Rainier Brewing Company

The Seattle Brewing and Malting Company, located in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle, was founded in 1893. Its plant was the largest brewery west of the Mississippi by the early 1900s, and with ensuing additions it became the sixth largest in the world by 1912. The company's Rainier Beer was popular throughout the West, but when Washington went dry in 1916, the brewery went idle. After Prohibition was repealed, Fritz Sick and his son Emil bought the brewery and the rights to use the Rainier brand, expanding their operations as they became increasingly successful. G. Heileman bought the brewery in 1977; it then had a string of owners finally ending with the Stroh Brewing Company in the mid-1990s. The Rainier brand struggled in the 1980s and 1990s, despite a creative and popular advertising campaign. When Stroh's left the beer business, a company called General Brewing bought the recipe and the rights to the brand.