Berghoff 1887 Pale Extra Dry Beer 12 Oz Tab Top Can

Berghoff 1887 Pale Extra Dry Beer

This all-aluminum 12-ounce tab top can represents a later production era for the historic label. Manufactured with a seamless rounded bottom and incorporating metric measurements in its mandatory text, the can features a bright white background framed by red rules and metallic gold bands. The front graphics center on the stylized black Berghoff signature above three gold stars, set over bold, red-outlined "1887" numbering that encloses a gold shield bearing a red hexagon. Below the central shield, the variety is marked in red and black lettering as "Pale EXTRA Dry BEER".

The Berghoff brand traces its origins to 1887 when Herman Berghoff and his brothers founded the Berghoff Brewing Company in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The beer gained significant regional fame across the Midwest, famously pouring at the legendary Berghoff restaurant in Chicago. After the Fort Wayne facility closed its doors in the mid-1950s, the brand name endured through a series of brewing arrangements, transitioning from regional independence into contract and licensed production across several American breweries.

This particular edition was produced by the Pearl Brewing Company in San Antonio, Texas. Pearl’s history began in 1883 with the founding of the San Antonio Brewing Association. Surviving Texas state and federal Prohibition by marketing non-alcoholic beverages and food products as the Alamo Industries, the brewery resumed full beer production in 1933 and grew into one of the largest brewing powerhouses in the Southwest. By the late twentieth century, under the ownership of corporate consolidator Paul Kalmanovitz, Pearl’s extensive facility in San Antonio frequently took on production contracts for classic legacy brand names.

For collectors of vintage breweriana, this can represents an intriguing crossroads in American brewing history. It links a venerable Indiana beer dynasty with one of Texas’s most prominent industrial breweries. Enthusiasts of tab top aluminum packaging and brand migration history value these cans as tangible artifacts of the contract brewing and consolidation wave that reshaped regional beer heritage.