Happy Oktoberfest, Karl

Perspective

It’s still about the beer

EVERY TIME I raise a beer now——as I probably will for the rest of my life——I toast Karl Strauss. The tribute is sometimes silent, or whenever possible, shared with those nearby. And any time I pour a beer, I pay particular attention to arriving at a 1-inch head of froth, just as Karl always instructed.

During Oktoberfest 1912, Karl Martin Strauss was born in what would become the administration building of his father’s brewery in Germany. There, he began his beer education before continuing on to the world’s most prestigious university for brewing science, the Technical University of Munich at Weihenstephan, where he officially became a master brewer. From there, he embarked on a 44-year career at a major U.S. brewery, before moving on to lead the educational charge in a fledgling beer movement: “micro” brewing——what Karl preferred to call “craft brewing.”

By all accounts, Karl was a central figure in a huge industry, and a gracious mentor to an emerging smaller one.

I did marketing for Karl Strauss in the Amber Age of beer, when craft brewers were men who revered beer as Karl always had, aspiring to his level of knowledge and craftsmanship. Respected by the industry’s top men, brewers skilled in the craft, Karl served as president of the Master Brewers’ Association of the Americas. He remains the only man in beer history to have received the industry’s top three awards, including the Distinguished Life Service Award (and so far, he is its only recipient). After he retired, he joined the beer revolution, and his image is now emblazoned in history for his contributions.

In 1969, conglomerate Phillip Morris purchased Miller Brewing and, as Karl put it, “pumped all kinds of money into advertising.” It changed the beer industry and the marketing-driven competitiveness that entertains us today and peaks every year during the Super Bowl. Marketing prowess and an effective plan for product distribution play critical roles in the success and profitability of a beer. In some ways, beer marketing played a role in revolutionizing the advertising industry. Today, domestic beer is a $60 billion-a-year business.

THE LABEL on Samuel Adams beer features a rendering of a Boston patriot, an American icon. You’ve heard of the Sam Adams brand. It came on strong in the early 1990s, about the same time San Diego’s Karl Strauss——a real name and a real man——was enjoying a surge in popularity.

Samuel Adams, however, launched with national distribution and a massive market share in mind; it never sought to implement the localized microbrewery paradigm. And it succeeded by a landslide. No other craft beer comes close to the market share of Sam Adams.

Craft brewers sought to make it all about the beer, and the renewed focus on taste quality provided a new wrinkle in the criteria for beer success, as well as cause for notice by the giants, the Anheuser-Buschs and Millers and Coorses of the world. In the 1990s, craft beers represented a mere 3 percent of domestic sales, still a huge number considering the quantity of the whole. Microbreweries all over the country, San Diego’s Karl Strauss included, adopted a more homegrown, grass-roots type of marketing, which seemed to suit the beer aficionado——the target market——very well.

During the 1990s, there was turf-warring in the beer business among breweries big and small. Lines were drawn on both sides to separate the small breweries from the large. Karl, though, never talked disparagingly of any brewery that was earnestly striving to complement the art and craft of brewing. Big, small; import, domestic; ale, lager; dark, light——to him, they were all just members of the growing beer family. He often said, “All beers are good——some are better,” referring to those conscientious brewers who were consistent in their effort to maintain the utmost in quality control.

Indeed, Karl was the grandfatherly figure of American brewing who reveled in the functionality of the family unit, taking no pleasure in petty bickering. He’d seen all the highs and lows of the industry, the birth and growth of the newborns and all the trauma and drama along the way. His quality credo never changed one iota.

Longtime Samuel Adams brewmaster Walter Scheurle had worked for Karl under his exacting standards long before the patriot brew became a brand——back when Karl was vice president of brewing operations for Pabst Blue Ribbon and Walter was a young brewmaster in his charge. Walter, now retired, had looked with a younger-brother fondness to the elder Karl. Beer is a living organism, and all of this is simply part of its cycle of life.

Through the beer that bears his name, Karl Strauss touched many San Diego beer drinkers along his journey, effectively linking each to beer history and Karl’s unique heritage. Whatever beer you drink today, it’s worth knowing that Karl is likely to have had an influence on it, somehow. He advised breweries worldwide, from Canada to the Caribbean. He is a San Diego beer icon, a real man of beer genius who made very good beer, right here.

It’s Oktoberfest again, and it’s the first time in 95 years that Karl Strauss is not in attendance. He passed away last December.

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