The Seattle Brewing and Malting Company was founded in 1893 by the merging of three Georgetown neighborhood breweries, the oldest of which had been founded in 1883 by Andrew Hemrich (1856-1910) and John Kopp (1853-1935). The company's Rainier Beer and the brewery itself, with it’s trademark red neon "R" that sat atop the building, were popular throughout the Pacific Northwest. Over the decades the company had a string of owners, including Emil Sick (1894-1964), from 1933-1977, who also owned the Seattle Rainiers minor league baseball team. The Rainier Brewing company eventually ceased regular brewing in Seattle in 1999.

Rainier Beer surged in popularity in the 1970s and mid-80s, after the company hired Heckler and Associates, a Seattle design and branding firm, known for the Starbucks logo and other notable advertising works. Terry Heckler and writer Ed Leimbacher produced many notable advertisements for the Rainier brand, including the famous Rainier motorcycle television ad. The poster pictured here references Rainier's long history in Seattle, although that history does not extend quite as far back as 1878 as the label and this advertisement suggest. Earlier iterations of the brewery included Bay View Brewery (founded 1883) and Sweeney's Brewery (founded 1884) which did indeed produce steam beers. At some point in the marketing and branding history however, the year 1878 was attributed to Rainier Beer and still stands, though it is not entirely factual.

Caption information source: "Terry Heckler, who drew Starbucks mermaid, can't stop sketching," The Seattle Times, September 19, 2011.
Caption information source: "Under the Needle: A vote for beer over politics," The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 8. 2008.
Caption information source: "Rainier Beer-Seattle's Iconic Brewery," by Peter Blecha, HistoryLink.org Essay 9130.