Sadly misunderstood by those of us who didn’t pick one up until the 1990s, Pearl is the mother of Texas beers. Old, bold, bought, sold, betrayed and all but forgotten, the brewery has a history that incorporates just about everything you could want in an epic beer story … except, sadly, a happy ending.
Born as the J.B. Behloradsky Brewery in 1881 and later known as the City Brewery, Pearl’s beginning comes when an investment group came together in 1883 and formed the San Antonio Brewing Company. Full operations commenced in 1886 once enough money was raised.
Keeping up the Texas tradition of musical names, the operation became the San Antonio Brewing Association in 1888, though the name City Brewery was also used.
According to a nicely written history on Wikipedia, Pearl beer was “formulated and first brewed in Bremen, Germany, by the Kaiser-Beck Brewery” (from which we get Beck’s beer). The brewmaster apparently thought the “foamy bubbles in a freshly poured glass of the brew resembled sparkling pearls.” Texans got their first taste of Pearl beer in 1886.
Otto Koehler took the helm of the brewery in 1902. When he died in 1914, his wife, Emma, took over as chief executive. By 1916, the San Antonio Brewing Association was larger than their top rival: the Lone Star Brewing Co. During this time, the brewery not only made Pearl, but also Texas Pride Beer. Later, Pearl Bock would be intermittently brewed.
Emma Koehler held on through Prohibition, changing the company’s name to Alamo Industries and, later, Alamo Foods Co. while brewing a near beer called “La Perla” and doing things ranging from auto repair to dry cleaning to bottling soft drinks and operating as a creamery.
Every account of a former brewery trying to survive Prohibition includes the obligatory reference to the rumors that the brewery still made small amount of beer. In this case, though, it’s telling that (again, according to Wikipedia) when Prohibition ended at midnight on Sept. 15, 1933, “within minutes, 100 trucks and 25 railroad boxcars loaded with beer rolled out of the brewery grounds.
The San Antonio Brewing Association survived the Depression and grew in the runup to and aftermath of World War II. In 1952 it changed its name to the Pearl Brewing Co. Later Pearl would seriously consider, but ultimately reject, a buyout offer by Pabst.
But the stage was now set for the coming flood of brewery consolidations. Pearl preferred to be a buyer rather than a buyee and growth meant acquiring another brewery. Ultimately, the M. K. Goetz Brewing Company in St. Joseph, Mo., would be considered the best option for giving Pearl a larger national profile. The deal was done in 1961. Goetz would brew the Pearl beers for the Midwest market and Pearl would brew Country Club malt liquor in Texas.
There’s not a lot of historical documentation of Pearl in the 1950s and ‘60s. It wasn’t as aggressively marketed as Lone Star, but it held its own and produced a lot of what would become wonderful memorabilia.
The beginning of the end would come in 1970, when Pearl was purchased by the Houston conglomerate Southdown Corp. It would remain Texas-owned for a few more years, but the brewery was now just a money-maker for a money-maker.
