There was a time when Stroh's was as synonymous with Detroit as Faygo or Better Made, but with a wider reach. It also laid claim to being the largest family-owned and -operated brewery in the nation. In fact, the Stroh's family had become brewers before the United States had even become a country.
Innkeeper Johann Peter Stroh was brewing beer in his hometown of Kirn in the Rhineland-Palatinate area of Germany by at least 1775, if not earlier. His son Georg Friedrich Stroh learned the trade from him and passed along those learnings to his son Bernhard Stroh.
The mid-1850s saw great political upheaval in Germany, and in 1848, Bernhard Stroh left the country for a German settlement in Brazil. Finding that area not to his liking, he left to check out the Chicago with $150 in his pocket, a suitcase in one hand and his family's treasured beer recipe in the other. On the way, his passenger steamer from Buffalo, N.Y., made a stop in Detroit in the summer of 1850, and, liking what he saw, he decided to stay. He was just shy of his 28th birthday, and Detroit was a small but growing city of about 20,000 thirsty souls.
Stroh used that $150 - about $6,000 in 2025 money, when adjusted for inflation - to set up a small brewery at what was then 57 Catherine Street on Detroit's near-east side. Most of the beers available in the city at that time were ales and porters in English or Scottish styles. Detroit was seeing a large influx of German immigrants at the time, many of whom longed for the Bohemian style of their homeland. Stroh was happy to oblige, and began offering up a lighter lager brewed one barrel at a time. Being a small business just getting off the ground, he personally delivered it in small kegs he hauled around in a wheelbarrow.
By 1865, at the end of the Civil War, Stroh had outgrown his small brewery and bought land on Gratiot Avenue near the present-day site of Interstate-375 that would become the eventual home of the country's third largest brewery. He excavated land to create an underground cellar to age and store his beer. Above it, he built a larger brewery that came to be known as the Lion Brewery, thanks to Stroh adopting the crest from Kyrburg Castle in his native Kirn, Germany. The crest would become one of the better-known Detroit logos for more than 100 years. Bernhard Stroh lived next door to the brewhouse in a home at 315 Gratiot Ave., and soon married Emma Welcker in 1853. The couple would raise seven kids, five sons and two daughters, including Bernhard Stroh Jr., who would carry on the family tradition into the next generation.
The lighter beer was a huge hit with Detroiters, and this enabled Stroh to branch out into brewing other types of European beers, including what became the most popular: Stroh's Bohemian, a hoppier offering that was fire-brewed.
In 1882, the Lion Brewery became the B. Stroh Brewing Co., and, in 1909, it changed its name to the Stroh Brewery Co.
Family. Legacy. Tradition.
Bernhard Stroh Sr. died June 24, 1882, at just 59 years old, and Bernhard Jr., his eldest son, became the brewery's president. It was under his stewardship that the company would expand its reach and usher in new technologies, such as switching from horse-drawn delivery wagons to electric trucks. He also moved from delivering mostly to local pubs to shipping by rail. Bernhard Stroh Jr. would see Stroh's shipped as far west as Winnipeg, Canada; as far east as Boston; and as far south as Pensacola, Fla.
The Stroh Brewery would eventually grown into amillion-square-foot factory, with buildings dating from the 1860s to 1914. In late 1890, the firm Spier & Rohns was hired to make extensive additions and improvements to the Stroh campus, including building a 25-foot-by-70-foot fireproof stockhouse, a 60-foot-by-100-foot bottling works, and a new ice-machine plant. These additions officially made the brewery the largest in Michigan and formed some of the most visible parts of the plant.
As Detroit entered the 20th century, it was home to nearly two dozen breweries, with Goebel, Schaefer and Pfieffer being the other two of Detroit's Sudsy Big Four. At the time, Stroh's was selling more than 50,000 barrels of beer each year, and the brewmaster at the time was Otto Rosenbusch. In 1908, his son Herman A. Rosenbusch began working at Stroh's, too, and would stay on for more than 50 years and rising to the title of brewmaster like his father. Herman A.'s son Herman K. Rosenbusch would join Stroh's and became brewmaster in 1937. It was another example of the importance of family legacy at the company.
Bernhard Jr.'s health led him to hand control of the business over to his brother Julius Stroh in 1908. Bernhard Jr. would pass away on April 4, 1916, dying at age 61 - not much older than his father.
Julius and Otto Rosenbusch often traveled around Europe to observe the brewing methods used in the Old World. A few years after assuming the presidency of the company, Julius Stroh became adamant that fire-brewed beer just tasted better than those brewed with steam, and implemented that traditional practice using copper kettles into the new brewhouse that was built from 1912 to 1914 along Gratiot. The bet paid off, and as Detroit grew to 1 million residents in 1910, Stroh's grew, too, selling 300,000 barrels a year.
But Stroh's growth would soon hit the brakes thanks to a little thing called Prohibition.
