Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve and Blitz-Weinhard were brands of

beer Beer is one of the oldest and the most widely consumed type of alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from ce ...

first brewed in 1856 in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...

. The brewery was owned by the brewer

Henry Weinhard Henry Weinhard (February 18, 1830 – September 20, 1904) was a German-American brewer in Portland, Oregon. After immigrating to the United States in 1851, he lived in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Sacramento before settling in th ...

of the Weinhard family, who also made a line of soft drinks which survives to this day. The Blitz-Weinhard brand was among several regional

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...

beers which were staples in that market during the decades following the repeal of

Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcohol ...

until they began losing market share to the national brands in the 1960s and 1970s.

Advertising campaign

Weinhard's created a unique and noteworthy advertising campaign in the late 1970s and 1980s to position its brand. The campaign featured a fictitious brand of beer called "Schludwiller" beer. A series of popular television commercials depicted Schludwiller as a beer brewed by the "California-Eastern Brewing Co." in California. In one of the ads, a "border patrolman" played by actor Dick Curtis asked Earl and Vern (the drivers of the Schludwiller Beer truck) "Well now…where you fellas going with all that beer?" Schludwiller came complete with its own motto in Latin: ''Quod Nesciunt Sibi Damno Non Erit'' (roughly: "What they don't know won't hurt them"). The Henry Weinhard's brand, repositioned as a quality

microbrew Craft beer is a beer that has been made by craft breweries. They produce smaller amounts of beer, typically less than large breweries, and are often independently owned. Such breweries are generally perceived and marketed as having an emphasis o ...

, was able to regain and sustain its popularity. However, its favored status with beer-drinkers was not enough to save the original Portland brewery from eventual closure. Like many businesses in the United States at the time, the Blitz-Weinhard brewery succumbed to purchase and resale by a number of companies in the late 20th century, including

Pabst Brewing Company The Pabst Brewing Company () is an American company that dates its origins to a brewing company founded in 1844 by Jacob Best and was, by 1889, named after Frederick Pabst. It is currently a holding company which contracts the brewing of over ...

and

Miller Brewing Company The Miller Brewing Company is an American brewery and beer company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was founded in 1855 by Frederick Miller. Molson Coors acquired the full global brand portfolio of Miller Brewing Company in 2016, and operates the ...

and now

MillerCoors MillerCoors was a beer brewing company in the United States. MillerCoors was formed in 2008 as a joint venture between SABMiller and Molson Coors to combine their brewing, marketing and sales operations in the United States. The company was acqui ...

, the U.S. business unit of

Molson Coors Brewing Company The Molson Coors Beverage Company is an American-Canadian multinational drink and brewing company incorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law and headquartered in Golden, Colorado and Montreal, Quebec. Molson Coors was formed in 2005 t ...

. In August of 2021 Molson Coors announced the end of production for Henry Weinhard's Reserve.

Brewery

In 1862, Henry Weinhard moved to Portland, Oregon and purchased an old brewery on the corner of NW First and Davis, before moving in 1864 to a facility occupying two full blocks at NW 12th and Burnside. This Blitz-Weinhard brewery in Portland survived as a production facility under several ownership changes until 1999, when it was sold by the Stroh Brewery Company to the Miller Brewing Company, who closed it down in late August. The brewery was a fixture of an old industrial and

warehouse district This is a list of notable warehouse districts. A warehouse district or warehouse row is an area found in many urban setting known for being the current or former location of numerous warehouses. Logistically, warehouses are often located in indust ...

which, beginning in the 1990s, has become known as the

Pearl District The Pearl District is an area of Portland, Oregon, formerly occupied by warehouses, light industry and railroad classification yards and now noted for its art galleries, upscale businesses and residences. The area has been undergoing significan ...

in downtown Portland, and its closure marked the beginning of a massive urban rejuvenation project. Following the closure of the Portland brewery in 1999, Henry Weinhard's was brewed at the Olympia brewery in

Tumwater, Washington Tumwater is a town in Thurston County, Washington, United States. The population was 25,350 at the 2020 census. It is situated near where the Deschutes River enters Budd Inlet, the southernmost point of Puget Sound; it also borders the state c ...

until that brewery too was closed in 2003. Some of its beers were brewed under contract at the

Full Sail Brewing Company Full Sail Brewing Company is a craft brewery in Hood River, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1987, Full Sail was the first commercially successful craft brewery to bottle beer in the Pacific Northwest for retail sale, and one of Oregon's early ...

in Hood River until 2013. The Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve brand survives today and is currently owned b
Molson Coors Beverage Company
Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve has been slated for discontinuation according to Molson as of August 2021.

Gourmet sodas

Molson Coors Beverage Company has sought to exploit the Henry Weinhard's brand selling gourmet sodas, distributed out of Colfax, California. Flavors include: *

Root Beer Root beer is a sweet North American soft drink traditionally made using the root bark of the sassafras tree '' Sassafras albidum'' or the vine of '' Smilax ornata'' (known as sarsaparilla, also used to make a soft drink, sarsaparilla) as the ...

* Vanilla cream soda *

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower *Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum * ...

cream * Black cherry cream

References

External links

*
Molson Coors Beverage Company: Our Brands
{{SABMiller Beer brewing companies based in Portland, Oregon Companies based in Portland, Oregon American companies established in 1856 1856 establishments in Oregon Territory American beer brands American soft drinks Pabst Brewing Company SABMiller Food and drink companies established in 1856

Advertising campaign

Brewery

Gourmet sodas

References

Further reading

External links