The Florida Brewing Company That May Have Invented The 6-Pack Of Beer

There's an old-school beer company that we may be able to thank for the idea of selling six packs of beer. Jax Brewing, located in Jacksonville, Florida, was started by a German immigrant named William Ostner. He moved to Jacksonville from St. Louis to brew beer with the blessings (and financial backing) of his father-in-law, who was also a brewer. Jax beer was released in 1914 and quickly became one of the most beloved beers in the Southeast.

Jax Brewing was brewing about 100,000 barrels of beer each year in 1943, 90%of which was sold in bottles. In true American fashion, Ostner realized that more is better: rather than selling individual bottles, it made more sense to sell them in quantities of six. Around this time, the brewery bought 100,000 burlap sacks from Towers Hardware and printed its logo on the side of them. The six sacks held six beers each and were sold for way under the 10 dollars we expect to pay these days at just $1.29. 

The first beer in cans, Kreuger's Special Beer, debuted in 1935, but canned beer wasn't as popular as bottled beer. Because of World War II, the nation was facing a metal shortage so beer was bottled, not canned. Ostner blamed Jax Brewing's eventual 1956 closure on the prevalence of the canned beer that became widely available after the war.

We often think of six packs as being in cans, but obviously they also come six a pop in cardboard holders (which incidentally, make the perfect condiment organizer). While we can likely credit Jax Brewing for the idea of selling quantities of six bottles of beer as a unit, there are numerous other companies that claim to be the first to can their product and market it in quantities of six. 

After World War II, Pabst, after extensive (misogynistic) tests, released six packs of beer deemed to be the weight a housewife could easily carry home from the store. Baltimore-based National Brewing Company, aka Natty Boh, also claims to have invented the portable packaging of six beers. Coca-Cola's company president, Robert Woodruff, is credited with marketing six packs of the bottled beverage in the late 1920s and even sent people door-to-door to mount Coca-Cola-branded bottle openers when the company discovered people would buy more six packs if they were able to easily open them at home. Still others make the argument that the six-pack was invented in 1938 by the Newark, New Jersey-based Ballantine brewery. 

Canned beer continues to evolve: Craft breweries maximize their economic advantages, and nice six-packs even come in more eco-friendly options.