Stroh's Ice Cream, founded by the Stroh Brewing Company of Detroit, Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

, is currently owned and distributed by Dean Foods

Dean Foods

Dean Foods is an American food and beverage company with two operating divisions: Fresh Dairy Direct and WhiteWave-Morningstar. The company maintains plants and distributors in the United States and the United Kingdom. Dean Foods products are sold throughout the USA.-History:In 1925, Samuel E...

 of Dallas, TX.

It is essentially a regional brand distributed mainly in the Midwestern United States

Midwestern United States

The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....

. This is mainly due to its former owner and namesake company, the Stroh Brewing Company, and the presence it had (and in some cases, like the Detroit area, still has) in this region. Stroh's Ice Cream is positioned as a premium brand, but is for the most part, a lower priced product in comparison to other premium brands such as Breyers

Breyers

Breyers is a brand of frozen dessert and ice cream owned by Unilever . They have a large plant in the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, outside Boston....

.

History

The Stroh Brewery Company, like many other alcohol

Alcohol

In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....

-producers in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, was left searching for ways to restructure their companies at the advent of prohibition in the United States

Prohibition in the United States

Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...

 in 1920. With the closing of saloons across the nation, ice cream parlor

Ice cream parlor

Ice cream parlors are places that sell ice cream and frozen yogurt to consumers. Ice cream is normally sold in two varieties in these stores: soft-serve ice cream , and hard-packed, which has an assortment of flavors, as well as frozen yogurt, which is a low-fat alternative and tastes slightly...

s increased in popularity as a new place for the average man to frequent. Julius Stroh, the head of Stroh's Brewery at the time, decided to convert the beer

Beer

Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

 brewing facilities of their factory in Detroit, MI to producing non-alcoholic products such as near beer (beer with its alcohol extracted), birch beer

Birch beer

Birch beer is a carbonated soft drink made from herbal extracts, usually from birch bark. It has a taste similar to root beer. Various types of birch beer are available, distinguished by color. The color depends on the species of birch tree from which the sap is extracted...

, soft drinks, malt

Malt

Malt is germinated cereal grains that have been dried in a process known as "malting". The grains are made to germinate by soaking in water, and are then halted from germinating further by drying with hot air...

 products, ice

Ice

Ice is water frozen into the solid state. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions...

, and ice cream. At the end of prohibition in America

Repeal of Prohibition

The Repeal of Prohibition in the United States was accomplished with the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 5, 1933.-Background:...

 in 1933, the ice cream operation proved to be popular and profitable enough to continue alongside the brewing operation.

In the early 1980s, Stroh's built a new ice cream production facility on Maple Street in Detroit, right down the road from its main brewery, which was demolished in 1985. Stroh's sold the facility in 1989 as a part of corporate restructuring at Stroh's. Stroh's Brewing Company was purchased by Pabst Brewing Company

Pabst Brewing Company

Pabst Brewing Company is an American company that dates its origins to a brewing company founded in 1844 by Jacob Best and by 1889 named after Frederick Pabst. It is currently the holding company contracting for the brewing of over two dozen brands of beer and malt liquor from defunct companies...

 and the Miller Brewing Company

Miller Brewing Company

The Miller Brewing Company is an American beer brewing company owned by the United Kingdom-based SABMiller. Its regional headquarters are located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the company has brewing facilities in Albany, Georgia; Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin; Eden, North Carolina; Fort Worth, Texas;...

 in 1999 and moved from Detroit to Milwaukee, WI. Stroh's Ice Cream was run by Melody Farms for several years, all the time keeping the Stroh's name, until that company was purchased by Dean Foods in 2005.

Today

Stroh's Ice Cream is still sold primarily in the Metro Detroit

Metro Detroit

The Detroit metropolitan area, often referred to as Metro Detroit, is the metropolitan area located in Southeast Michigan centered on the city of Detroit which shares an international border with Windsor, Ontario. The Detroit metropolitan area is the second largest U.S. metropolitan area...

 area. The primary ice cream plant remained in Detroit until February 2007 when it was announced that the facility would be moving to Belvidere, IL, though the Detroit distribution facility would continue to operate.