By: Billy BeerSlugger
Frederick Pabst was a German born brewer and founder of Pabst Brewing Company. In 1848 he emigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago. He spent a portion of his youth as a hotel waiter and then a cabin boy on a Lake Michigan Steamer. Later he became Capitan of one of these vessels and meet another German, Philip Best, the owner of a small but profitable brewery.
Frederick Pabst took the same route as Adolphus Busch and married the daughter of a brewery owner. In 1862 Pabst entered a partnership with fater-in-law Philip Best and began mastering the art of brewing. Some time later he began focusing his attention on expanding the beer market. Soon he was producing 100,000 barrels per year.
The Brewing Company eventually became publicly traded and it grew bigger and bigger with the increasing demand. In 1889 Pabst plunked down $30,000 to procure prime shoreline in Wisconsin’s Whitefish Bay. He developed this land into Pabst Whitefish Bay Resort where, on any given Summer day, 10,000 people would come to ride the Ferris Wheel, rent rowboats, attend concerts, eat freshly caught fish including 5 kinds of whitefish and of course drink Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.
While Fredrick Pabst passed away in 1904 the company continued to be a leading brewer and Pabst was the first to put beer in a can in 1934. It required an actual can opener to open and had instructions on how to do so on the side of the can (we’ve come a long way).
In 1999 the production of Pabst beer was turned over to Miller Brewing Company. They shuttered their last brewery in 2001 in Allentown PA, where they’re closing all the factories down. After InBev’s purchase of Anheuser-Busch in 2008, Pabst laid claim to the title of “Largest America Owned Brewer”. Actually they don’t actually brew the beer (Miller and Lion doing the majority) but Pabst is an American not-for-profit based in California.
Pabst is historically associated with Milwaukee (which Alice Cooper tells me is Algonquian for “The Good Land”).
The “Blue Ribbon” refers to an 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, where the beer won a contest.