We all know Cleveland is home to some really great local breweries today, with Great Lakes, Market Garden, Sibling Revelry just to name a few.
What Clevelanders may not be aware of, though, is Cleveland’s rich brewing history, so we're taking a nostalgic look back at some of the breweries that have called Cleveland home over the years.
The Christian Schmidt Brewing Company in Cleveland
First up will be the last to close shop in Cleveland in 1984, the Christian Schmidt Brewing Company. It should be noted that even though the brewery was not started in Cleveland, it still became a symbol of yet another industry one thought would be lost to the city until just four years later, when Great Lakes Brewing Company began operations.
As you will see below, Schmidt’s may not have the strongest pure associations with Cleveland either through origin or longevity, but since it was the last to leave our city landscape, we felt it was a good one to revisit.
History of the Christian Schmidt Brewing Company
The Christian Schmidt Brewing Company was founded and started in Philadelphia in 1860 and was the largest brewery in Philadelphia’s history.
When Christian Schmidt’s three sons - Henry, Edward, and Frederick - came on board the company name became C. Schimdt & Sons, with Edward taking over as the head of the company in 1894 upon his father’s death and remaining the head of the company for a 50-year tenure.
Christian Schmidt Brewing During Prohibition
Edward Schmidt was respected in the industry as a forward-thinking innovator not only for the brewing of beer, but striving to achieve state-of-the-art brewing facilities. He was even able to successfully navigate the company through the Prohibition era by brewing non-alcoholic cereal beverages. These were high-powered beers with alcohol removed just prior to sale. The only blemish for the company during Prohibition was a single raid in 1925; otherwise, they survived, and when Prohibition ended in April 1933 with the Volstead Act, their return to market was with a 3.2% beer. December of that same year was when their first full-strength beer returned to consumers.
What Brought Christian Schmidt Brewing Company to Northeast Ohio?
What brought Schmidt’s to Cleveland was the opportunity to expand into western Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, thanks to the acquisition of the Standard Brewing Company facilities on Cleveland’s west side at 5801 Train Avenue. This step allowed Schmidt’s to reach a production level of two million barrels combined from all facilities for the first time in 1964.
In 1971, operations in Cleveland were moved to the east side through the acquisition of the Carling Brewing facilities at 9401 Quincy Avenue, which by itself allowed for the production of up to 1.5 million barrels on its own. The west side location was no longer needed and shuttered.
Schmidt’s remained aggressive as the company tried to navigate the financial stress of dealing with increased competition from larger national brands, as well as growing regional brands. Acquiring strong regional brands but not their facilities was the strategy at the time, but it ultimately failed to stave off the financial struggles that began in the early 1970s. In 1974, Schmidt’s produced 3.47 million barrels, 200,000 less than the previous year, which represented a financial loss for the first time in the company’s history.
The End of the Christian Schmidt Brewing Company
Family ownership ended in 1976 when William Pflaumer purchased the company for $15.9 million. Pflaumer at the time owned a Schmidt’s distributorship and trucking company and could best be described as a colorful figure with little formal education who started his trucking company with a single truck.
Pflaumer continued to be aggressive in acquiring strong local regional brands, and in 1978 even attempted a hostile takeover of the F & M Schaefer Brewing Company. Even though Schaefer’s was also experiencing financial difficulties they were successful in fending off the attempt by Pflaumer. Despite this legal setback, under Pflaumer’s tenure Schmidt’s peaked in 1979 at a high of 3.85 million barrels, making it at the time the ninth-largest brewery in the country.
Just three short years later, though, Schmidt’s was only brewing at 66% of capacity. In 1983 Pflaumer was convicted of a false billing scheme, and after exhausting appeals, began serving his three-year prison sentence in 1986. In 1987 loans were called in to the tune of $24 million by Schmidt’s largest creditor, forcing Pflaumer to sell. So when Pflaumer could not make the sale of the Philadelphia brewery home part of the final deal, the brewery closed in 1987, marking the first time in 300 years that no brewery was operating in the city of Philadelphia.
So, as we said, this entry might not have the strongest ties to Cleveland itself, we still thought it was a story worth telling, as Cleveland was a very large part of Schmidt’s time at the top of the brewing world.