Beer Brawl IV: Gusto Rides Again

(For Part III, click Beer Brawl III: Drink It Or Else.)

In Part III, a reformulated Schlitz led to the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company’s implosion, and the brand was sold. Bud ruled, while Schlitz survived as a bottom shelf bargain brand.

Fast forward to 2007. Pabst Brewing had been sold several times, eventually morphing into a holding company that owned several beer brands, including Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, Stroh’s, Old Milwaukee and more. The company contracts out the production of these beers, operating no breweries of its own.

Having seen Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) become an unexpected favorite of the young and the hip, the folks at Pabst had a special announcement. They were resurrecting Schlitz. Though the original recipe had been lost, brewmasters had teamed up with former Schlitz staffers and created a taste profile that matched the glorious Schlitz of old. They called it “Classic 60’s Formula.” The Gusto was back!

In contrast to Richard Uihlein Jr., the makers of new-old Schlitz decided that time was their friend. Their beer would be rolled out slowly on a city-by-city basis. “Classic 60’s Formula” Schlitz would only be sold in bottles, distinguishing it from any previous stock that was still on the shelves.

The tactics and target market would differ as well. There would be no gigantic national ad campaign aimed at the twenty-somethings so sought after by Bud, Miller, Coors and other big brands. Schlitz’s efforts would zero in on baby boomers who remembered the beer’s glory days. Low-cost new media would do the heavy lifting. An army of enthusiastic supporters, dubbed “Gusto Guys,” would go forth and spread the word.

New-old Schlitz was hailed as a marked improvement when it hit the shelves in 2008. Cheered as fresh, crisp and light in the tradition of mass-market American lagers, this was a solid entry, or rather, re-entry. You had to hand it to the Pabst people for setting things right after all those years. Now when you reconnected with your college roomies on Facebook, you could catch up over the brew you used to drink back in the day. This was a beer you could root for.

Generalists were roundly pleased. But America’s new legions of craft brew connoisseurs were, unsurprisingly, not quite as impressed. Most admitted that new-old Schlitz was better than the swill it replaced. Still, they dismissed it as just another lackluster American lager.

The makers of new-old Schlitz never intended to win the hearts and minds of self-styled microbrew snobs. But they knew that this breed of beer drinker–essentially non-existent in the ’60s and ’70s–could cast a long shadow, especially in the digital age. In a knotty contradiction, Americans were drinking less beer per capita, but had grown both pickier and more adventurous in their beer drinking. New imports kept appearing. Small, entrepreneurial breweries were popping up everywhere. Flavors once thought far too bold, complex or exotic for the American palette were becoming favorites. Added together, imports, microbrews and craft beers were bottling up more than 10% of the market and growing their share every year.

Other things had changed as well. Wine had gone mainstream. Hard liquor was back, inspiring expensive, super-premium products and a cocktail craze. And all of the famous American breweries founded by German immigrants in the 1800s had been swallowed by conglomerates.

Anheuser-Busch was the last to go, gulped down by international giant InBev in a particularly prickly hostile takeover. Family names that had become iconic brands–including Hamm’s, Stroh’s, Coors, Blatz, Miller and Schaefer–held no intrinsic emotional value for cool, calculating corporate types.

In the brand’s heyday, ads for Schiltz proclaimed, “You only go around once, so grab all the gusto you can!” With a second go around at hand, Schlitz was finally the same. But the landscape was dramatically different.

(To read the exciting conclusion of this series, click Beer Brawl V: You Only Go Around Twice now!)