The Lion Brewery history

Luzerne County Brewing Company went into bankruptcy in May 1908 but continued to operate under a receiver.

Soon after that, in 1909, Josephine, who was now 50 years old, married a penniless Italian prince, Don Giovanni Del Drago of Rome.

In 1911, the company was reorganized as Lion Brewing Company.

In 1912, it began marketing Lion Beer, which included a pilsner and a bock.

By 1914, their turreted mansion on Fifth Avenue was purchased by the Knickerbocker Club and subsequently razed.

By 1919, an H. A. Murray is noted as President of the Lion Brewery.

There were 121 of them in the nineteenth century, and, even just before Prohibition began in 1920, there were 70.

When a large fire ravaged the brewery again on the Fourth of July in 1927, Mr.

The brewery operated until 1928, when it was raided by Federal agents and was again closed for making high-alcohol beer.

Pauline Schmid Murray and her husband were killed in an automobile accident in 1931, and their daughter inherited their interest in the Lion.

The brewery remained closed until the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, when it was purchased by The Lion, Inc., a company owned by brothers Henry, Ted, Morris and Louis (Laffe) Smulowitz.

In 1936, in order to avoid confusion with other similarly named brands, it changed the name of its beer to Gibbons beer (named for Charles Gibbons), which became its flagship brand, and included lager, ale and porter varieties.

Del Drago died in 1937, leaving a million-dollar estate – down from the $10 million she was said to be worth before Prohibition.

Moses made the point that while household scrap was nice, a more significant amount could be collected in New York from such structures that the city was removing: the Old (1939) World’s Fair, old streetcar tracks, and scrap metal from old buildings, including the Lion and Dolger’s breweries.

By the time the Lion closed in 1942, it had become The Greater New York Brewery.

In 1957, William Smulowitz, Ted's son, started with the brewery.

Post-Prohibition, the beer brewing industry as a whole grew by leaps and bounds until around 1960, when the big breweries began to take control of the market.

Steinecker (renamed Steinlager in 1962) is born.

In 1967, with consolidation taking place in the brewing industry, Bartels Brewing Company, a brewery located in nearby Edwardsville, Pennsylvania, went out of business and The Lion acquired its labels and recipes.

The firm was now the only brewery left in Northeastern Pennsylvania, which had once been home to 28. Its Stegmaier Gold Medal and Liebotschaner Cream Ale joined the Gibbons and Bartels brands, which were supplemented in 1977 by the acquisition of Esslinger beer of Philadelphia.

In 1981, it began brewing Malta, a non-alcoholic malt beverage, for Goya Foods.

Selling beer at cut-rate prices to a diminishing local audience was not an easy way to turn a profit, and in 1982 Lion sought out and won a contract to produce a different kind of beverage called malta.

In 1983 Lionshead beer was introduced.

In 1987, The Lion also began contract brewing for craft brewers.

Lion’s 130 employees also continued to produce craft beers and soft drinks under contract, with customers in the latter category including Mad River and Reed’s, whose ginger beer the firm had begun brewing in 1991 before taking on its entire line.

In 1993, Bill Smulowitz sold the Lion Brewery to the Quincy Partners.

Stegmaier 1857, an all-malt lager brewed in accordance with the German Reinheitsgebot, was introduced in 1988. It would go on to win many awards, including a gold medal at the 1994 Great American Beer Festival.

For fiscal 1995 Lion recorded sales of $24.8 million, up more than $3 million from the year before.

In 1996, the Quincy Partners took the Lion Brewing Company public by selling shares on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange.

Nardone, Ralph, “140-Year-Old Product Name Given New Life via Interest in History, Micro-Brewing,” Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal, April 1, 1997.

In the summer of 1998 the Philadelphia-based Red Bell Brewing Company made three separate offers to buy the firm, culminating in a bid of $19 million in August.

A lawsuit to block the sale was subsequently filed by five Lion shareholders, who included two Red Bell executives, but the judge denied their petition and in January 1999 the firm’s shareholders voted to accept the management offer.

“Lion Brewery to Pay $500,000 to Women Who Were Passed Over for Jobs,” Associated Press Newswires, September 29, 2000.

In April 2001 the firm introduced a new alcoholic brew called Lion’s Long Island Iced Tea, which was initially distributed in 14 states and sold well.

The Brewery Hill line of craft beers was rebranded under the Pocono label in 2002.

In early 2003 the company won certification as an organic brewery, becoming the first of its type in Pennsylvania.

In the fall of 2004 Lion formed a marketing alliance with Christian Moerlein Brewing Company of Ohio.

In 2005 the company celebrated its 100th anniversary.

In January 2006 the firm replaced its 52-year-old copper brewing kettle with a new stainless steel one that would improve quality while giving better control over the brewing process.

On November 1, 2007, Chuck Lawson and Pat Belardi sold The Lion Brewery to private equity investors led by Cliff Risell and Ron Hammond who continued to operate the brewery as a private company.

The West Side Rag published a post by Marjorie Cohen recently noting this same problem: http://www.westsiderag.com/2012/05/25/the-lion-brewery-where-beer-was-made-on-the-upper-west-side.

May 14, 2016 at 7:52 am Wish the Lion beer gardens were still here under the leadership of the energetic Josephine Schmid.

The fates aligned, and on 1st December 2018, the first Straits Pale Ale entered the market.

At the end of 2019 the Lion Brewery was purchased by Encore Consumer Capital, a San Francisco-based private equity firm.

Prohibition in BloomingdaleNovember 2, 2020