An occasional column of often-times mindless ramblings.

• The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported online yesterday that Pabst is for sale for a reported $300 million. As faithful Sioux Brew readers know, Pabst is only a marketing company. It owns no physical breweries. Its beer is brewed under contract by MillerCoors.

Pabst is comprised of a portfolio of “old-school” brands. Most notable being Schlitz and, well, Pabst. And this is what matters to Sioux Cityians. Pabst bought the brands of the G. Heileman Brewing Co., which bought the brands of the Kingsbury Brewing Co., which bought the brands of the Sioux City Brewing Co.

So, Pabst probably owns the Heidel Brau name and trademark. There is no mention of Heidel Brau on the Pabst website, but when I did a trademark search about 10 years ago, Pabst showed as Heidel Brau’s owner (as I recall it was a debtor in possession type of deal).

Upshot is that maybe any new Pabst owners would like to part with the Heidel Brau brand. Or maybe some local benefactor with a spare $300 mil. would like to bring the whole company to Siouxland.

Or, if someone could get the brand cheap enough, wouldn’t it be cool for a brewpub to open in Sioux City and start brewing Heidel Brau? I know the recipe is floating around there somewhere……..

-Tim Hynds

Tags: heidel brau, pabst, Pass the mash

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 10:34 am and is filed under Pass the mash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.