Vintage 1960s P.O.M. 🍺 Pride of Michigan All Malt Beer Label — The Michigan Brewery Inc., Huron County

Who Brewed Pride of Michigan? 🍺 Vintage 1960s P.O.M. All Malt Beer Label, The Michigan Brewery, Huron County

Size: 3 1/4" x 2 3/4"

An unused P.O.M. label - Pride Of Michigan on a ribbon, ALL MALT BEER on another, and in the middle a suspension bridge that sure looks like the Mackinac Bridge, which had only opened in November 1957. Before the bridge, cars crossed the Straits of Mackinac on state ferries, and in deer season the wait for a boat ran to hours; when it opened it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. CONTENTS 12 FL. OZ. at the top and THE MICHIGAN BREWERY, INC., HURON COUNTY, MICHIGAN along the bottom.

🏭 The Brewery in Sebewaing

"The Michigan Brewery" was the last name of the old brewery in Sebewaing, a little town on Saginaw Bay in Michigan's Thumb. Sebewaing started out in 1845 as a Lutheran mission under Rev. John J. F. Auch, and German settlers followed. (The county seat, Bad Axe, got its name in 1861 from a battered old axe two surveyors found at their camp while laying out the first state road through Huron County.) E. O. Braendle started brewing there in the 1800s; after a fire in 1893 he rebuilt in brick, with walls three feet thick, on the bank of the Sebewaing River, with partners Leonard Eberlein and Fred Kroll, and it became the Huron County Brewing Co. After Prohibition it was the Sebewaing Brewing Co., known for Sebewaing Beer, Old Stock Ale and Golden Pheasant - pheasants were all over its labels, because hunters came to the Thumb for them.

Then, in the 1960s, investors from Detroit quietly bought up blocks of the stock and took control of the board. The new owners changed the name to The Michigan Brewery, Inc. and brought out P.O.M. - Pride of Michigan, a premium beer, and folks in Sebewaing weren't used to paying that much for their beer. It didn't go over. The new name rubbed a lot of loyal local drinkers the wrong way, and the brewery started cutting corners on ingredients to save money. It shut down in the mid-1960s; a sale to Buckeye Brewing of Toledo, Ohio ended up in court, a short try at reopening didn't last, and that was the end of brewing in Sebewaing.

The town put up a fight, though. Buckeye meant to close the plant and take the brand for itself, so local shareholders ran a proxy battle, voted the sale down and swept the Detroit board out, and on June 7, 1965 the 7 a.m. brewery whistle blew for the first time since March. But court fights had frozen the money and other brands had taken the shelf space, and it never got going again. Sebewaing's own brewery history tells how the beer left in the vats went down the floor drains into the Sebewaing River, mostly in the middle of the night, and for weeks folks passing through wondered about the suds on the water. The locals knew. That same history counts 62 breweries in Michigan around World War II and just 7 by 1965. The big brick brewery sat empty for years and was torn down between 1979 and 1984.

🌾 All Malt

ALL MALT BEER was a boast. By the 1960s the big national brewers were stretching their beer with corn and rice, and "all malt" meant the old German way - the Reinheitsgebot of 1516 allowed only water, barley malt and hops. Which makes it a little ironic that the brewery was trimming its ingredients to save money at the same time.

🦁 The Lion Cubs

My favorite bit: in July 1939, when the Lewis Brothers circus came through town, the brewery's president, Dr. J. E. Wurm, bought three of its lion cubs and took them on the road as a traveling promotion. He had a special trailer built, and the brewery's traveling salesman, Manley Watts, hauled the lions to parades and picnics in towns around Michigan. The pride grew to seven, and the Old Style label traded its flying goose for a lion's head. Wartime gas and rubber rationing ended the tours in 1942. Try doing that with a beer today.

A great one for a Michigan breweriana collection, or for anybody from the Thumb. You'll get one like the one shown.