Never change the recipe...If it ain't broke, don't fix it...I loved Schlitz in the day...but beer drinkers will ALWAYS know the difference in flavor...ALWAYS...

A classic example of letting the bean counters destroy your quality product. Same thing happened to most of the US automobile industry, especially GM.

Prior to the bad commercials Schlitz had great radio jingles. “When you’re out of Schlitz…you’re out of beer.” Simple, set to bouncy music.

Accountants, chasing larger profits, have a demonstrated history of brand failure.

"When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer!" Stroh's rhymes with nose. Great video on American beer!

Im 71 now but when i was just coming of age Schlitz was my first beer.

Moral of the story is consumers are smarter than the executives give them credit for. Thank you for providing the references at the end. That’s always a mark of quality.

Schlitz? Man! I aint had a Schlitz since I was in grade school. !

This should be a case study taught in every business school to impress upon students the fundamental importance of customer satisfaction and the disastrous consequences of the cost-cutting mantra [Boeing?].

In the 1950's, my dad worked at Schlitz each summer -- as a "taster", he said. He brought me to work one time (I was about 5 or 6) and introduced me to his colleagues, all men wearing white lab coats. One taught me new expressions like "See ya later, alligator. After a while, crocodile. Toodloo kangaru." Another filled up a sink with water and gave me a plastic boat to play with. I had tours, and fun all morning. Side note: when the machinery was off calibration, cans would be "short-filled" and couldn't be sold. They were given away to my dad and the guys in white coats. My dad took his cases to my grandpa, who distributed them around the large extended family. Lot's of Schlitz cans are in those family reunion pictures. Great memories, and thanks for the whole history of the company.

My older brother loved Schlitz malt liquor, AKA The Bull.

The Uihlein name is pronounced "Eee-line"...which is why the chocolate they produced during prohibition was named "Eline's". There is a faction of the family that pronounces it "U-line"...which happens to be the family that started the office supply company "ULINE" based in Pleasant Prairie, WI. As well as another family that produces refrigeration units in Milwaukee named "U-Line".

"What made Milwaukee Famous, has made a big fool out of me" There's a County music line for every situation.

My father was a Creative Director for Leo Burnett in Chicago back in the sixties until he died in 1974. One of the campaigns he worked on was Stroh's Beer and he did great on it. During his spin-up research he met someone who told him the very true story of the corporate line "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer." Turns out it was a fluke of circumstance, Let me explain... After work one night a guy working on the Schlitz campaign for whomever was handling their advertising stopped by a bar for a well-deserved drink. Eventually some other guy of no importance comes into the bar and asks for a Budweiser. The bartender tells him they're out of Bud. So the guy says, "When you're out of Bud, you're out of beer." The guy working on the campaign ran back to work and wrote it down so he could see it and spoke it over and over in different ways. The next morning he gave his pitch for "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer." It stuck. Ironically, a few years after my father died, Stroh's bought Schlitz.

Schlitz was enormous in Chicago. All around the city are taverns that featured the Schlitz globe as an architectural detail, rather than simply signage. My family had a strong Schlitz connection. I had two uncles that worked for them, one as a driver, the other as a bookkeeper. I still have a photo of me as an infant of myself in a local park, with my father and other men, with a bottle of Schlitz firmly in hand. Sad fate.

Thanks for the video. My parents used to drink a regional beer here in Philadelphia called Ballantine Beer. They must have done something similar to Schlitz. One day my dad said the beer tasted different and not in a good way. Needless to say my dad changed beer brands. Ballantine also eventually also closed their brewery in Newark, NJ. The brand was bought by some other brewery but never was able to recover and I never see it anymore.

My dad always seemed to have a 6-pack of Schlitz bottles or Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) cans in the fridge. By the time I started drinking beer, both were on the decline. Thanks for putting together your video. It's one of those topics that I wasn't aware that I wanted to know more about. Hope you decide to create more in the future.

