July 1953 was a curious time for two long-standing St. Louis traditions: beer and baseball. The Mound City still had two major league teams with the National League Cardinals and the American League Browns. For 50 years, these ball clubs had battled for the hearts and wallets of the city's baseball fans, and by 1953, it was evident that this town was not big enough for the two of them.
At first it looked like it would be the Cards who would fly the roost, but when Gussie Busch bought the Birds from Fred Saigh, it became plain that Browns owner Bill Veeck would have to pack up his midget ballplayers and exploding scoreboards and move this baseball circus to Baltimore. The summer of '53 would be their St. Louis swan song.
But if Anheuser-Busch now owned the Cardinals, you could not tell it by listening to the radio. In 1953, there were eight breweries operating in the St. Louis area and one of the largest, Griesedieck Bros., had an ironclad contract that gave them the broadcasting rights to all the Redbird games through the end of the season.
For the ninth straight year, Harry Caray was holding down the mike on the Griesedieck Bros. Cardinal Baseball Network. Along with Gus Mancuso and Stretch Miller, Griesedieck beer brought St. Louis baseball to millions of fans in a 10-state area over more than 90 radio stations. Griesedieck Bros. gave a 25-year-old Caray his first shot as a big league announcer in 1945. Often it was referred to as "GB," and listeners were reminded after every inning that "GB" meant "Good Beer."
However, long before there was radio, baseball, Anheuser-Busch, or even a United States of America, there was Griesedieck beer.
On a crisp winter morning in 1766, a horse-drawn cart clattered down a cobblestone street in Stromberg, Germany and stopped in front of a gabled building. Its occupant, Johann Heinrich Griesedieck met the driver at the door, and together they loaded the cart with the first barrels of a beer that was new to Stromberg. Griesedieck's beer met with wide acceptance, launching Johann Heinrich on a successful career as a master brewer. For the Griesedieck family, a brewing tradition had begun.
Near the close of the American Civil War, brothers Anton and Henry, direct descendants of Johann Heinrich, arrived in America and embarked on brewing careers in St. Louis. Anton's sons, Henry and Joseph, worked as malt house apprentices in those early days when beer was brewed only in winter, then stored in caves to keep it cool. One of the reasons St. Louis blossomed as a brewing center was its vast system of natural caverns that provided an ideal site for aging beer. A few years later the Griesedieck brothers were harvesting ice from the Mississippi River, for with the advent of icehouses, the brewing season could be extended. Several caves were turned into underground beer gardens that took advantage of their constant coolness during sweltering St. Louis summers.
By 1867 St. Louis was well under 500,000 in population, but boasted 53 breweries. In 1880, Anton Griesedieck bought the Phoenix brewery at the corner of 18th and Lafayette. By this time brewing was becoming a very profitable business. A barrel of beer that cost a dollar to make could be sold for seven times that amount. As the beer business in the United States became more lucrative, it attracted the attention of a group of English financiers who tried to set up a brewing "trust." They proposed to create a beer monopoly by purchasing virtually every available brewery. The new British "syndicate" would crush those who would not sell.
In 1891, the English purchased 18 St. Louis breweries, but they were never able to gain the stranglehold on the industry that they had anticipated. One reason was that two of the city's brewing giants, William J. Lemp and Adolphus Busch, looked down their handlebar mustaches at the "foreigners." A second factor was one the English never anticipated.
The Britons had been paying inflated prices for brewing plants that in many cases were tired and out-of-date, a fact that did not escape the Griesediecks. After holding out for a fancy price, they took the money and ran - to the corner of 18th and Gratiot Streets where they opened a new brewery under the name National Brewing Co. The English were furious, since most of Griesedieck's customers followed them. The buyout had not only failed to eliminate the Griesedieck as competitors, but had also financed a sparkling new place for them to boot. Henry Griesedieck considered the move just good business and claimed he could not understand what the English brewers were foaming over.
