Latrobe says goodbye to Rolling Rock

LATROBE, Pa. --A line of trucks idled outside the loading docks at Latrobe Brewing Co. on Friday morning. In a few hours, they would haul away some of the last cases of Rolling Rock beer brewed in Latrobe.

"It's over. It's done," said Larry Ewantis, who ran the receiving department for ingredients. "Now they're just cleaning up."

Known for its distinctive green bottle and quality pledge with a mysterious "33" at the end, Rolling Rock has been brewed here since 1939. But Belgium-based InBev SA, which owned Rolling Rock and Latrobe Brewing, sold the Rolling Rock brand to Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. for $82 million in May.

Anheuser-Busch plans to brew the beer in New Jersey beginning in August. The brewery in Latrobe was not included in the deal, and is expected to close Monday.

La Crosse, Wis.-based City Brewing Co. is negotiating to buy the brewery and produce other brands of beer here. Union workers at the brewery have voted to accept a contract with City Brewing.

Ewantis, 56, who has worked at Latrobe Brewing for almost 30 years, fears the brewery will be dismantled and sold for scrap if no deal is signed.

And if the brewery closes for good, the Latrobe native will lose a job and a family tradition. His late father, George, worked at Latrobe Brewing, and his brother Mike, 62, has worked there for 42 years.

"I went from a baby bottle to a beer bottle," said Ewantis, who could see the brewery from his bedroom window as a child. "Rolling Rock is all I've known all my life."

Nick Carota, 56, has also worked at Latrobe Brewing for about 30 years. His father worked there for 46 years.

Carota wrote "Among the Green Bottles," a bitter tune about the brewery's fate set to the melody of an old Kentucky mining song. It goes: "Oh Daddy, won't you take me back to Westmoreland County / Down by the Loyalhanna where the Rolling Rock lays. / Well I'm sorry my son but you're too late in asking / InBev and AB have hauled it away."

Rolling Rock simply is part of Latrobe, he said.

"Even people who didn't work here felt like someone was taking something away from them," Carota said.

Count among them Dave Banner.

Sporting a Rolling Rock T-shirt, the masonry worker was taking advantage of the 10 a.m.-to-noon happy hour at J.L.'s Bar to enjoy its dwindling supply of Rolling Rock.

"I'll drink it till they run out of Latrobe beer," Banner said, gazing philosophically at the bottle in his hand. "This might be the last one, you never know."

Like other disillusioned Rolling Rock buffs, Banner has pledged to boycott the brew once it is made in Newark, N.J.

Steve Lopatich Sr., 79, bought J.L.'s from his mother when he returned from the merchant marine after World War II. For most of the 40 years he owned the bar, Rolling Rock was the only beer on tap, he said.

"Rolling Rock was the biggest seller in here," Lopatich said. "I wouldn't even sell Budweiser. They (Budweiser sales representatives) come down here, I wouldn't even let them in."

But times have changed. Steve Lopatich Jr., 48, runs the bar now. And Budweiser is on tap -- in fact it's the only beer on tap.

Until recently, Rolling Rock was on tap too, but the last keg recently kicked, and only Rolling Rock bottles and cans are available, he said. Lopatich has already taken off the Rolling Rock tap handle, several signs and other paraphernalia. They may be collector's items one day, he reasons.

He said he won't sell the New Jersey-brewed version.

He worries about the fate of a Latrobe without Rolling Rock and the money and jobs that came with it.

"We've already seen the steel mills come and go," he said. "It's going to be a downfall. The price of gasoline is killing us already. This is just another poker in the fire."