I can speak from experience on this. Back in the late 70's a neighbor was rebuilding an engine for a 70 Olds Cutlass and offered us a beer. I don't know too many 15 year old farm kids that would turn that down so I took 1. It was a Schlitz and it was the worst can of, I guess you could call it beer, I've ever had in my life. This was about 40 miles north of Milwaukee and I did actually know what american Lager is supposed to taste like. About the only thing that I could compare it to was Rhinelander, and that crap was awful. Fun fact, at that time Kingsbury, which was actually a decent cheap Lager was about $4 for a case of returnables. It was far and away more drinkable than Schlitz and Rhinelander. Here is another little tidbit from my youth. As a farm kid I could buy beer by the keg when I was 16, no questions asked. I worked fields 5 or 10 miles away from home and since it would take 30 minutes to drive a tractor that far I would just go to the local taverns and eat lunch there. So after a few years of that they must've just felt I was old enough and served me without thinking about it. At football practice, I was a sophomore at the time, the seniors were talking about having a party but none of them could buy beer. I told them I could get them beer, no problem. They didn't believe me, obviously, but I did talk one of them into picking me up after milking cows, about 7pm and I'd get the beer and he could make the couple calls he needed to make to let everyone know the party was on. I was invited to all the parties after that, and only needed to be the guy that got the beer about 6 more times. Yup, I was cool with all of them after that. At that time, Miller was the popular beer with the teen crowd and that's what we bought until I was a senior in High School. At that point I noticed the quality was going down so at a smaller party I picked up Pabst and mentioned it only to the guy that was throwing the party. He asked because the tapper was different. He was cool with it as a 1/2 barrel of Pabst was $24 and Miller was $28. (something like that price wise) The only give away was the tapper was different, but nobody paid attention to that as the barrel was in a tub of ice with a blanket over the top to keep it cold. About 1/2 way thru the party my buddy mentioned to me that everyone was asking him "is this Miller, it's great". He just told them yes and we were laughing about it. My theory is Miller was just too popular and quality control went down or wasn't aged enough, either way Pabst was better at the time. We told our closer friends about it and the cat slowly left the bag. It took about 2 months before most people figured out Pabst was the way to go back then and that was all we bought.

This was a needless disaster, all done in-house and Coca-Cola should have learned from this but didn't. 40 years later the "new Schlitz" concern painstakingly recreated as close as possible to brew a beer made with the 1960 formula; even combing surviving paperwork and surviving brewmasters to make the beer that's available today. I like it and they worked hard to get it right. Damn shame it had to come to that.

Nothing could skunk out like warm Schlitz.

The resurrected Schiltz is actually a very good quality American style lager. The brew master in charge worked with former Schlitz brewhouse workers to reverse engineer the original formula. I've had the beer several times over the years. I recommend trying the beer if you can find it.

Remember the tv commercials: "The beer that made Milwaukee famous-- simply because it tastes so good!"

I don't think anyone in the 70's was threatened by something on the TV

When I became legal 25 cent bottles called Lil' Joe's were my regular accoutrements to the red dyed imported Iranian pistachios that always stained my fingers. I really miss those days.

First, Schlitz was so big in the '70s that they were the corporate sponsors of a tour by The Who. Next, what the heck happened to Strohs?

I quit drinking Schlitz because of the taste. I never thought the ad campaign was that bad.

Schlitz: We had the stupidest beer marketing campaign in history, we lost so many customers. Bud Light: Hold my beer.

Whenever I hear the word 'Schlitz' I instantly see cigarette butts and smell the stale empty cans littering my grandparent's kitchen table. Ah memories

Interesting assessment. The take away lesson is that when the focus of a business morphs from producing a good product into sustaining its livelihood, it begins it's journey into a downward spiral. A shift of priority from your client to oneself can't be hidden and your clients will naturally respond accordingly.

The 70's sitcom Laverne and Shirley brewery scenes were shot in the old Schlitz brewery in Milwaukee. Growing up in the Chicago area in the 70's, Schlitz, Old Style, Strohs, Old Milwaukee were all cheaper beers and the staple of six packs and kegger parties. Making chains out of the old style of pull-off tabs were a fond memory and an easy way of keeping track of how many beers you had and bragging rights for the one with the longest at the end of the night. Great times!

Schlitz of course is still brewed. The nice thing about Schlitz beer is that you can't tell when it goes bad.

In college, my friends and I would buy pitchers of Schlitz Dark. The closest thing I can find to it is Dos Equis Amber.

