Goebel Brewing Company
The Goebel Brewing Company is a former American brewery in Detroit . It was founded in 1873 and acquired by the Stroh Brewery Company in 1964 .
history
founding
The Goebel brewery was founded in Detroit in 1873 as A. Goebel & Company by the German emigrants August Goebel and Theodore Gorenflo. Directly across from the brewery was the Stroh family 's Lion's Head Brewery , which later became known as the Stroh Brewery Company . The annual output when it was founded was 4,000 barrels . The Goebel brewery experienced rapid growth until the 1880s. Annual output rose to around 18,000 barrels. This made Goebel the third largest brewery after Voigt and Kling in Detroit.
In 1889 August Goebel convinced the “English Syndicate”, a group of investors from London, to buy up several breweries in Detroit and to merge them. The Bavarian Brewing Company, the Charles Endriss Brewery and the Jacob Manns Brewery were bought out, with a combined annual output of 50,000 barrels. The breweries were incorporated into the Goebel Brewing Company.
Turn of the century to Prohibition
In 1890 the company officially became the Goebel Brewing Company, Ltd. with a capital stock of $ 600,000 . Registered. First President and Manager was August Goebel, Vice President his partner Gorenflo. Goebel's son August Jr. became secretary and treasurer in 1891. Five years later, Gorenflo retired. August Goebel Sr. died in 1905. His successor was Fred Brede, the new General Manager August Goebel Jr., whose brother Fritz became the new master brewer.
In 1912 a new eight-story brewery was built, which more than doubled the production capacity. Two years later August Jr. became President, his brother Fritz became Vice President and Superintendent, and Fred Brede was again treasurer. During the American prohibition , the Goebel brewery closed because the British owners were not interested in the low margins of alternative products such as lemonade or malt beer. August Jr. died in 1932. The land in the brewery was bought by the Haas family, who rented the premises to various small businesses.
Reintroduction after prohibition
The brewery only reopened in 1933 after the new owners reorganized the company. For the restart, seed capital of 1.4 million US dollars was raised through share sales. The last member of the Goebel family in the brewery was Ted E. Goebel, who was responsible for purchasing and a grandson of the company founder.
Production began in 1934. The new master brewer was the retired Otto Rosenbusch, who had previously worked for the Stroh Brewery Company across the street and whose son Herman was still employed there as master brewer. After Rosenbusch's death in 1935, Charles Elich of the Pabst Brewing Company succeeded him. A German-looking eagle was chosen as the new company logo.
In 1938 Edwin J. Anderson was hired as sales manager. He soon became Vice President. To promote Goebel beer, he introduced a train of wagons from Clydesdales that drove across the country. This campaign was discontinued during the war. In order to avert damage to the company's image, the German eagle in the company logo was replaced by an American bald eagle during the Second World War .
From 1941 to 1942, three members of the Executive Board died within a few months, including President Walter Haas. Anderson became the new president.
Competition against straw
The following decades were marked by competition with local rivals straw. In the 1950s, straw reached an annual output of over one million barrels, Goebel was around 810,000. Both companies were hit equally hard by a state-wide strike from April 1 to May 20, 1958. Breweries from other states managed during this time to increase their combined market share in Wisconsin by nine percent in the long term. In addition, large breweries such as Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing Company stirred the competition even further with large-scale advertising campaigns. To counteract the onset of the downward trend, Anderson was replaced by Vice President Leroy J. Wallace.
A newly developed brewing process was supposed to turn things around: During the 1960s, Goebel experimented with new production methods in order to achieve an authentic barrel taste even with bottled and canned beer. Usually, bottled and canned beer had to be pasteurized before it could go on sale. The reason for this was that the yeast active in the beer had to be killed before it was sold, otherwise the containers would burst due to the build-up of gases. Draft beer, on the other hand, did not have to be pasteurized because it is stored refrigerated from the brewery to the tap, which prevents the yeast from continuing to work. In fact, Goebel's chemists were able to grow a new bacterial culture that slowly decomposed the yeast after the brewing process and then died without any further consequences. This new process and the resulting barrel flavor resulted in a brief, steep increase in sales. However, the success only lasted for a short time, as the new bacterial culture spread uncontrollably in the brewery and thus disrupted other production processes in which the yeast had to persist. This had such a negative effect on the taste that Goebel reintroduced the old production method. The experiment cost Goebel several customers. In addition, it missed adapting to changing taste preferences. New generations of beer drinkers preferred lighter beer.
Sale to straw
The early 1960s continued to be marked by a number of leadership changes and marketing campaigns that did not have the desired effect. Stricter production regulations made it difficult for Goebel to assert itself in competition. Due to the indignant dwindling sales, the brewery had to close in 1964 and was bought up by its decades-long rival Stroh. Stroh tore down most of the Goebel brewery.
Goebel beer gained popularity again under the direction of Stroh. The same original yeast stick was used. With the price set low, the product recovered and soon reached annual sales of 250,000 barrels. Less than three years after the acquisition, Stroh was in turn bought by the large Pabst brewery . Pabst stopped selling Goebel beer at the end of 2005 due to falling sales.
Trivia
- Between 1954 and 1955 Goebel sold the Guinness Brite Ale and Guinness Lager brands under license from Guinness .
- The American comedian George Gobel was the spokesman and advertising figure for the brewery due to the similarity of names.
- For a long time the company had a bantam chicken nicknamed “Brewster Rooster” as its mascot.
- Goebel was a sponsor of the Detroit Tigers .