Tuesday’s ad is for Erlanger, from 1980. Erlanger was part of the Joseph Schlitz stable of brands when this ad ran, but was acquired by Stroh’s two years later. Stroh’s promptly killed the brand shortly thereafter. It’s certainly an interesting looking bottle and glass. Fancy.
A nice remembrance of this beer. I remember it, it was excellent quality for a big-brewery beer, along the lines of Michelob when it was good.
Gary
If I remember correctly, it came out sometime in the 70’s when I was working in a grocery store that sold beer (but had limited cooler space, which we refilled from open stock on the floor in the beer & wine nook). We got a small order (everything came from County warehouse, so we told the Schlitz rep that we’d try a few cases) – it was a dud sales-wise compared to Mich (as was Pabst’s Andeker, another of the same ilk of that era), so we never reordered it. Certainly was better than Schlitz (which I hated then).
Odd irony: circa 1975, Stroh’s (which was a Midwest regional) expanded its distribution east, & did pretty well – then they bought Schlitz (which was losing ground steadily to Miller once Lite hit the scene & was running into $$ trouble for whatever reasons). 10-15 yrs later, both brands pretty much disappeared – now they’re semi-generics that you’ll find in stores that cater to the lower-income folks who want something less alcoholic than malt liquor & who don’t like Milller High Life (which is now the cheapest Miller-named product – Milwaukee’s Best is SABM’s cheapo line).
How times have changed for the better, thanks to all the craft brewers!
Stroh did not kill the Erlanger brand “shortly after” purchasing Schlitz.
In 1984, in fact, they even revamped the brand – changing the label (it was now labeled “Marzen Bier”) with a series of three different scenes (dragons, knights and sea serpents) and switched it to a tall, thin “select-style” brown bottle. The label emphasized that it was the only nationally distributed US beer that met the requirements of the Reinheitsgebot.
Hudepohl, which then brewed and marketed Christian Moerlein as the first US beer to pass the Reinheitsgebot, complained to Stroh about their claim, which made the national wire services.
In 1987, Dubuque Star purchased the Erlanger brand from Stroh, after the latter announced they were discontinuing the brand.
I guess that’s what happens when I reply on the internet. Erlanger is a brand I wasn’t familiar with, so did a simple search last night, and found one source (which of course I can’t locate this morning) that claimed Stroh’s discontinued Erlanger a year after the acquisition. I should probably just ask you first, but that would involve foresight and planning ahead. Cheers, and thanks, as always, for setting the record straight. J