- Olympia Brewing Company
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Olympia Brewing Company 
The Olympia Brewery building in 1989Location Tumwater, Washington Year opened 1896 
Olympia Beer label from 1914.
The Olympia Brewing Company was a brewery in Tumwater, Washington which existed from 1896 until 2003.
Contents
History
Leopold Schmidt, a German immigrant from Montana founded The Capital Brewing Company at Tumwater Falls on the Deschutes River in the town of Tumwater, near the south end of Puget Sound. He built a four-story wooden brewhouse, a five-story cellar building, a one-story ice factory powered by the lower falls, and a bottling and keg plant and in 1896, began brewing and selling Olympia Beer. In 1902, the firm became Olympia Brewing Company and chose the slogan "It's the Water" to promote its flagship product. Statewide Prohibition, which began in January 1916, four years before National Prohibition, ended beer making operations. After Prohibition ended, a new Olympia Brewery was erected just upstream from the original, and Olympia beer went back on sale in 1934.[1]
Olympia Beer was a very popular regional brand in the Pacific Northwest for half of a century. It eventually expanded nationwide, repositioned as a low-price lager. During the 1970s, Olympia acquired Hamm's and Lone Star. Olympia Brewing also produced Buckhorn Beer,[2] which had previously been a product of the Lone Star Brewing Company.[3] The beer declined increasingly in sales when the president of the brewery was caught engaging in a homosexual act,[citation needed] and was therefore publicly outed in the early 1980s. The Schmidt family, which owned and operated the brewery and company, elected to sell the company in 1982. Olympia was subsequently purchased by Pabst in 1983.
As with many other regional breweries, ownership of this brewery eventually passed through several corporations including Pabst, G. Heileman, and Stroh's, until the brewery was eventually purchased by SABMiller. For a time, the Olympia brewery took over the brewing of other Pacific Northwest brands as their original breweries were closed one by one, including the Lucky Lager brewery in Vancouver, Washington, the Henry Weinhard's brewery in Portland, Oregon, and the Rainier Beer brewery in Seattle, Washington. Miller closed the Olympia brewery on July 1, 2003 citing the unprofitability of such a small brewery. However, beer marketed under the Olympia Beer name continues to be manufactured by SABMiller at a plant in Irwindale, California.
Use of Artesian water
For many years, Olympia Beer was brewed with water obtained from artesian wells. The company's promotions made much of the use of artesian water in the brewing process. However, the advertisements never explained what artesian water was, preferring to claim that the water was controlled by a mythical population of "Artesians".[4] Once the brewery was taken over by a larger company, the use of artesian water was discontinued, and so was that advertising campaign.[5]
In downtown Olympia, current efforts to preserve the use of artesian water at the one remaining public well has been the mission of H2Olympia: Artesian Well Advocates.[6]
Pop culture
Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock drinks an Olympia beer in The Graduate (1967). Paul Newman drinks an Oly in the movie, Sometimes a Great Notion (1970). A neon sign advertising Olympia beer can be seen in the window of the liquor store in American Graffiti (1973). Clint Eastwood promoted the brand in several popular films, including Magnum Force (1973), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Eiger Sanction (1975), Every Which Way but Loose (1978) (in which his orangutan Clyde also indulges), and Any Which Way You Can (1980). Rebecca Balding is seen drinking Olympia in bed in Silent Scream (1980). John Denver drinks an Olympia in "Oh, God!" (1977). Signage and cans being consumed are also easily visible in The China Syndrome (1979). The brand was also featured in the movie Friday the 13th Part III (1982) and Airport 1975 (1974). A neon light Olympia Beer sign can be seen in the roadhouse bar in the vampire cult-classic Near Dark.(1987)Josh Brolin's George W. Bush drinks Olympia beer in W. (2008). In the independent B-movie Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch (2005), the teen-age campers and the adult hunters were drinking the brand.
Ag Energy Resources Inc. of Benton, Illinois purchased the machinery from Olympia Brewing Co. to make ethanol for motor fuel use.[7]
See also
The movie "House of Games" features many cases of Olympia Beer stacked toward the back room. Additionally, an old Mickey Rooney movie, where he has to change a tire on his dad's car. On the street in front of their house, Mickey and his dad remove an Olympia Beer case from the trunk to get to the spare tire jack.
References
- ^ Brewery Gems, An Illustrated History of the Olympia Brewing Company (Retrieved on October 25, 2009).
- ^ Beer Advocate. What Happened to Buckhorn Beer?, (Retrieved on November 2, 2006)
- ^ The Buckhorn Museum. Fact Sheet, (Retrieved on November 30, 2008).
- ^ Kelley Advertising & Marketing: Olympia Beer: A Good Campaign Accelerates the Death of a Brand . Accessed 2008.11.07.
- ^ Beer Advocate: Olympia Beer. Accessed 2008.11.07.
- ^ "It's Still the Water" Thurston County PUD Report - CONNECTIONS, Summer 2009, Vol. 3, No. 3 - http://www.wpuda.org/PDF_files/Connections/Summer2009final.pdf
- ^ "Benton ethanol plant clears hurdles". The Southern. http://www.thesouthern.com/articles/2007/11/28/local/22368999.txt. Retrieved 2007-11-28.
External links
Categories:- Companies established in 1896
- Companies based in Washington (state)
- Defunct companies based in Washington (state)
- History of Olympia, Washington
- Defunct brewery companies of the United States
- Companies disestablished in 2003
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