Happy 80th birthday, Lone Star Beer!
But … what about “since 1884”? Well, it turns out that date has been co-opted. Borrowed. Eh, it’s more like stolen.
Basically, it’s a lie — not any less than me introducing myself as Dave Thomas, wealthy hamburger entrepreneur.
The “National Beer of Texas” has its roots in the 1940 purchase of a San Antonio brewery by Kansas City-based Muehlebach Brewing Company. That San Antonio brewery was built just after Prohibition by Sabinas Brewing Co. and operated until 1939, when it was briefly run by Champion Brewing Co.
Muehlebach bought the brewery from Champion and in April of 1940, Muehlebach put their “Munich-style lager beer” on the market: Lone Star Beer was born.
“But there was a Lone Star Brewing Company in San Antonio in 1884!” you say. And that’s true. Adolphus Busch had an interest in it, along with a couple other early Texas breweries, and it stayed in business (brewing Alamo beer, not Lone Star) until Prohibition shut it down in 1918.
But here’s the key. It was a completely different company. There were absolutely no ties between the pre-Prohibition Lone Star Brewing Co. and the beer that would emerge in 1940. The breweries were at different addresses, the management and ownership is different. Basically, it’s just two companies with the same name separated by 30 years (the latter Lone Star Brewing Co. would not emerge until it split off from Muehlebach in 1949).
Early on, there was little confusion. There’s no evidence that Lone Star Beer traded on any residual fame from its pre-Prohibition forebear. Instead it stood on its own legs and rose quickly.
Lone Star Beer grew into “The National Beer of Texas,” eventually outpacing Pearl beer and becoming a cultural icon during the 1970s.
And Lone Star Beer was proud of its own history. They talked of their 1940 beginnings in their official communications, and marked their 25th anniversary in 1965. They celebrated 60 years in 2000. They even had a whole “65 years of Pure Texan Beer” marketing campaign in 2005.
So what happened?
Inexplicably, by 2010 Lone Star had labels that said “since 1845” — not just on the cans and bottles, but on promotional materials as well. I wrote a letter to the company asking for an explanation, but got none. Texas became a state in 1845, of course, but if you’re just going to absolutely make something up, 1836 would have been a better fit for the National Beer of Texas.
I never have seen an explanation or an acknowledgement of the "since 1845" branding, but by 2016, Lone Star had quietly dropped it and adopted the “since 1884” that it brags about today. Media writers who rely on news releases have fallen for it, of course, and every time they do, they just push us all a little farther from the truth.
Why does Lone Star do it? Well, it makes them the oldest beer in Texas — beating out Pearl by 2 years and Shiner by 25 years. And it gives them a rarefied history. Who needs to be associated with the cosmic cowboys when you can claim you were there with the real thing?
But, in the end, the fact is that they are claiming the history of another company as their own. It's not true and it's not right.