Iron City Brewing Company

Just three years later, Iron City Brewery erected an additional three-story building at the site.

Frauenheim and Vilsack’s fame spread throughout the brewing industry across the country, as the company had built one of the most complete and extensive breweries in the United States.

The total value of Iron City, from stock to raw materials, was about $150,000 – an unheard of sum for a brewery.

By 1886, the Iron City Brewery had about 500 large reception casks, each of which held 45 to 50 barrels of beer.

Greater efficiencies and more modern equipment made it practical to close many of the 21 breweries shortly after the incorporation without relinquishing capacities.

Prohibition, starting in 1920, forced many breweries, distillers and taverns to close, yet Pittsburgh Brewing Company survived.

One of only 725 American breweries left when the movement was repealed in April 1933, PBC produced soft drinks, ice cream and 'near beer' and ran a cold storage business to endure those years.

The brewery’s creative efforts kept alive a Pittsburgh tradition and foreshadowed future innovations that would again restore security in times of struggle.

At its peak, the Queen City brewery produced over 250,000 barrels of beer a year in Cumberland.

[citation needed] The Queen City brewery was demolished in April 1975, ending a combined 152 years of brewing in Cumberland, Maryland.

[3] In January, 1974, the Pittsburgh Brewing Company acquired the Augustiner, Mark V, Robin Hood and Gambrinus brand names from August Wagner Breweries, Inc., Columbus, Ohio.

IC Light's aggressive marketing campaign targeted the young beer drinker.

Both men and women enjoyed the new beer, which quickly captured 80 percent of the local light-beer market.

(PBC had been hovering around the 1 million barrel production mark, even through rough financial times).

They returned the brewery to its original name, "Iron City Brewing Company", and planned a rebound to full production.

Iron City Brewery circa 1919
Distinctive Iron City space-bottle.
Billboard in Pittsburgh, 1936
Old German label
Cumberland Brewing Company motif