Using “fining agents”, as you describe in your “Step-4”, does not inherently degrade a beer’s flavor or quality. Rather, the use of any of several fining agents is a time-honored brewing method for improving clarity in many beers, including some very high quality beers. On the other hand, fining a flawed beer will, at most, produce a brilliantly clear but still flawed beer.

in the 1970's, alaska was in an oil boom, and enticed a german beer company to open up a brewery here in anchorage. the plan was for it to use grain from another government subsidized project, the delta junction grain project. Prinz Brau opened in 1976, and closed in 1979, without ever having used any grain from delta junction. fascinating story (i think), so consider this an official submission for a video idea hehehe. enjoyed this video very much, subscribed. looking forward to more!

I grew up in Milwaukee and watched the whole thing play out. You just can't cut corners and expect the beer to taste good. Micro breweries continue the tradition of local breweries run by people who enjoy beer. "Drinking should be a pleasure, not an occupation" as a friend of my father used to say.

My child photos, late 70s. Adult men all had a can of schlitz

Loved the real deal Schlitz same as Strohs that was fire brewed in Detroit both classics in the day

My High School beer of choice. Wow! What a blast from the past.

Drinking Schlitz gave me the Schitz

I remember that Schlitz was all my dad and my uncles drank until the early '80s.

Very interesting and entertaining! I'm 73 years old and remember most of those old-time beer brands from back in the day!

Same thing happened to Winchester, when they disastrously degraded their iconic Model 70 rifle, in 1964, trying to cut costs. Winchester is now foreign owned, and a high quality Model 70 is available again. Hopefully business execs know to stick to their core product and don’t compromise its quality.

As someone who lives right near Milwaukee, Schlitz still exists and I can get it on tap at multiple bars in my town

Schlitz was my Dad's favorite American beer circa 50's to '70's ... then he changed to Coors. We lived in AZ, VA and UT. I tried this in about 2010 in WA state, and I liked it ! It seemed to have a touch of hop bitterness more that other beers. Now we can't get Schlitz in WA state. 😞

I remember the Schlitz Light commercials with James Coburn acting all rough and tough.

As a college student in the 70s this beer was derogatorily because the quality was so poor

I own a vintage neon Schlitz sign. It hung in the window of my parent’s bar. I was under the impression Primo always used dry wort. I worked for a brewery in Alaska that copied their processes. The problem was that after a while, a case of Olympia from the mainland cost the same as a case of Primo. Primo was still popular with vacationers. So somebody decided to send it to the mainland. That didn’t last long.

At the time when Stroh bought Schlitz, over 80% of American beer was brewed by just three mega-breweries, and if you were smaller, you had a choice between being acquired, driven out of business or getting really big really fast. Stroh chose the third option and acquired Schlitz. They thought it made no sense to maintain their Detroit production facilities, so they moved everything to Milwaukee, and uprooted from their home in Detroit, things started deteriorating. If you read the book "Beer Money" by one of the Stroh heiresses, you'll find that Stroh's failure wasn't just due to Schlitz, but also partly due to a decline in the family that owned it.

I read an article a few years back about an alcohol control board inspection of a Pennsylvania bar, where they found that all the the taps for the various American "beers" were all actually attached to kegs of the same cheap off-brand "lager," and patrons couldn't tell the difference. America's pasteurized processed imitation-beer product, made with corn and rice, is not beer, and its consumers can't tell the difference, no matter how much they claim brand loyalty.

I would like to know whatever happened to Olympia beer. The best beer I have ever had.

I remember this well. I was a Schlitz drinker and the difference in taste was immediate and disgusting. First thought was it’s just a bad batch which didn’t make sense because they supposedly constantly test. We finally realized they radically changed something in the process and said eff them, we’ll drink something else.

My local bar still sells draft pints of Schlitz in Chicago

Around 1960 my grandfather (an old German guy) ordered me a Schlitz 7 oz "Little Joe" after a hard day of fishing at Burlington, Wisconsin. My dad look disturbed but didn't stop him, and my mother was horrified when she later found out. I was just 7 years old. It tasted really good. Must have been before they cheapened the formula. 😂

Schlitz & Old Milwaukee were classic cheap beers when i was young... My grandpa drank Schlitz, probably my first sip of beer ever...!! I'm from Michigan, so we were very loyal to Stroh's.... "Cold Filtered" and an excellent beer..!!

