Saint Arnold Brewing Company Revives Historic Grand Prize Beer Brand

Once the best-selling beer in Texas, Grand Prize gets a modern makeover from Houston craft brewing pioneer

Win a Grand Prize of Texas Beer Contest to the Texas Hill Country

Saint Arnold Brewing Company, Houston’s foremost craft brewery since 1994, recently added Grand Prize to its year-round beer lineup, reviving a brand that was once the best-selling beer in the Lone Star State.

This classic American lager is light and refreshing, with each 12 oz can containing just 100 calories, 2.7g carbs, and an alcohol percentage of 4.2%. The original Grand Prize beer was born in 1933 when Gulf Brewing Company brewed its first batch in Houston’s East End. The post-prohibition brewery was a collaboration between two of the city’s most well-known figures: celebrated brewmaster Frantz H. Brogniez and the famed Howard Hughes, whose Hughes Tool Company owned and operated the facility.

The beer they brewed used Brogniez’s family recipe – the same formula that in 1913 bested over 4,000 others to win the grand prix at the world’s preeminent beer competition in Belgium. Fittingly, they called their new beer Grand Prize.

Over the course of next three decades, Grand Prize was enjoyed by beer lovers in Houston and by Texans far and wide. For years, it was the best-selling beer in Texas. When the brewery was eventually sold in 1963, a classic was lost to history.

Saint Arnold is launching Grand Prize only months after winning the Brewery of the Year award from the Great American Beer Festival which is essentially the Grand Prize of Craft Brewing.

“As we learned the history of the original Grand Prize beer, everything about it felt iconic and quintessentially Texan,” says Jeremy Johnson, the company’s Branding & Design Manager. “Like Saint Arnold, Grand Prize is Texas.”

Saint Arnold Founder/Brewer Brock Wagner agrees. “We feel like in our own way we share Howard Hughes’ pioneering spirit, opening a craft brewery in Texas thirty years ago,” says the company’s owner. “We pride ourselves in being independent, Texas owned and putting quality above all else, all of which were part of the ethos of the original Grand Prize.”

Grand Prize is available now across Texas and Louisiana. It can be found in six packs at grocery and liquor stores as well as on draft at bars and restaurants.

To celebrate the beer’s release, Saint Arnold is promoting The Grand Prize of Texas Beer contest to give one lucky beer lover a Grand Prize weekend in the Texas Hill Country. The prize package includes: a VIP experience at the Texas Craft Brewers Festival, a private and curated Saint Arnold beer dinner for two, hotel accommodations, and a Burch Barrel grill fire pit. Contest details and entry form can be found here.

Photo courtesy of Saint Arnold