In 2016, Stroh's began brewing its Bohemian-style pilsner (5.5% ABV) via Brew Detroit, a contract brewer in Corktown, marking Stroh's' return to brewing beer in the Motor City, though it's only available in cans and bottles. Stroh's also brewed a Detroit Lager (4.6% ABV), made with traditional corn grits and Midwestern hops, but it was discontinued after a short time.
With hops you can actually taste, a fuller body, clean finish and foamy head with lacing that lingers on the surface, the Detroit-made Bohemian-Style Pilsner (5.5% alcohol by volume) is angling for craft-beer cred.
"This is a brand that Stroh had made at one time and was a very good, credible beer," said Deuhs, who turns 53 this month. "And I think it'll resonate very well with craft beer drinkers as well as people that drink the regular Stroh's Lager."
The pilsner is all malt, meaning that there aren't any corn-based adjuncts found in cheaper beer, such as Stroh's Lager and many other mass-produced domestic brews classified as American lagers. The Bohemian-Style Pilsner's introduction comes as major companies such as Pabst, Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors lose market share to craft brewers, which have benefited from using more-flavorful ingredients for bigger, more-alcoholic beers.
Stroh's is part of a collection of regional beers Pabst owns, such as Lone Star Beer in Texas and Rainier Beer in Washington. I asked Phillips whether Bohemian-Style Pilsner is the beginning of a trend toward similarly robust, locally made beers for the other regional brands. He declined any specifics but responded: "We're looking at getting back to the heritage and history of the brands."
For people who like craft beer and have nostalgia for local brews, this could be a neat thing, even though the company is part-owned by TSG Consumer Partners, a San Francisco-based private equity company far from the Motor City. It could revive fire-brewing.
"Stroh's is very dear to me, because I worked at the Stroh brewery in St. Paul (Minn.) and in LaCrosse (Wis.), and I know the pride that the Stroh family had for making beer," Deuhs said. "I think we're continuing on that tradition today, so I'm very excited to see this beer get to market."
AS WITH MANY OF AMERICA'S GREAT FORTUNES, the Stroh family's story starts with an immigrant: Bernhard Stroh, who arrived in Detroit from Germany in 1850 with $150 and a coveted family recipe for beer. He sold his brews door-to-door in a wheelbarrow. By 1890 his sons, Julius and Bernhard Jr., were shipping beer around the Great Lakes. Julius got the family through Prohibition by switching the brewery to ice cream and malt syrup production. And in the 1980s Stroh's surged, emerging as one of America's fastest-growing companies and the country's third-largest brewing empire, behind only public behemoths Anheuser-Busch and Miller. The Stroh family owned it all, a fortune that FORBES then calculated was worth at least $700 million. Just by matching the S&P 500, the family would currently be worth about $9 billion.
FOR ITS FIRST CENTURY the Stroh beer business, based in Detroit, grew by following the basics: respect your customers; respect your employees. The former meant catering to Midwest working-class tastes at working-class prices (the family watered down Bernhard Stroh's precious recipe, after hops and wheat shortages in World War II left Americans accustomed to weaker brews). The latter by treating every employee like an honorary member of the clan. John Stroh, who oversaw a dramatic sales surge in the Eisenhower years, "was known for walking the brewery and knew everyone's first name," his grandnephew Greg remembers. "Employees would run through walls for the family." As if to connect the customers and the business, the Stroh signature was emblazoned on every bottle, topped by a family crest with a lion. Sales surged in lockstep with postwar Detroit, from 500,000 barrels in 1950 to 2.7 million barrels in 1956.
The mammoth changes came in the early 1980s. John Stroh had moved into the chairman's role in 1967 and handed control of the brewery to his nephew, Peter, who became CEO in 1980. Like John, he had a plan to grow, but not incrementally: He would do it by acquisition. In 1981 Stroh bought New York-based brewer F&M Schaefer, which, like Stroh, was founded by a German immigrant in the mid-1800s and also offered low-priced suds to its regional fans (famous marketing line: "The one beer to have when you're having more than one"). The next year, in what family members describe as "the minnow swallowing the whale," Peter Stroh bet the family business, borrowing $500 million (the book value of the Stroh business was $100 million at the time) to buy Joseph Schlitz Brewing of Milwaukee.
