Pearl Brewing Company
The Pearl Brewing Company (also known as the Pearl Brewery or just Pearl) was an American brewery, established in 1883 in Downtown San Antonio, Texas, USA. In 1985, Pearl's parent company purchased the Pabst Brewing Company and assumed the Pabst name. In 1999, the Pabst Brewing Company began transferring its production to Miller Brewing, on a contract basis, and closing all of its breweries. Pearl beer is still in production at Miller's Ft. Worth, Texas facility, but the Pearl Brewery in San Antonio was closed in 2001. Since then, the former brewery was purchased by Silver Ventures, Inc., which has made the property the crown jewel in revitalization efforts of southern Midtown and northern Downtown San Antonio.
Falls City Brewing Company
In 1977, Falls City representatives approached Billy Carter, brother of President Jimmy Carter, about marketing a signature brand to capitalize on Billy's fame as the beer-drinking black sheep of the Carter family. Falls City brewed several test batches in hopes that one would meet Carter's approval and could be marketed as Billy Beer. Carter, who had long been a Pabst Blue Ribbon drinker, chose one of the Falls City formulas and the brewery quickly developed a marketing campaign for Billy Beer. Realizing that a regional brewery could not fulfill national demand for the product, Falls City licensed several other independent regional breweries to brew and package Billy Beer. Those breweries were Cold Spring Brewing Company of Cold Spring, Minnesota; Pearl Brewing Company of San Antonio, Texas; and West End Brewing Company in Utica, New York. Billy Beer became a briefly-popular fad due to the company's expensive, large-scale marketing campaigns and promotion by Carter, however the cheaply made beer quickly fell out of favor, and in 1978 it was discontinued.