The Beer Dynasties That Drank Away Billions (Documentary)

In this in-depth, full-length documentary, we explore the rise and fall of four of the most powerful family beer dynasties in modern history — the Strohs of Detroit, who turned a $9 billion fortune into bankruptcy in twenty years, the Anheuser-Busch family, who lost the King of Beers to InBev in 2008, the Uihleins of Schlitz, who built the most popular beer in America and watched it collapse from a single ingredient change, and the Heinekens of Amsterdam, the family that survived a 1983 kidnapping and is the only one of the four still in the chair. --------------------------------- Gain FREE access to secret full-length documentaries on wealthy families "too scandalous for YouTube" by joining our newsletter: https://www.substack.com/@oldmoneyluxury --------------------------------- In 1988, Forbes valued the Stroh family of Detroit at approximately $9 billion. By 2008, the Strohs had nothing left. Bernhard Stroh had arrived from Kirn, Germany in 1850 with $150 in his pocket. He set up a beer plant on Catherine Street in Detroit and brewed the Bohemian-style lager his father had taught him. By the time Bernhard's grandson Peter Stroh died in 2002, the family had purchased Schaefer in 1981 and Schlitz in 1982, becoming the third-largest brewer in America in less than eighteen months. The Schlitz acquisition was the bullet that killed them. The brand had already been destroyed by a chain of decisions made in the 1970s by Robert Uihlein Jr., the great-grandson of August Uihlein, the immigrant who had inherited Schlitz when his uncle Joseph Schlitz died in a shipwreck in 1875. To increase margins, Uihlein switched from real malt to corn syrup adjuncts and to a new "accelerated batch fermentation" process that cut brewing time in half. The beer began separating in the can. Customers called it the "snot beer." Schlitz collapsed from the most popular beer in America to a brand the Strohs paid $500 million to inherit at exactly the wrong moment. The Strohs took on debt to compete with Anheuser-Busch and Miller and lost. By 1999, the family sold the breweries to Pabst and Miller for an amount that, after debt, left the heirs with effectively nothing. Anheuser-Busch was older and lasted longer. Adolphus Busch, a German immigrant son of a hardware merchant, married Lilly Anheuser in 1861 and inherited the brewery from his father-in-law in 1865. He invented Budweiser in 1876 by stealing a recipe from a Bohemian town named Budweis. By the time he died in 1913, Anheuser-Busch was the largest brewery in America. His great-grandson August Busch III ran the company through its modern peak — Bud Light, the Clydesdales, the Super Bowl ads. He fired his own son, August Busch IV, from the presidency twice. In 2008, the Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate InBev launched a $52 billion hostile takeover. August IV was the family member who signed the surrender. He sold for $70 a share. The deal closed in November 2008. The family received approximately $1.4 billion. The brewery has not been controlled by a Busch since. Schlitz, before its collapse, had been the most popular beer in America from 1902 through the 1950s. Joseph Schlitz had inherited the brewery from August Krug in 1856 and married Krug's widow. When Schlitz drowned in the wreck of the SS Schiller off the Isles of Scilly in 1875, the brewery passed to his nephew August Uihlein. The Uihlein family ran Schlitz for ninety-six years and lost it in five. Heineken is the only one of the four still standing. Gerard Heineken purchased a Haarlemmer brewery on Amsterdam's Rembrandtplein in 1864. His son Henry-Pierre patented the Heineken A-Yeast in 1886, the strain that gives the beer its consistent flavor across 192 countries. Henry-Pierre's grandson Freddy Heineken built the international empire. On November 9, 1983, Freddy was kidnapped at gunpoint outside the Amsterdam headquarters by a gang led by Cor van Hout and Willem Holleeder. He was held for three weeks in a soundproof cell in a warehouse in Diemen. The family paid a $35 million ransom. Freddy was released. He spent the rest of his life under armed protection. He died in 2002. His daughter Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken, with a personal net worth of approximately $20 billion, controls the company today. Four dynasties, three collapses. The Heinekens survived because they kept the brewery in the family and refused to compete on volume. The Strohs, Schlitzes, and Buschs all died trying.