The History of Reading Beer

Reading Premium is a beer with a long history. That’s part of the reason why we decided to brew it again. Take a sip. Can you taste the history? Forget it, we’ll just tell you that. But it’s good beer and there’s a story behind Reading Premium and the place it comes from.

Reading, Pennsylvania has been home to many small breweries for almost 250 years. The first known brewery in Reading was built in 1763 by Henry Eckert at what is now 4th Street. It was a two-story residence with a two-story stone brew house, but you can’t go pay homage to Mr. Eckert or his brew house because it was torn down in the 1850's.

Over 100 years later, in 1886, Philip Bissinger founded the Reading Brewing Company. It was housed in a building at 9th and Laurel in downtown Reading.
This location had previously been home to another brewing center owned by Herman Floto in 1853. When Prohibition was passed in 1920, the Reading Brewing Company became “Health Beverage Company”. In 1933, at the end of Prohibition, when the country was finally free to partake of a cold beverage legally, it was renamed “The Old Reading Brewery, Inc.”.

Old Reading Beer was a popular local favorite. Much of their ad campaign through the 1940’s and 50’s was steeped in Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. Advertised as the traditionally Pennsylvania Dutch beer, the ads often featured Pennsylvania Dutch home life, illustrations that were “hospitality based” and reflected the cultural character of the area. The ads were so popular that the brewery published a book with many of them.

As Old Reading Beer sales grew to outside areas, the Pennsylvania Dutch way of life had little impact or meaning to a widespread audience. So, in 1958, Harry Fischman, then president of the 72-year-old brewery, introduced the “modernization” of Old Reading Beer.

The company had decided it was time to lighten it up a bit and give the heavy handed, old world European flavor and its sales campaign a more modern look and taste. And a new name. Reading Premium was launched in 1958 as the “Friendly Beer for Modern People”. Brewmaster Edward Messer was quoted as saying, “Reading Premium is a lighter bodied more mildly hopped beer than Old Reading. It is a new beer right down to the flavor.”

The five year “modernization” of the brewery and beer cost $300,000 and also included extensive changes to the brewery warehouse, production and bottling. The first step to modernizing began with replacing the old fashioned oak vats with twenty, 500 barrel capacity, glass-lined, steel fermented, storage tanks.
By far the biggest change, however, was going from Old Reading Beer to Reading Premium. Initial concerns about the change were that strong local support of the beloved beer would wane with a new look and new taste.

“Had we stayed Old Reading, there is some question as to how long even a local brewery can continue to bank heavily on tradition in order to hold its position in its home market or elsewhere,“ Fischman was quoted as saying.

It was a big gamble, but it paid off when sales jumped 17 percent in the first month with Reading Premium at the helm. It was the fastest growing beer in the state.

The beer makeover also meant a whole new approach for the advertising campaign; a crucial step in re-introducing this new and improved product.
These ads would not feature the traditional happy Pennsylvania Dutch home, where often there were not even any pictures of the beer. There was a distinctive move in the new ads to “accent beer in a glass, not in the bottle or can.”

Reading Premium, the beer, was the focus, not people. The one exception to that concept was one of the first ads done with Reading Premium. It included the "Brewery Family" and featured 141 Reading Premium employees pictures, showcased the new bottle, and boldly stated across the top, "The Best Beer We Have Ever Brewed". It was hung up in taverns and bars all across Berks County.

The ad proved to be sheer genius. It helped to keep the local appeal and interest, and the community could claim ownership of is new beer with the familiar faces of those who were making it.

"There had to be some real substance behind our improvements, for our own employees would never let us get away with any high style promotion that wasn't strongly rooted in fact,” Fischman said. At the height of its popularity, the brewery produced 15,000 cases a day of Reading Premium.

Almost two decades later, things had dramatically changed. On April 15th1976, with an onslaught of big beer companies and waning sales, the Reading Beer Company shut down. Reading Premium found its place in history as the production plant and brewery closed its doors and all operations, leaving 105 employees out of work. Many of them were heartbroken.

The final 50 employees paid their last respects in the company break room that day, drinking the last of the beer they’d made. Hoisting their glasses and saying goodbye, the final air whistle sounded at 4 p.m., marking the end of a 90 year-old brewery.

Brewmaster Elmo Messer had been there 30 years. The newspaper reported that the Lower Alsace Beneficial Association at Stony Creek Mills, had a day long wake for the last of the Reading Brewers, complete with a casket, holding a barrel of Reading Beer and ten cent draughts. The Reading beer "label" was bought by Schmidt & Sons in Philadelphia.

An article in The Reading Eagle newspaper on April 15, 1976 said the company had “…closed before bankruptcy, before embarrassment, before loss of pride.’ “…the company was beginning to lose money, the giant's in the industry had destroyed all future for a small brewer.” Well, not exactly destroyed.

Lucky for today’s beer drinker, that reporter was wrong. Most of us remember those “big beer company” years. The 80’s, the power suit, power lunch and really big hair. Everything was big.

Step into this decade and today’s trends have more to do with nostalgia and a “boutique” mentality. Thanks to mega blunders like Enron and the dot.com crash, we’ve returned to a time when bigger is not better and there’s something to be said for remembering where you came from.

There’s been a resurgence in the “little guy” and the underdog. Boutiques over shopping malls, a corner café instead of the corporate chain restaurant. A local beer over the one made someplace else. That’s how we got here. We think people have started looking for the little things that matter. “Little” even made its way into the beer world with evolution of the microbrew. No, we’re not brewing Reading Premium with blueberries or turning it into a micro beer. We’ve pretty much stuck to the same “lightened up” taste that Fischman and his team introduced in 1958.

We’re just brewing it again, -the little guy, guys from Reading. Reading Premium “Brewery Family” has found a new home. We live here, work here, and drink the beer we make here. Now you know our history and where we come from. After 30 years, we invite you to taste both our history and our future. So gather around friends and toast the proud city that lends its name to your beer.

First, do us a favor . . Reach for Reading

(copy by Rebecca J. Simmons, 2007)