Roll out the barrel ... of ice cream
The story of Prohibition has been told many times over, so we won't do so here. However, it's important to note that though Prohibition didn't take effect nationally until January 1920, it became effective in Michigan on May 1, 1918. The state's largest brewery found itself forced out of the brewery business.
Julius Stroh was determined to keep the family business going, however, and rather than shut down like many of the city's other breweries, he started making near-beers, birch beer, sodas, ice, malt extract and, most famously, ice cream. You can still buy Stroh's ice cream today, though that business was sold by the Stroh family in 2007 to Dean Foods.
The ice cream was such a hit - thanks in part to the rise in popularity of ice cream parlors at the time - that even after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Stroh's continued to sell it even after resuming its beer-making operations. The company dropped its other Prohibition-era products.
Because it hadn't shuttered its doors and kept a workforce during Prohibition, it had an advantage over many other breweries. By the end of 1933, Stroh's had shipped 102,000 barrels of beer in the six months since repeal. A year later, that number jumped to 439,000, necessitating new storage cellars to be built in 1936.
Julius Stroh died June 2, 1939, and leadership of the company was taken over by his son Gari Melchers Stroh, who would lead the company for the next 11 years. As president, Gari Stroh would significantly modernize the brewery while refusing to compromise on quality, even during the rationing years of World War II.
Mid-century modernization
Gari Stroh had a second set of six giant copper kettles installed in the brewhouse, and had its storage and aging facilities expanded yet again and a new packaging facility built, which opened in 1950. This helped the brewery roll out 2.7 million barrels of beer — 83.7 million gallons - by 1956.
Gari Stroh died June 26, 1950, at age 58, dying young like his father and grandfather before him. His younger brother, John W. Stroh, stepped up, but he was no stranger to the brewing business, having started working there in 1908, pasting labels on cases when he was a schoolboy.
It was under John Stroh's leadership that the brewery would see further expansion, with new cellars, a major addition to the brewhouse and larger packing and shipping facilities. All of this helped the company reach a significant milestone - 1 million barrels shipped in 1953. Just two years later, it would smash that by reaching 2 million barrels in sales in 1955. Stroh's was officially a beer behemoth.
After decades of growth, Stroh's needed more room, so it bought out the Goebel Brewing Co. next door in 1964, continuing to produce Goebel Beer. The Goebel company had operated in Detroit almost as long as Stroh's had, from 1873 until the sale 89 years later (other than during Prohibition).
August Goebel Sr. was born in Münstermaifeld Rhenish, Prussia, in 1839, and immigrated to the United States when he was 17. The story goes that - like Bernhard Stroh Sr. - he was originally headed for Chicago, but he ran out of money on the way, so he landed in Detroit. After serving in the Civil War, Goebel and partner Theodore Gorenflo founded A. Goebel & Co. in 1873. His German-style, dry, light lager was an instant hit and competitor of Stroh's. By the 1880s, Goebel had grown into one of the largest breweries in Detroit.
In 1967, John W. Stroh became chairman of the board and chief executive officer, and for the first time in the company's history, its president would not be a Stroh. The new president was John W. Shenefield, though it would be brief; just a year later, the title would pass back into the Stroh family's hands, as Gari Stroh's son Peter W. Stroh took over. He was the sixth Stroh to lead the company, and like his predecessors, continued to grow the brewery's reach.
In 1970, Stroh's crossed the 3 million barrel mark, good for 10th place in the country in terms of annual beer shipments. Just two years later, it moved into eighth place as it shipped more than 4 million barrels, and four years after that, in 1976, it sold 5.75 million barrels and moved into seventh. By 1977, Stroh's was sold in 17 states.
On Oct. 21, 1975, the State of Michigan named the Stroh Brewery as a historical site.
Growing too big for its beer britches
As Stroh's moved into the 1980s, it was producing more than 6 million barrels a year and, determined its break-neck pace of growth, had acquired several struggling competitors. In addition to Goebel, Stroh's had bought out Schaefer, Schlitz, Erlanger, Old Style, Lone Star, Old Milwaukee, among others. This acquisition spree made Stroh's the nation's third largest brewing company, with seven brewing plants. By 1988, Forbes reported that the company had a market value of $700 million.
However, grown too big, too fast and was struggling itself. On Feb. 8, 1985, Stroh’s announced it was closing its Detroit facility, calling it too costly to run and too inefficient compared with newer facilities it had acquired. The plant was shuttered that May, bringing an end to 135 years of tradition and costing 1,159 Detroiters their jobs.
The factory was imploded in two phases -- on April 13, 1986, and July 13, 1986 -- with the land eventually be redeveloped as Brewery Park.
"Stroh's gamble is the final step in a transition for the Stroh Cos. from Stroh's longtime role in Detroit as a manufacturer of beer into a group of real estate and baking companies," Crain's Detroit Business reported Nov. 4, 1985. "Stroh's hopes for the site coincide with the companies' own reshaping and with the change in the near-downtown area from a manufacturing area to an office and service center."
In 1999, the struggling company was imploded, too, split up and sold to Miller Brewing and Pabst.