Falstaff Brewing Company
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| Industry | Alcoholic beverage |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1903 in St. Louis, MO |
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Key people
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John Adam Lemp, founder; William J. Lemp, Griesedieck Brothers |
| Products |
Beers, lagers, malt beverages |
| Owner | Pabst Brewing Company |
The Falstaff Brewing Corporation was a major American brewery located in St. Louis, Missouri. With roots in the 1838 Lemp Brewery of St. Louis, the company was renamed after the Shakespearean character Sir John Falstaff in 1903. Production peaked in 1965 with 7,010,218 barrels brewed, and then dropped 70% in the next 10 years. While its smaller labels linger on today, its main label Falstaff Beer went out of production in 2005. The rights to the brand are currently owned by Pabst Brewing Company.
Falstaff Brewing's earliest form was as the Lemp Brewery, founded in 1840 in St. Louis by German immigrant Johann Adam Lemp (1798-1862). Over the next 80 years, the Lemp family was devastated by personal tragedies as it built its beer empire over the caves of St. Louis. It adopted its famous "Blue Ribbon" moniker quickly, as an 1898 trial proved when it took the Storz Brewing Company of Omaha to court for tying blue ribbons on its bottles, and won. The Lemp Brewery company closed in 1921, and sold its Falstaff brand to the then-named Griesedieck Beverage Company. Griesedieck Beverage was renamed the Falstaff Corporation and survived Prohibition by selling near beer, soft drinks, and cured hams under the Falstaff name. Falstaff Brewing was a publicly traded company on the , which was rare for a brewing industry in which families closely guarded their ownership.
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Wikipedia