Interesting - thanks for posting.
For those who haven’t the time to read the history of a brewery, here’s one of the key paragraphs about the demise (after a crippling delivery driver’s strike) of what was once (according to the article) one of the major suppliers of beer in the world:
“That was bad enough, but what killed Trommer’s was not spending the money or even the competition. It was the yeast. Each brewery develops its own unique strain of yeast for fermentation. The strikers didn’t take care of the yeast when they took over the plants, and the strain died. When the strike was over, Trommer’s had to begin a new strain of yeast. The taste of the beer was radically different, and people didn’t like it.”
Good thing the SEIU wasn’t around to take notes, though I expect they (and others of their union buddies) will do fine killing off enterprises on their own.
That was bad enough, but what killed Trommer’s was not spending the money or even the competition. It was the yeast. Each brewery develops its own unique strain of yeast for fermentation. The strikers didn’t take care of the yeast when they took over the plants, and the strain died.
Thanks for the link about Trommers. With the rise of local craft beers, I like to read stories about the old regional breweries like Ballantine and Hudepohl that were everywhere until they all seemed to vanish between the 1960s and 1980s. The craft breweries are a return to that era of locally brewed beers. Some of them are good, some not so much. Like Hudepohl.