National Brewery Company

(courtesy:baltimore sun)
Not sure what had occurred in my initial entry of the blog last week. Nevertheless, I will reinstate my entry of my blog will be the history of Brewers Hill brewery. I'm going to start with the National Brewery Company in Brewers Hill.

(courtesy:www.atomicteevee.com)
National Beer
National Beer
You’ll love the taste of National Beer
And while I’m singing
I’m proud to say
It’s brewed on the shores
of Chesapeake Bay!2

These are the lyrics of the National Bohemian song. "Natty Boh", has been a Baltimore symbol for a long time.

National Bohemian Beer was first brewed by the National Brewing Company of Baltimore in 1885. It was founded in 1885 by Joseph L. and William L. Straus, whose father Levy Straus gained control of a local brewery through foreclosure of a mortgage of malt debts, which was erected in 1872 by Frederick and Anna Wunder.3 The National Brewing Company merged with Carling, a Canadian firm that had built a large brewery in Halethorpe in 1961, and became Carling-National and became the nation's 10th-largest beer maker. 2

(courtesy: brandchannel.com) National Brewery introduced Colt 45 in 1963. When Colt 45 first hit liquor stores it was a premium product, priced higher than Boh and designed to compete with Bud, Pabst, and Schlitz. Dawson Farber,vice president of marketing for National Brewery, stated that the name was chosen to state the extra "bang" that Colt 45 had. (Malt liquor's alcohol content is as much as twice that of beer). "We had to be very careful to never show a gun in the advertising", Farber said. National Brewery was a major sponsor of the Baltimore Colts football at the time. Farber also said that, "he sometimes told people the brew was named for a Colt fullback who wore the number 45".1

Colt 45 soon became National's first truly national brand. However, National Brewery had less luck with several follow-up products, including a "sparkling malt liquor" called French 76 ("It tasted just like champagne," Farber says eagerly) and 007 Special Blend, a mixture of beer and malt liquor whose cans featured pretty models set against London landmarks.1

As a cost-cutting measure, National's Lager Beer Hill plant,(as we know now as the the Brewers hill Plant), shut down in 1978 and moved to the Halethorpe facility. At its height, the brewery produced over two million barrels of beer in 1983 and employed oveer 550 people in Baltimore.3

G Heileman Brewing Company bought out Carling National in the early 1980's. Heileman was then sold to the Stroh Brewery Company in 1996. Then it was sold to Pabst Brewing Company. The beer is now brewed in Eden, North Carolina by Miller. The Halethorpe brewery ceased production in 2000. It was razed in 2006.2


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1."A beer to call your own. Tales from the Rise and Fall of National Brewing", by Brennen Jensen, January 16, 2002, City Paper.

2. From the National Bohemian Brewery Historical Museum, Brewers Hill, Maryland.

3. From the files of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Researched October 16, 2009.