Goebel Brewing Company - A New Production Technique

A New Production Technique

In the mid 1960s, Goebel began advertising that their beer was "real" (unpasteurized) draft beer. Normally, bottled and canned beer had to be pasteurized to kill the active yeast left in the beer after brewing was completed, otherwise the buildup of gasses in the bottle would explode them on store shelves or ruin the taste of the beer even if the bottles stayed intact. This does not affect draft beer, which is kept at refrigerator temperatures from brewery to tap. Goebel's method of achieving this was a bacterium cultivated by the company's chemists that acted specifically on the yeast in the beer, then died harmlessly when the yeast was all consumed. Sales spiked, as people liked the "draft-like" flavor of the beer, but the technique was short-lived, as the bacteria became prevalent everywhere in the brewery, affecting other aspects of the brewing process negatively, and it had to be discontinued. The beer never regained its previous popularity after that point, exacerbated by the gradual changing of tastes in a new generation of beer drinkers who preferred a lighter, sweeter beer. Comedian George Gobel became a spokesman for Goebel Beer for obvious reasons.