This appeared in the Syracuse New Times, September 23, 1973, and made it all the way to the brewery president’s desk, angering him and prompting the comment, “What is this paper anyway?”

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As part of a five-year, 300-million dollar expansion program, the Schlitz Brewing Company is building a brewery in the town of Lysander, just outside of Syracuse. The plant was welcomed by local officials, who feel having Schlitz in the area will boost the local economy by increasing the tax base and providing needed employment.

Whether you are a beer drinker or not, you have undoubtedly heard the name Schlitz before. They have advertised in almost every conceivable way — on five-color jumbo beach balls, on the side of Lionel model trains, on the side of bandwagons drawn by Belgian horses, on a float at the Gasparilla Parade of Pirates in Tampa, Florida, and on the front of a Gusto Dart Game. In case any of these escaped your attention, Schlitz spent 9 1/2 million dollars last year on TV advertising to get you to mumble their brand names in your sleep.

The Schlitz empire began in 1849 when August Krug started a brewery in Milwaukee. He died in 1856 and Joseph Schlitz, his bookkeeper, took over the brewery and later married Krug’s widow as well. The couple was childless, but six nephews came over from Germany to learn the business. Thus, when Joseph Schlitz and his wife went down with the ship Schiller on its way to Germany, the business remained in family hands.

Schlitz was in charge of the brewery for a comparatively short time. It has been the Uihlein family, the six nephews and their descendants, that has shaped what is now the second largest brewing company in the United States. The current president is Robert A. Uihlein Jr., a grand-nephew of one of the original six brothers.

Schlitz’s fondness for advertising developed early. Its chief competitor in Milwaukee was the Best Brewing Company, founded in 1844, later known as the Pabst Brewing Company. When explorer Robert Peary “found” a bottle of Pabst on one of his northern expeditions, Schlitz countered by sending 3,600 bottles of beer to Admiral George Dewey and his men for their victory in the Battle of Manila Bay. Then, in a movement to one-up Peary’s discovery, Schlitz “found nine bottles of their beer in the stomach of a dead whale.” Fortunately for Schlitz, no one thought to ask what killed the whale.

Schlitz had another run-in with Pabst over who was making Milwaukee famous. Schlitz bought the slogan “The Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous” from another brewery and felt they were doing the job. Pabst, however, started using the slogan “Milwaukee Beer Is Famous — Pabst Has Made It So.” Pabst had started brewing five years before Schlitz, had brewed the first German-style lager beer in Milwaukee in 1851, while still the Best Brewing company, and was consistently in the same league with Schlitz with sales. But in 1898, Pabst gave up — perhaps due to pressure from Ida Uihlein on her husband, Fred Pabst — and Schlitz has had the sole “claim to fame” ever since.

Schlitz flourished in the late 1800s. The company gained control of railroads to avoid price discrimination, bought more than 50 saloons in Milwaukee to insure a market for their product, and built the Schlitz Hotel and Palm Garden and Schlitz Park, which featured a theater, menagerie, fountains and summer opera.

The anti-German feeling brought on by World War I and the advent of Prohibition almost brought it all to an end. Schlitz held on by trying Famo, a soft drink, and by making chocolates, candies and malt-flavored syrup (used by amateurs to make beer at home).

After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, Schlitz began brewing again, and by 1947 was the No. 1 beer brand in the U.S.A. They held on to that position until 1957, when Anheuser-Busch bumped them out. They have been chasing A-B ever since, and last year showed a sales gain of more than 13%. New plants like the upcoming Syracuse operation have enabled Schlitz to increase their capacity and lower their cost per barrel. Anheuser-Busch claims their beers cost them $30 a barrel while Schlitz, using cheaper ingredients — more corn and less malt, hop extracts rather than hops — can make theirs for $20. Labor costs at A-B’s St. Louis plant are three to five times higher than those at Schlitz’s newer plants. It is hard, though, to feel sorry for the makers of Budweiser and Michelob, who sold more than 26 million barrels of beer last year.

Besides malt and hops, the breweries of America also find room in their beers for 57 registered additives that keep the head big and creamy, and the beer clear and pretty. Because of the lack of labeling requirements, beer drinkers do not know who uses what. The additives are tested by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) but not necessarily in combination with each other or with alcohol. Mistakes are noticed only when large numbers of people fall over, as in the Sixties when a compound of cobalt was used as a head stabilizer and 47 people died of mysterious heart damage. Canadian doctors found that cobalt, in combination with alcohol, caused heart failure in rats. Other doctors suspected cobalt when some of the deceased persons had slowly been turning blue. The use of cobalt sulfate was discontinued.

In 1971, Swedish scientists discovered that the preservative diethyl pyrocarbonate (DEPC) reacted to form urethan, a cancer-causing chemical. In August of 1972, the FDA banned the use of DEPC. Brewing industry spokesmen assured questioners that no American brewery used the chemical, but it was later discovered that Schlitz had been using it for five years.

Schlitz is by no means alone in its use of additives. In fact, of all major breweries, only Rheingold claims to use no chemicals in its beer.

Schlitz brews Schlitz Beer, Old Milwaukee Beer and Schlitz Malt Liquor. These brews could not make it by themselves. It is their advertising that has put them where they are today.

Schlitz Beer is their big gun, and in a recent taste test (blindfolded) run by Mike Royko, a Chicago columnist, it came in 21 in a field of 22, evoking such comments as “tired,” “weak,” “nasty,” and “ugh.” But lest Budweiser freaks rejoice, the King of Beers as 22nd. Royko’s methodology is suspect, but the results were close to fair. Look at it this way: When you brew a beer that will be inoffensive to millions, there can’t be much flavor left.

For those of you who think the best beer in the world is free beer, the new Schlitz brewery will have a hospitality center and a tour, and expects to be brewing by early 1976. The new plant will cost 100-million dollars and will cover 25 acres of the 193-acre site. Schlitz expects to produce 5.8 million barrels (31 gallons per barrel) a year when things get started. Schlitz spent more than 2-million dollars on anti-pollution devices for its Memphis plant and is expected to do Syracuse air and water the same favor.

Because of the new plant, and expansion programs in other Schlitz breweries (there are eight), Schlitz will have a capacity of 35-million barrels by 1978. And that’s a lot of beer.