Photos by S. L. Stein
Pabst, Miller and Schlitz are three names as synonymous with Milwaukee as any. But none of these brewing giants were founded by the men who made them famous. In fact, the brands that came to define Brew City were each forged in interesting and often tragic ways. Let’s take a look at how each of Milwaukee’s “Big Three” came to their long-standing identities:
Pabst
Milwaukee was still two years away from incorporating as a city when Jacob Best Sr. founded the Best and Company Brewery with four of his sons in 1844. One of the pioneer brewers in what was to become known as America’s beer capital, Jacob Sr. retired in 1853, leaving his sons to take over the works (Phillip, Charles, Jacob Jr. and Lorenz). Three years later, Phillip’s daughter, Maria, married a strapping Great Lakes steamer captain named Frederick Pabst. Captain Pabst eased his way into the business and, after Jacob Sr. died in 1869, became partners in the company with Emil Schandein, another of Phillip’s sons-in-law. What was by then known as the Phillip Best Brewing Company remained so until Schandein died in Germany in 1888, leaving control of corporation to Pabst, who shortly thereafter renamed it the Pabst Brewery.
Miller
Frederick Miller was still in Germany when two of Jacob Best Sr.’s sons—Jacob Jr. and Charles—broke away from the family firm to found the Plank Road Brewery on Milwaukee’s outskirts in 1850, but they gave up on the plant in 1854. Around that same time, Miller was on his way to the U.S. With pedigree that belies the modern-day, working-class identity of his brand (as a young man, he was sent from his native Germany to France for seven years of academic study and carried $9,000 in gold with him to the U.S.), Miller was most fascinated with the brewing business and had spent time working at his uncle’s brewery in the old country. Miller arrived in Milwaukee in 1855 and promptly purchased the Best brothers’ shuttered brewery for $8,000. The brewery would remain in the Miller family until Phillip Morris bought them out in 1970.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Schlitz
“The Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous” can trace its roots back to August Krug’s downtown restaurant and pub. Krug came from a brewing family in Germany and first began brewing in Milwaukee shortly after arriving in the U.S. in 1848. The next year, Krug hired Joseph Schlitz, himself a newly-arrived immigrant, to work as his bookkeeper. Krug was a major player in the local beer business until 1856, when he died after a bad fall. Schlitz, his right-hand man, took over the company and, in 1858, married Krug’s widow and rechristened the brewery with his own name. Schlitz also died suddenly, killed in an 1875 shipwreck, throwing control of the company back to the Krug family in the way of Krug’s nephew, August Uihlein, and his brothers. The family ran the brewery until 1981 when, after years of declining sales, it was taken over the Stroh Brewing Company of Detroit.
