Steve Jackson wrote:
Steve Jackson wrote:
> > wrote in message
> t...
>
>
>>OK, we've now covered 4 states other than PA
>
>
> BTW, the poster you were responding to pointed out that Illinois and
> Wisconsin allow sale of beer in groceries.
>

Yeah, that's where the "4" figure came from- I noted two states that
don't allow beer sales in grocery stores, Joel mention two which do.
I'm well aware that many states DO allow for grocery store sales- MY
point was that the OP was way off to suggest that only PA doesn't.


> I don't know the PA brewery history well at all. Yeungling, obviously, and
> Latrobe. Who else? Pittsburgh, IIRC, and the Lion.

Kinda depends on how far back one goes, of course (I'm thinking
1960's-up)- Straub, Stoney's (Jones), Horlacher, Reading, Neuweiler,
Schmidt's, Ortlieb, Kaier's...

>
>
>>Yeah, they did but their total also had 3 or 4 or 5 of the largest
>>brewers (Pabst, Schlitz, Miller, Blatz and Heileman), and thus not
>>"independent" in the sense of regional and local brands.
>
>
> Independent does not mean regional or local-

I did not say Independent MEANT regional or local. "Independent" in
this case, means NOT simply a branch of a larger chain of breweries.

> And, at least in terms of judging the survival of breweries, what
> difference should it make if they were big or small?

Huh? Well, say we were talking about survivial of local and regional
breweries in New York State. While Genesee struggles, Koch is gone and
Matts seems to be doing OK, the Anhueser-Busch plant in Baldwinsville
ISN'T part of the question since it's NOT a local or regional brewery,
it is part of the A-B chain (i.e., not "independent").

>
> Besides, until the 70s, Schlitz and Bud were really the only big national
> brands. Miller to some degree as well.

Yes, you've said that twice. Miller was a small company for a national
UNTIL the purchase by Philip Morris. In 1967, for instance, they only
sold 4.5 million barrels of beer, compared to A-B's 15.5 and 10 million
by Pabst and Schlitz. Regional Coors and Schaefer actually out-brewed
them with 4.6 and 4.8.

I suppose it all depends on what a "big" national brand means to you.

While there's no doubt that the top brewers of the 40's and 50's and
60's did not have anything close to the market share that A-B alone has
today, in brewing, any brewer that had a chain of breweries that allowed
for distribution (of at least one brand) over most of the country was
considered a "national" brewer and included companies like Pabst,
Schlitz, Falstaff, Carling and National.

Heileman was always an unusual case in that, while they had a lot of
breweries (many that were once part of the Associated chain) they
distributed their beers more like a chain of "regional" breweries and
never really attempted to have a 'national' brand (even after they
picked up the brand of the merged Carling-National, which had a least
one such brand, Carling Black Label [then well-past it's heyday, of
course]). Heileman never bothered to penetrate the Northeast market,
either.