The invaders did obtain some well-known brands, such as Hyde Park, Green Tree, and Wainwright, and proved to be hefty competition. As a result the Griesediecks decided to join several other brewers, including the Columbia (Alpen Brau) brewery at 20th and Madison, the Gast brewery in Baden and the A.B.C.
brewery on South Broadway, in creating their own syndicate called the Independent Breweries Company. Ill-fated from the beginning because of high overhead and low profits, IBC essentially had too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Every executive from the merging companies wanted to receive a princely sum, which resulted in large salaries going to people who did virtually nothing. Independent Breweries Company eventually fell into receivership, but one of its sidelines survives to this day: IBC root beer.Henry Griesedieck saw the handwriting on the wall, so in 1911 he purchased the Consumer's brewery at Shenandoah and Lemp (formerly Buena Vista) and christened the new enterprise the Griesedieck Brothers Brewery Company. The "brothers" were actually Henry's sons: Anton, Henry, Raymond, Robert, and Edward. The company quickly gained a reputation as one of the city's finest brewers and by the advent of Prohibition, Griesedieck Bros. beer held the number one sales positioning St. Louis.
Prohibition made life difficult for every brewer in the country, but it was particularly disheartening for Griesedieck Bros. They tried to stay open by producing grape soda, root beer, and near beer, but the modest success of these products was insufficient to offset operating costs and the brewery was eventually mothballed with the hope that legal beer would eventually return. It was 13 long, lean years before that day arrived and many of Griesedieck's competitors fell by the wayside, including the giant Lemp brewery. Henry's brother, Joseph "Papa Joe" Griesedieck, bought the Falstaff trademark Brewing from Lemp and founded the Falstaff Brewing Corp. A cousin, Henry L. Griesedieck, had bought the Western brewery in Belleville, IL and began brewing Stag beer.
This created an unusual situation when Prohibition finally ended on April 7, 1933: three branches of the Griesedieck family, each with their own brewery engaging in head to head competition. The effect of the sibling rivalry is still evident today as cousins categorize each other as "Falstaff" Griesediecks, "Stag" Griesediecks, or "Griesedieck Bros." Griesediecks.
Genealogists may have scratched their heads over this situation, but the beer drinker was not confused. Falstaff vice-president Alvin Griesedieck, Sr. conceded that when his cousins put Griesedieck Bros. beer back on the St. Louis market, it "literally took over the town."
The Griesedieck brothers were not content to just sit back and live off past success. They marketed their beer aggressively and expanded the brewery to meet increasing sales. In 1937, two new copper brew kettles, each holding 340 barrels, were installed. Anything new or innovative that would improve the plant or enhance quality control was brought in. The result was one of the most modern and widely acclaimed breweries in the United States. It was frequently written up in industry publications as a state-of-the-art plant and brewers from around the globe visited St. Louis to see how Griesedieck Bros. beer was brewed and packaged. By 1950, annual sales had reached almost a million barrels a year.
Griesedieck Bros Brewery Corp. was a closed corporation, with all of the stock in the hands of family members. When Edward, the last of the original Griesedieck brothers, died just short of his 60th birthday on March 6, 1955, the brewery was faced with a dilemma. Because its stock was so tightly held, Uncle Sam slapped the Griesediecks with a huge tax bill. If they kept the brewery, it would have virtually drained the family coffers.
At the same time their cousins at Falstaff coveted Griesedieck Bros.' giant, well-maintained facility. Falstaff had purchased the old Columbia brewery in 1948 as a branch plant, but their main brewery at Forest Park and Spring was a hodgepodge of outdated buildings. Therefore, Henry Griesedieck, who had succeeded his uncle as president of GB, agreed to enter negotiations to sell the brewery to Falstaff.
Griesedieck Bros. beer can now be found in St. Louis on tap in select restaurants and pubs.
On the side, the original Griesedieck brewery, after more than two centuries, still serves as a tavern in Stromberg, Germany.
Edited, from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, by Steve DeBellis
