Who Invented 6-Pack Beers?
There are some foodie inventions whose origins are undisputable. Jimmy Dewar's search for a "good two-pack nickel number" has gone down in history as the iconic Twinkie, while Sylvester Graham gave his actual name to the beloved cracker (and the pre-made crust for this no-bake lemon pie). Things get a lot less clear-cut when it comes to the six-pack of beer, however. As many as five American companies claim to have been the first to use the portable packaging method, but is there any truth to them? Let's dig into it and find out.
One of the oldest claims is connected to Milwaukee-based brewery Pabst. Always a pioneering company, it embraced technology including ice machines and electric lighting in the 1880s, and used real blue ribbon to decorate its Best Select beer (later renamed Pabst Blue Ribbon). The company is said to have invented the six-pack off the back of a study that showed it was light enough for housewives to carry! There is a mention on the company's website of the introduction of "packaged beer in cans" for 1935, but that's a little ambiguous for our liking.
In 1992, Florida Times-Union staff writer Bill Foley wrote fondly about Jax Brewing Company, based in Jacksonville, describing its beer as "of the common man and the woman who smoked menthols, of the bon-vivant in a blue collar and the siren in Evening in Paris," per Florida Times-Union. The company's suds even featured in a rare 1948 advert aimed at Black consumers, but the brand also came up with the concept of the six-sack of beer. According to Foley, Jax owner William Ostner printed thousands of sacks with the company name and sold them as nifty ways to carry a half-dozen bottles at a time.
Was the real inventor always hiding in plain sight?
New Jersey business Ballantine & Sons is credited with having invented the six-pack by a few online sources who — unfortunately — provide little or no evidence to back up their claim. This writer's attempts to find any corroborating evidence from the company, which was sold to the Falstaff Brewing Corporation in 1972, drew a frustrating blank. If you're from the Maryland neck of the woods, chances are you've been told that the National Brewing Company (affectionately known as "Natty Boh") was the first company in the US to sell six-packs of beer from the 1940s. Again, there's no confirmation (or denial) of that anywhere on the company site.
Locals make a stronger case for Natty Boh than our final contender, the Schlitz Brewing Company. Marketed as "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous," it operated for 175 years, before going out with a whimper. Yet in 2014, KHON2 News' Joe Moore posted on Facebook that Schlitz pioneered the six-pack of beer, again citing its ease of transport. We've been unable to verify that claim.
Dial back the clock to 1923 and we find Coca-Cola's marketing genius at work. While we know there are lots of unsettling things about diet sodas, back then, the company wanted to make it easier for people to buy as much Coca-Cola as possible in a single trip, and get the bottles home in one piece. Thus the "home package with a handle of invitation," was created. It's instantly recognizable as a cardboard six-pack, and likely inspired the beer companies (and other drinks connected by those infuriating plastic rings) to follow suit. As for which one of them did it first ... the jury's still out.