Olympia Brewing Company
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| Olympia Brewing Company | |
 The Olympia Brewery building in 1989 |
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| Location | Tumwater, Washington |
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| Year opened | 1896 |
The Olympia Brewing Company was a brewery in Tumwater, Washington which existed from 1896 until 2003.
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[edit] History
The Olympia Brewing Company began brewing Olympia Beer at the Olympia Brewery in 1896 at the Tumwater Falls of the Deschutes River and continued until Prohibition. It was founded by Leopold Schmidt, a German immigrant living in Montana. After Prohibition ended, a new brewery was erected just upstream from the original.
Olympia Beer was a very popular regional Pacific Northwest brand which eventually expanded nationwide, positioned as a low-price beer. During the 1970s, Olympia acquired Hamm's and Lone Star. Olympia Brewing also produced Buckhorn Beer,[1] which had previously been a product of the Lone Star Brewing Company.[2] The Schmidt family, which owned and operated the brewery and company, elected to sell to Heilemann's Old Style Beer Company in 1982. Heilemann's was subsequently purchased by Pabst in 1983.
As with many other regional breweries, ownership of this brewery eventually passed through several corporations including Pabst, G. Heileman, and Stroh's, until the brewery was eventually purchased by SABMiller. For a time, the Olympia brewery took over the brewing of other Pacific Northwest brands as their original breweries were closed one by one, including the Lucky Lager brewery in Vancouver, Washington, the Henry Weinhard's brewery in Portland, Oregon, and the Rainier Beer brewery in Seattle, Washington. Miller closed the Olympia brewery on July 1, 2003 citing the unprofitability of such a small brewery.
[edit] Legacy
Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock in 1967's The Graduate drinks an Olympia beer; Clint Eastwood promoted the brand in several popular films, including Magnum Force and Every Which Way but Loose, in which his orangutan Clyde also indulges. The brand was also featured in the movies Friday the 13th Part III, Any Which Way You Can, the Eiger Sanction and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. A neon sign advertising Olympia beer can be seen in the window of the liquor store in American Graffiti. Josh Brolin's George W. Bush in 2008's W. drinks Olympia beer. Signage and cans being consumed are also easily visible in the 1979 movie The China Syndrome.
Ag Energy Resources Inc. of Benton, Illinois purchased the machinery from Olympia Brewing Co. to make ethanol for motor fuel use. [3]
[edit] References
- ^ http://beeradvocate.com/forum/read/857218 Beer Advocate. "What Happened to Buckhorn Beer?," (November 2, 2006)
- ^ http://www.buckhornmuseum.com/factsheet.html The Buckhorn Museum. "Fact Sheet," (retrieved on November 30, 2008).
- ^ "Benton ethanol plant clears hurdles". The Southern. http://www.thesouthern.com/articles/2007/11/28/local/22368999.txt. Retrieved on 2007-11-28.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Olympia Beer Official Web site
- Olympia Beer: A Good Campaign Accelerates the Death of a Brand
- Olympia Brewery Property
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