Olympia Export Type Beer 12 Oz Tab Top Can

Olympia Export Type Two-City Can

This 12-ounce crimped steel tab top represents a key transitional era in the late 1970s for the Pacific Northwest's most iconic brand. The can's upper mandatory line specifies production across two cities: Olympia, Washington, and St. Paul, Minnesota. Alongside the two-city credit, this container features modern packaging milestones of the period, including dual customary and metric volume markings ("12 FL. OZ. — 355 ml") along the bottom rim and a UPC barcode printed along the right edge. In collector reference materials, this version was previously cataloged as part of a broader listing before being assigned its own dedicated entry to account for its distinct combination of manufacturing traits.

Brand Heritage and Iconography

Olympia positioned its flagship lager as an "Export Type" beer, a naming convention historically used by American brewers to denote a premium, fully attenuated lager. The can prominently features the brand's trademark horseshoe emblem framing a depiction of Tumwater Falls, accented by barley stalks, hop clusters, and the traditional "GOOD LUCK" inscription. Beneath the emblem, the legendary red script slogan "It's the Water"® is accompanied by the brewery's long-standing declaration celebrating the purity and natural solvent properties of artesian well water in the brewing process.

The Olympia Brewing Company

German immigrant Leopold Schmidt founded the business at Tumwater, Washington, in 1896 as the Capital Brewing Company, renaming it the Olympia Brewing Company in 1902. Schmidt chose the location specifically for the natural artesian springs bubbling near the Deschutes River falls. Olympia survived Prohibition by producing fruit juices, extracts, and industrial wood products before resuming beer production immediately after Repeal in 1934.

The inclusion of St. Paul on the label traces back to Olympia's mid-1970s expansion drive, highlighted by its 1975 acquisition of the historic Theodore Hamm Brewing Company facility in Minnesota. Facing stiff national competition from macrobreweries, Olympia was sold to the Pabst Brewing Company in 1983, and brewing at the historic Tumwater facility ultimately ceased in 2003.

Collecting Context

For breweriana enthusiasts, this can serves as an important artifact of Olympia's mid-1970s multi-plant expansion. Steel cans carrying the dual Olympia and St. Paul designations illustrate the rapid consolidation of regional brewing giants during the shift toward standardized barcodes and metric labeling.