

Sources vary as to whether it was Peter Ballantine, Sr. or his sons who decided to get into to the business that was dominated by German brewers. The two firms were kept separate until after the death of Peter Ballantine in 1884, when the P. Ballantine and Sons (ale brewery and malt houses) and the new lager beer brewery, Ballantine & Co. came together under the same parent company. (Thus, some of the ads to the left which refer to "Ballantine's Breweries".)

The first years' production was approximately 40,000 barrels but by the early 1890's, Ballantine Export Beer and Ballantine Pale Beer were outselling the ales, porters and stouts of the older brewery.