Lone Star Brewing Company

Infobox Brewery
name = Lone Star Brewing Company


caption = The National Beer of Texas
location = Woodridge, Illinois
owner = Pabst Brewing Company
opened = 1884
production =
active_beers = brewbox_beer|name=Lone Star|style=Pale Lager brewbox_beer|name=Lone Star Light|style=Light Pale Lager
seasonal_beers =
other_beers =

Lone Star is the brand name of a beer once produced in San Antonio, Texas and marketed as "The National Beer of Texas."

History

The Lone Star Brewery, built in 1884, was the first large, mechanized brewery in Texas. Adolphus Busch, of Anheuser-Busch, founded it along with a group of San Antonio businessmen. The castle-like building now houses the San Antonio Museum of Art. The original "Lone Star Bottling Works" opened in San Antonio in the 1890s and by 1903 was selling 65,000 barrels of beer annually. With the end of Prohibition in 1933, a new Lone Star brewery was built under new owners. The plant first produced beer under the "Sabinas" brand name and then the name "Champion" beer. In 1940, the name "Lone Star" was first used to market a beer from the brewery. The brewery also produced Lone Star Light, low-calorie Lime Lager (1970) & Brut Super Premium (1969).

It wasn't until 1940 that brewer Peter Kreil from Munich created the formula for the first beer to actually be called Lone Star beer. In 1949, under the leadership of Harry Jersig, Lone Star went public. By 1960, the brewery had 651 employees and by 1965, annual sales exceeded 1 million barrels.

Olympia Brewing Co. of Washington bought Lone Star in 1976, and it changed hands again in 1983 when Wisconsin's G. Heileman bought Olympia.

Detroit-based Stroh Brewery Co. then bought Heileman and closed the San Antonio brewery in 1996 moving beer production to Longview, Texas and signaling the end of San Antonio as a major brewing town. Milwaukee-based Pabst bought most of the Stroh brands, including Lone Star, in 1999, and began brewing Lone Star at the San Antonio Pearl Brewery to great fanfare. In 2000, the Pearl Brewery was closed because it was outdated and would have been too expensive to continue to operate or to bring up to date. Production of Lone Star is currently contracted out to non-Pabst owned breweries (e.g. Miller Brewing Company in Fort Worth).

In 1956 the Lone Star Brewery purchased the Buckhorn collection. Harry Jersig, President ofthe brewery and a friend of the Friedrich’s, continued to add to the collection and had aspecial building erected on the Lone Star grounds to house the collection

In the '70s, Lone Star's sales benefited from a close association with Willie Nelson, the Austin music scene and their Giant Armadillo. The beer is mentioned frequently in the title track of Red Steagall's 1976 album "Lone Star Beer and Bob Wills Music". In 1999, the company began to sponsor Texas singers and musicians, such as Two Tons of Steel, with the beer's "It's a Texas Thing" advertising campaign.

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References

External links

* [http://www.lonestarbeer.com Lone Star Beer] - Lone Star's Official Site
* [http://www.pabst.com/mainpage.html Pabst Brewing Company] - Current owner of the Lone Star brands.
* [http://picasaweb.google.com/geohoy/LoneStar1981/ Vintage photos of Lone Star's brewery in 1981]
* [http://www.texasbreweries.com/lstour1.htm 1958 Brewery tour ]
* [http://www.uer.ca/locations/show.asp?locid=23869 The ruins of Lone Star's second brewery]
* [http://www.edsanders.com/hunting/buckhorn.htm Photos of Lone Star Hall of Horns circa 1996]
* [http://thismatters.net/hobbies/lonestar/ Solutions to Puzzle Caps]