Valentin Blatz Brewing Company - History

History

Johann Braun opened City Brewery in 1846. Valentin Blatz established a brewery next door in 1850 and merged both breweries upon Braun's death in 1852. The brewery produced Milwaukee's first individually bottled beer in 1874. It incorporated as the Valentin Blatz Brewing Company in 1889, and by the 1900s was the city's third-largest brewer.

During Prohibition, Blatz produced non-alcoholic beverages, from 1920 to 1933. In 1933, Blatz was issued U-Permit № WIS-U-712, granting permission to resume brewing beer.

In 1958, Pabst Brewing Company, then the nation's tenth largest brewer, acquired Blatz, the eighteenth largest, from Schenley Industries. In 1959, the federal government brought an action charging that the acquisition violated Section 7 of the Clayton Act as amended by the Celler-Kefauver Anti-Merger amendment. The sale was voided in 1959 and Blatz closed that same year. In 1960, the assets of Blatz, including its labels, were sold to Pabst.

In 1969, Blatz was acquired from Pabst by the G. Heileman Brewing Company. Heileman, in turn, was acquired by the Stroh Brewery Company in 1996. On 8 February 1999, prior to its dissolution in 2000, the Stroh Brewery Company sold its labels to the Pabst Brewing Company and to the Miller Brewing Company. By 2007, Blatz was once again part of Pabst.