Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve, once the pride of Northwest beer drinkers and hailed by many as Oregon’s first craft beer, is being discontinued by current owner Molson Coors after more than four decades of production.
Commonly known as Henry’s, the brand is among 11 beers the publicly traded corporation will stop producing, Molson Coors recently announced in its second quarter earnings call. The discontinued beers include:
- Keystone Ice
- Keylightful
- Icehouse Edge
- Mickey’s Ice
- Milwaukee’s Best Premium
- Miller High Life Light
- Hamm’s Special Light
- Steel Reserve 211
- Olde English HG 8000
- Magnum
- Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve
Molson Coors CEO Gavin Hattersley said the company is “meaningfully streamlining and premiumizing our U.S. portfolio.”
“This will improve supply chain flexibility for our more profitable priority brands, enhance our innovation efforts, enable us to better focus resources and ensure dependable and on-time shipments to our distributors,” he said, adding that Molson Coors will focus more on its fast-growing hard seltzers. “We are excited about the progress we’re making and we’re not about to stop now.”
Pete Dunlop, author of the book “Portland Beer: Crafting the Road to Beervana,” said he isn’t surprised Molson Coors would stop making Private Reserve.
“I think all the big companies are having a hard time trying to figure out which way is up,” he said. “Part of it is the pandemic, and now you have this evolution with seltzers, and craft beer is part of that -- (seltzers have) taken a chunk of their business away.”
The beer was one of the remaining vestiges in the legacy of Northwest beer pioneer Henry Weinhard, a German immigrant credited as the founding father of brewing in Portland. According to “Portland Beer,” Weinhard started Weinhard Brewing a few years after arriving in the Northwest in 1856, buying land and establishing the brewery on West Burnside Street in Northwest Portland.
Weinhard Brewing and Portland Brewing, owned by Arnold Blitz, merged in 1928, Dunlop wrote. Blitz-Weinhard operated on Burnside until 1999, when the property was sold and developed into commercial businesses and condos. Parts of the original brewery structure still remain in what is now known as the Brewery Blocks in the Pearl District.
Blitz-Weinhard first brewed Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve in 1976. On his beer blog, Beervana Buzz, Dunlop writes that Henry Weinhard’s great-grandsons, Bill and Fred Wessinger, came up with the idea to give the brewery a boost as competition stiffened.
“The whole idea for Private Reserve came along because they were struggling a little bit in the ‘70s,” Dunlop said in an interview Tuesday with The Oregonian/OregonLive. “There was a whole crush of national brands that came along, and they were hammering away with advertising campaigns. Blitz was losing market share.”
Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve brand, once the pride of Northwest beer drinkers, is being discontinued by corporate parent Molson Coors. The 24-pack originally came in a wooden crate, a practice that was quickly discontinued, writes Portland beer historian Pete Dunlop. (Courtesy of Pete Dunlop)Courtesy of Pete Dunlop
Private Reserve was marketed as one of the first “super premium” beers, and it was based on a simpler 19th century recipe using malted barley, hops and water, eliminating the heavy use of adjuncts in mass-produced beer, Dunlop writes. Private Reserve was a huge success, reviving Blitz-Weinhard and contributing to what in a few years would be the birth of craft brewing.
Olde English 800 malt liquor was another brand Blitz-Weinhard owned and promoted at the time, eventually becoming the company’s best seller. The latest version, Olde English HG 8000, begun in 2001, is among the brands Molson Coors is ending.
The Wessinger brothers in 1979 would sell Blitz-Weinhard to Pabst Brewing Co., beginning a chain of corporate ownership that would end with Stroh Brewing Co. unloading the brewery on Burnside. Molson Coors eventually took over the remaining Blitz-Weinhard portfolio.
But Private Reserve endured for decades.
“This was the gold standard,” Dunlop said. “If you were doing someone a favor, that was the payoff -- ‘Here, here’s a 12-pack of Henry’s.’
“It was a really great beer,” he said. “It was well made, it was clean, it didn’t have a bunch of junk in it.
Dunlop said in recent years after production was moved elsewhere, Private Reserve “has not been what it was at one time.”
“The quality really deteriorated,” he said. “It’s a common story when these popular brands get bought; they find ways to cut corners. We still see it when craft brands today get bought by big beer.”
Its legacy, though, is something that won’t change or die.
“When you thought of Henry Weinhard, it had a very strong Portland identity,” Dunlop said. “When Reserve came out, it had this Portland identity, too. Private Reserve did really open the door here in Portland and in Oregon for what came just a few years later.”
-- Andre Meunier; ameunier@oregonian.com
Follow me on Instagram, where I’m @oregonianbeerguy, and get my beer reviews on Untappd, where I’m andremeunier13.
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