Editor's Draught
Last call for mid-size breweries?
August, 1999by Alan Moen
I attended an historic event at the Rose Hill Alehouse in Kirkland, Washington, on July 10 - the tapping of the last keg of Rainier Beer produced by the Rainier Brewery in Seattle.
As you probably know, Seattle's Rainier brewery was one of the casualties of the mega-beer business recently. (see Rick Star's article elsewhere in this issue for more details on Rainier's demise.) When the Stroh Brewing Co. of Detroit decided to call it quits last fall, it sold all its beer brands to rivals Miller and Pabst and made plans to close down its breweries. Both Rainier and Blitz-Weinhard of Portland were part of the Stroh empire, and both breweries will officially close this summer.
Rainier has been in Seattle since 1878 (the current landmark structure by the I-5 freeway was built in 1916). While the beer itself is a somewhat bland American lager that is hard to distinguish from many others in the mass market, Rainier is a distinctly Seattle tradition. Never mind that the brewery also produced Henry's, the dubious Emerald City and Jet City Ales, "Green Death" (Rainier Ale, made with a lager yeast), Pete's Wicked Ales, some contract brewing for the micros, and a lot of soda pop. It was still the major Seattle brewery for many generations, including mine.
As the brewers gathered around the table to quaff the remaining pints of a surprisingly flavorful batch of Rainier Beer, I wondered if this was the last call for more than just one local brewery. The million-barrel per year facility at Rainier was actually something of anachronism in today's age of consolidation, when Anheuser-Busch produced the same amount of beer in a single month last summer. For all its size, Stroh simply could not compete with the real industry giants.
Of course, for many of us craft beer lovers, Rainier is no significant loss to the local scene. We weren't very interested in the beer, and as part of a big brewery chain, it really wasn't very "local" anyway. The brand will continue to be made by Pabst, probably under contract at the now Miller- owned Olympia Brewery, just 60 miles south.
So why worry? Well, as Rick Star points out, the old brewery was still part of our beer landscape here, a real chunk of Northwest history. As such, it's sad to see it go, and with it perhaps the notion of the viability of a mid-sized brewery here. When it comes to tank farms, the bigger, the better. Olympia is now due for an expansion to a 6 million- barrel capacity, which will make it the biggest brewery on the coast North of A-B's Fairfield, California plant. It will produce the lion's share of the major industrial brands in the Northwest, and some big specialty brands, too.
So with all the talk in the past year about narrowing the field at the bottom of the beer business, it's interesting that the real shakeout is taking place at the top. More big changes may be in the works as the giants grapple for position, like Sumo wrestlers attempting to push each other out of the ring. When all the big beer dominoes are so carefully lined up with their contract arrangements, the shock wave carries a long way when one falls.
We can only watch as the heavyweights battle, knowing our own audience is a small one. And there's another important difference - the craft beer movement is not (yet) controlled by a few large companies who make all the rules. Maybe the best thing about this business now is the presence of a lot of other breweries who refuse to play the same game as their local predecessors, producing a marketing-driven, flavorless product with Emerson's hobgoblin consistency.
So here's to the new "landmark breweries" of the Northwest. You may never cast the giant shadow of some of your ancestors, but the quality of your beers is becoming known throughout the country. Let's hope the compromises Rainier made to stay alive which eventually contributed to its death will not be repeated by brewing's new blood. Keep up the good work, and may you never have a last call.
