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Schlitz beer, once the world's top-selling beer brand, has gone back to its original formula.

Woodridge-based Pabst Brewing Co. relaunches the formula -- packaged in the long-neck bottles it abandoned in the 1990s -- this week in Chicago.

The stunt is among those breweries are executing to mark the 75th anniversary of returning to business after Prohibition.

Lincolnshire-based Louis Glunz Beer Inc., Schlitz's longest distributor, chucked the canned product last month in anticipation of the original formula. The company first brought the beer to Chicago at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

"I believe this could be something very big in the future," said Glunz's general manager, Gerry Glunz.

Schlitz sales account for less than 1 percent of Glunz's business. It sells abut 6,000 cases a year. Glunz thinks the brand has the potential to sell 200,000 a year.

The beer will be fun to play with this summer, said Ric Hess, owner of Sheffield's bar, 3258 N. Sheffield. "It's based on your grandfather kind of beer. They're marketing to that nostalgia."
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