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Original recipe Schlitz returns

Susan Troller  —  10/07/2008 12:51 pm

Schlitz, the once wildly popular "beer that made Milwaukee famous," is making a nostalgic comeback to Madison on Thursday.

Scheduled to be delivered in '60s era muscle cars, both bottles of the brew and Schlitz on tap will make their local debut at -- appropriately -- the Old Fashioned, 23 N. Pinckney St., on the Capitol Square.

Jennifer De Bolt, general manager of the restaurant and bar, said the reintroduction of the beer would include $1 servings of both taps and bottles during the afternoon, following a short press conference at 1 p.m.

Schlitz is a formerly iconic "workingman's beer" that once was one of the best known brands in America. Its heyday was in the first half of the 20th century.

According to Beer Advocate, Milwaukee's Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co. fell on hard times when the recipe for the beer was changed to try to cut costs in the mid-1970s and the company experienced labor troubles in the early 1980s. In 1982, the company was sold to the Stroh Brewery Co. in Detroit. In 1999, Stroh's befell the same fate and sold the Schlitz label to the Pabst Brewing Co., which is now located in Chicago.

The brand has been largely dormant for decades.

The taste of the re-introduced Schlitz is based on a recipe created by award-winning Pabst brewmaster Bob Newman to closely approximate the original flavor of the brew before the disastrous changes that sent it into obscurity. New Schlitz features the logo and the long-necked brown bottles familiar to old fans.

The beer has already been reintroduced to several other mostly Midwestern markets, including Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Chicago. The beer is also available in Florida.

Susan Troller  —  10/07/2008 12:51 pm