But Peter Stroh's grand vision of a thriving U.S.-wide brewer failed to materialize. It largely missed the boat on the biggest industry trend in a generation: light beer. And Stroh's core product--cheap, watery, full-calorie beer--was a commodity. But saddled with debt, Stroh couldn't afford to match the ad spending of its bigger rivals, Anheuser-Busch and Miller. Unable to spur demand through marketing, Stroh turned to price, introducing a 15-pack for the price of 12 cans and a 30-pack for the price of a case of 24. While the latter had legs, it wasn't enough to outrun the shrinking margins.
Desperate, Peter Stroh brought in renowned adman Hal Riney to give the Stroh's brand a more upscale look and position. The cherished Stroh signature gave way to block print, prices were raised, and the 15- and 30-packs were nixed. It could not have been a worse decision. But since the product hadn't changed, customers could do the math: Sales of Stroh's-brand beer fell more than 40% in one year, "the biggest drop in sales in the history of beer," says Benfield.
And yet it tried to do more. In 1996 Stroh repeated his mistake, borrowing yet more money for the $300 million acquisition of struggling brewer G. Heileman. The purchase fell flat. Heileman had breweries in cities like Seattle and Portland, where Stroh didn't, but it lacked a big stable of strong brands. One industry analyst remembers the deal described as "two sick chickens--they were both declining."
Stroh's, founded in 1850 as a family-owned brewery in Detroit, is the Great Lakes State's most popular "trashy" beer, according to a study by Workshopedia that tracked Google Trends search interest over the past 12 months. Though the study doesn't specify which Stroh's beer in particular is the "trashy" choice, its graphic uses an image of the Stroh's Classic lager (4.6% alcohol by volume).
(We're writing "trashy" in quotes because what's considered "trashy" is very open for interpration. For the sake of this study, though, it means cheap beer options when you're not feeling an IPA or other craft beer, most likely from macrobreweries.)
Granted, no matter what Stroh's beer this study is referring to, it could be a whole lot worse; 10 states prefer Natural Light, seven prefer Michelob Ultra and four states apiece prefer Bud Light and Coors Light. That's already half the country right there.
To find out which trashy beers are chilling in coolers across the country, we turned to online search interest. We started with a list of 36 popular beers and recorded Google Trends search interest over the last 12 months for each of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. We determined clear winners for which beer each state searched for the most, the most popular beer overall, and how many states the most popular beers won in. Read on to see what we found!
In 2016, Stroh's began brewing its Bohemian-style pilsner (5.5% ABV) via Brew Detroit, a contract brewer in Corktown, marking Stroh's' return to brewing beer in the Motor City. Stroh's also brewed a Detroit Lager (4.6% ABV), made with traditional corn grits and Midwestern hops, but it is currently discontinued.
Available in cans or bottles, the crisp, low-alcohol beer will be previewed at Tuesday night's Detroit City FC game. The new beer's color scheme is oxblood red and gold, the same as our Hamtramck-based team.
Bernard Stroh established his brewery in Detroit in 1850, brewing delicious Bohemian style pilsner from his homeland in Germany. The lion on the can was adapted the heraldic lion emblem from the Kyburg Castle, and the beer was originally called Lion's Head.
But, I do still feel fondly about one line of beer products that I became enamored with - Stroh's. And it was just announced this week that the Detroit-based brew is coming back, and in classic style!
"We are returning Stroh's back to the 1987 packaging with some minor updates to bring the packing to life and we could not be more excited about it. Detroit has so much love for this beer and most locals say, 'Strohs is spoken here.'" - Adam Powers, AMM for Stroh's Beer
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