Rainier Beer and the brewery date back to 1884, when Edward Sweeney established the Claussen-Sweeney Brewing Company in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle. In 1893, Sweeney's company merged with two other breweries; the new company became known as the Seattle Brewing and Malting Company. Originally, all three of the breweries were operated by this company, but it was the Claussen-Sweeney brewery which would remain in operation until 1999 and become a Seattle landmark. [edit]
The Prohibition Era
Alcoholic beverages were outlawed in Washington state in 1916[2] and the Rainier brand was sold to a San Francisco, California company. Four years later, alcoholic beverages were outlawed nationwide.
Rainier Brewing Company (1884–1999) was a Seattle, Washington, company that brewed Rainier Beer, a popular brand in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Although Rainier was founded in 1884, the Seattle site had been brewing beer since 1878. While the beer enjoys near iconic status, it is no longer brewed in Seattle, nor is the company owned locally. In the late 1990s, the company was sold to Stroh's, then to Pabst Brewing Company, though Miller contract brews most of Pabst's beers. The brewery was closed by Pabst in 1999 and sold.
In 2010, Emerald City Beer Company rented and renovated a portion of the building, brewing the first batch of beer from the Old Rainier Brewery in 11 years on September 23.[1] The brewery itself is a well-known fixture in the south end of town, adjacent to I-5 just north of the Spokane Street Viaduct. The plant is also home to the Tully's Coffee headquarters, Bartholomew Winery, Red Soul Motorcycle Fabrications, as well as artist lofts, band practice spaces, and a recording studio. The trademark red neon "R" that sat atop the building was replaced with a green "T" when Tully's was using the plant to roast coffee. The neon "R" is now in the collection of Seattle's Museum of History and Industry.
After Rainier Brewing Company resumed producing "Rainier Beer" after the end of Prohibition and its advertisements became ubiquitous in the Seattle-Tacoma area, a rumor began circulating that the brewery's owner, Emil Sick, had bribed a Washington state committee with free beer to name the local mountain "Rainier". This, however, is an urban legend and can still be heard today among Tacoma residents who preferred the alternate name of "Mount Tacoma".[3] Sick did, however, purchase the local baseball team and named them the Seattle Rainiers for this purpose.[4]
Sick's also brewed Rainier at a branch brewery in Spokane. The Spokane brewery closed in 1962
The Olympia Brewery brewhouse is at the base of the Tumwater Falls in Tumwater, Washington. The original buildings, constructed in 1896 and reconstructed in 1906, were once the manufacturing site for Olympia Beer. They have long served as a landmark for local residents and drivers along Interstate 5.[1] A new brewery was built in 1934, uphill from the original brewhouse. Brewing operations in a modern plant on the site ended in 2003.
The brewery has been for sale since the collapse of a real estate deal with a bottled water company in 2007.[2] After condemning previous owners' water rights in April 2008, the cities of Lacey, Olympia and Tumwater took possession of water rights once held by the former Olympia Brewing Company.[3]
The original brewhouse is part of the Tumwater Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Olympia Beer was a very popular regional brand in the Pacific Northwest for half of a century. It eventually expanded nationwide, repositioned as a low-price lager. During the 1970s, Olympia acquired Hamm's and Lone Star. Olympia Brewing also produced Buckhorn Beer,[2] which had previously been a product of the Lone Star Brewing Company.[3] The beer declined increasingly in sales when the president of the brewery was caught engaging in a homosexual act, and was therefore publicly outed in the early 1980s. The Schmidt family, which owned and operated the brewery and company, elected to sell the company in 1982. Olympia was subsequently purchased by Pabst in 1983.
As with many other regional breweries, ownership of this brewery eventually passed through several corporations including Pabst, G. Heileman, and Stroh's, until the brewery was eventually purchased by SABMiller. For a time, the Olympia brewery took over the brewing of other Pacific Northwest brands as their original breweries were closed one by one, including the Lucky Lager brewery in Vancouver, Washington, the Henry Weinhard's brewery in Portland, Oregon, and the Rainier Beer brewery in Seattle, Washington. Miller closed the Olympia brewery on July 1, 2003 citing the unprofitability of such a small brewery. However, beer marketed under the Olympia Beer name continues to be manufactured by SABMiller at a plant in Irwindale, California.