Schlitz was huge in its day. Their name was everywhere. Even in school we watched a series of movies on automotive engine maintenance and repair that were sponsored by Schlitz. So they even had their name in schools. When I was a kid Dad always drank Schlitz. He wasn't a big beer drinker but that's the only brand I ever saw him drink. I remember him and some of his buddies talking about how the beer just wasn't good anymore. Long before they went out of business Dad had switched to Pabst. He never liked it as well as Schlitz in its day.

"Tastes great, less filling" was the best beer marketing campaign ever.

Schlitz is back with their classic formula and is becoming popular again.

Leave pop ups on longer please😮

Schlitz was my favorite beer when I began drinking beer but the taste and quality did change drastically for the worse. I always blamed the Strohs takeover for it because Strohs was an awful beer. Thanks for explaining what really happened

The last Schlitz beer I ever had, you need a church key (58-59, somewhere there).

So Hollywood and Disney have been embracing the Schlitz business plan!

Imagine all the Schlitz hangovers since 1849.

I was on a diving trip to the keys. We struck up a conversation with a guy on the boat who told us he was related to one of the corporate owners. The story goes, investors moved Shlitz to Mexico and branded their beer “CORONA” to quell the nasty flavor the encouraged customers to put a wedge of lime in it… the lime part I made up.

Funny how no CEO ever sees their market share shrink and thinks, "you know, higher quality will restore our fortunes and make us more competitive". B school graduates, accountants, and others of similar education only have one answer to all problems--lower cost through lowering quality.

"When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer!" As a bartender in the 1970's, we knew that to be true because it was always the last choice of every beer drinker.

Interesting. Kept me entertained for almost 19 minutes.

I watched this happen when I was growing up in Memphis. From the biggest brewery in Memphis to no brewery in Memphis. I always wondered what caused the decline and demise. Now I know.

Hey Arthur! Algorithm got me here! The legalization of home brewing in the USA was almost as massive of an impact on beer companies in America as Prohibition. America’s taste in beer started to shift. Plus, the rise of “malt liquor” and other higher alcohol meant beer companies in America had regularly make new products or lose out to huge market shares.

Another commercial had a football quarterback say "I'll take you out for a pass and you'll come back incomplete". They paid James Colburn a million dollars to just say "Schlitz Lite" in one commercial.

"Pabst won the ribbon in 1893, and now it is here, the original beer, No longer a memory. No one can bring back the good old days, but Pabst has brought back the beer. Original Pabst Blue Ribbon beer." "I'm from Milwaukee and I ought to know That Blatz beer tastes great wherever you go. Smoother, fresher, less filling that's clear, Blatz is Milwaukee's finest beer." Love those old commercials.

In the mid-late 70s, I used to frequent an ice house on the Texas gulf coast where they served Schlitz Dark, and I played shuffleboard or pool with friends to Roger Miller's "King of the Road" spinning on the juke box. If you were with a friend or two, they'd fill the pitcher, and each of your glasses at no extra charge. We were all broke, so it must've been pretty cheap. I remember it being pretty dang good beer. Regular Schlitz, OTOH, was just as bad as Lone Star. Thanks for posting and reminding me of some good times.

While sitting in a dentist's office during the time Schlitz and Bud were going head to head in L.A., I picked up a Business magazine and read interviews with the heads of both Schlitz and Bud. Bud announced that they were going to dismantle Busch Gardens, which was a successful Beer and exotic birds park at their Van Nuys brewery, and during construction all beer needed in the Southern California market will be trucked in from St. Louis, in refrigerated trucks until construction was done. The head of Schlitz said they would pump out the beer as fast as they could, and the customers wouldn't notice the difference. Now I know the complete story. Here's one. There used to be Beer Bars all over L.A. What happened?

In marketing class the professor pointed out that most consumers couldn't taste the difference, but, the super tasters could and advised everyone that it was terrible.

