William 1 posted:
That’s cool. Here is the back of the Gablinger’s can showing calories etc. It says contains 99 calories. 1/3 less than our regular beers. Forrest Brewing Co. New Bedford, Mass.
Rheingold was originally known as Liebman Brewing It was run by the Liebman family along with some Jewish immigrants that fled the Nazi's. They ran two breweries in the early 1960's Bushwick Brooklyn and Orange New Jersey. They were New York's number one beer controlling 35% of beer sales. They couldn't compete with the National Breweries In 1963 it was sold to Pepsi Cola They changed the name of the breweries to Forest Brewing from Liebman Brewing. Forest was selected because the Bushwick Brewery was on Forest Street. They hired a guy named Joseph Owades as a Vice-President Technical Projects. He developed Gablingers. The marketing of it killed it as their ad campaign called it diet beer. They were sued by some people that said they really weren't dietetic which led them to add the line on the front of the can "Not dietetic or Therapeutic" This was one of the later cans I have never seen the early ones. Gablingers was originally brewed in Orange New Jersey. Pepsi moved the brewing of Gablingers to the Pepsi bottling plant in New Bedford Ma as a way to seperate it from Rheingold The marketing never worked They sold the formula to Meister Brau. Meister Brau was another company in trouble and were purchased by Miller brewing which changed the name to Miller Lite with a great ad campaign The rest is history " Less Filling Tastes Great "
The man on the can was a real person named Hersch Gablinger, a Swiss researcher who developed the technique for eliminating carbohydrates from beer.
The guy Joseph Owades also was the brewing consultant that worked for Boston Beer and developed Samuel Adams
