As Detroit grew to be an industrial giant of automotive manufacturing, the Strohs Brewing Company grew to meet the demand of the automotive worker for cheap brew.

Back in the late 1920’s, shortly after Henry Ford introduced the 5 day work week, the Strohs Brewing Company began using automotive engines for brewing because they thought is was a neat idea. The wort is passed through the coolant section of the engine block for continuous heating throughout the brewing process. The heating of the wort is controlled by the rate of flow of the wort through the engine. The ‘fire’ of the fire brewing is from the explosions in each cylinder of the engine. The Strohs brewery soon became an enormous matrix of automobile engines with the coolant loops hooked in serial and parallel configurations.

Strohs has been under financial preasure from its competetion, rising oil prices, and the decline of large engine manufacturing. Strohs had been forced into running older used engines from junkyards (not many 450ci engines arround any more). With the increased blow-by of the older engines and left-over radiator coolant, Strohs beer had taken on a truly ‘Detroit taste’ from the carbon deposits and oil. It is been said that the taste is similar to the taste one experiances riding behind a truck in traffic on a bicycle with one’s mouth open. Others refer to it as road water run-off. The most significant problem Strohs is facing today is engine failure. Periodicly the head-gaskets on the engines blow out and leak engine oil into the wort making it taste like shit. Recently the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) rejected a sample as a lubricant.

Presently, the original Strohs brewery in Detroit has been converted to a liquid plumber plant. Strohs is now brewed in an old brewery in Allentown PA. Strohs got a good deal on Volkwagen engines after their Jetta/Golf assembly plant was closed in early 1987. Strohs is getting away from the large engine brewing in favour of the smaller import engines. The smaller engines run hotter an thus scorch the beer (they haven’t changed the flow rates yet). Some company officials believe they can market the scorched stuff as ‘Cajun Beer’.

In summary, Strohs will continue to make terrible beer as long as they hold onto the ‘fire brewing’ technique. The only significant contribution Strohs has made to society is in engine reliability studies, and some claim that Strohs is “pretty good radiator fluid”.

(I found this in an old rec.alt.homebrew post dated 7 Oct 1988. Too clever to ignore, DG)