In the early 1970s I was a newly married man. When my then spouse was going grocery shopping, I would sometimes ask her to pick up a six-pack of beer for the weekend, or if I needed razor blades, some of those new-fangled shaving cartirdges. On occasion she would bring home Schick razor blades or Schlitz beer. Both products were decidedly inferior to the competition. I HATED them. So I said to her: "Dear, if you go shopping for eithet of these items in the furure, just remember this line: 'Schick and Schlitz are SH*T." This is not the place to talk about what Schick razor blades did to my face, but I am happy to confirm that Schlitz beer was so bad I considered it undrinkable.

The common theme in all these corporate failures is inane management and boardrooms. The folks that make the real money don’t deserve it. You see it today with DEI.

Yes, Anheuser Busch did advertise, the famous music hall song "Down at the Old Bull and Bush" dedicated to the Bush pub on Hampstead Heath was originally a promotional song called "Under the Anheuser Busch"

“You tell the world you know what your doing, each time you reach for Schmitz”

I only drank Schlitz in the early ‘70’s. The change made it undrinkable.

Cheaper ingredients and shorter fermenting time? Shoulda just called it Hazy IPA and they'd still be huge!

I was around back then and drank inexpensive beer. I definitely noticed the Schlitz quality dropping and we started calling it a slightly different name.

I loved their Tall Boys

Thank you for the great video!

I'm Still A Big Fan Of Schlitz Gusto Beer & Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull.

Was stationed in the Marine Corps with a great friend from Rumford RI. Chris H. Blake and we're kinda of broke, so we decided buy some Beer and party! We went to the PX to get some beer! He grabs a case of Schlitz Beer and I say, that should be good! He looks at me and says what kinda of beer are you getting? I thought Damn! They had Old Style so I got a 12 pack and we walked over the baseball field and sat in the dugout and started to drink! Chris drank that whole 2 four before Finished 9 Old Styles and finished my last 3! That boy could knock them down! And he loved Schlitz Beer! Later we went up to Bos Mas and watched the Reds VS Bo Sox! And watch Louie win their only game! But the Boston crowd? Mostly Rhode Islanders drove back to RI, they never stopped drinking! It was the best World Series Party ever! Any time I see a Schlitz sign or beer I always think of C H Blake! The boy CMTFU!

This story rings true for many, if not all, western businesses. Bring back original Schlitz!

Have you tried the recent Schlitz product? It is wonderful compared to what it was in the 80s.

Well done. Most Britts suck with American history perhaps for obvious reasons. Well done lad.

SCHLITZ was a great beer. The revived it a few years ago but then vanished again

Good video...hope to see more

Managers + senior 'executives' - "Screwing up twice as much in half the time".

great video. the snot consistency issue, shows either how inept they were or how the senior management refused to listen to the brewers.

I quit drinking Schlitz in 75 due to the terrific hangover it gave me. Went to Bud and the problem went away unless I really overdid it. Better living through chemistry. I am told that Papst also went through a period of chemical tinkering. Clearification agents, heading agents and whatever else for shelf life etc.

In the US, the company which brews Budweiser is generally pronounced Annhiser Bush, not Anhowser as pronounced here. I’m guessing that an original German pronunciation might have been closer to Anhoyser, but that’s just a guess.

Growing up in a predominately german farming community the beers of choice were Falstaff, Stroh's, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Budweiser and Griesedieck Brothers. Sad to see so many have changed their recipes and many times went away.

This was a family business with the stock held across numerous family members . The family could not feeling agree how to manage things, and not enough of the family was involved in the daily management. The family did not develop their next generations to run it or look for professional managers to run it. generations to run

Gee, I guess at one point back in the '80's, when the company went bankrupt, one could literally say, 'we're outta Schlitz !' 😫

Per my neighbor, a 30yr employee of The Miller Brewing Co, the REAL reason that Schlitz tanked was that one of its employees accidentally pumped waste water into their primary tank of original recipe yeast mixture! That mistake ruined their source of its primary brewing recipe. Its brewmasters desperately tried to reconstitute its original recipe but obviously that would be impossible because aside from basic ingredients, a beer’s taste is directly tied to that tank of aged yeast n other ingredients. And once their tank of primary ingredients was destroyed, their brewmasters were never able to reestablish the taste that its customers preferred! End of story.

I still buy it and drink it when I can find it!

I love my Old Milwaukee beer! The advertising campaign was great too, despite it not working well. Great story.

Back in the 70's, a common saying was "Drink Schlitz and get the sh*tz"! 🤣