Pabst Blue Ribbon offers huge reward in search for missing beer

Greig DeBow, the CEO of Pabst Brewing Co., said Wednesday that the company will pay up to $20,000 to anyone who provides new information that leads to the recovery of 1,602 cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon and non-alcoholic Old Milwaukee beer. The beer went missing Aug. 17 in Southern California .

“I'm sure they look cool with a garage full of PBR,” DeBow said in a post on TikTok . “That's actually not cool though. We want it back."

Police in Montclair, California , said the beer was stolen from a warehouse in two separate incidents on the same day.

In the first heist, about $45,000 worth of beer headed to Tucson , Arizona , was picked up but never delivered, according to police. An hour later, a “purported subcontracting company” submitted fake documents to pick up another $25,000 worth of beer, Montclair police said. Both thefts occurred on August 17 at an Anheuser-Busch distribution center about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of Los Angeles .

All told, the thieves made off with 40,000 pounds of beer, Pabst said. Police estimated that the stolen beer was worth $70,000.

DeBow said the company wants the beer to be returned by Sept. 9. Anyone with information is asked to email [email protected].

Late last year, 40,000 oysters, lobster worth $400,000 and a cache of crabmeat all were stolen in separate incidents within weeks of each other in New England .

And in March, Swiss food giant Nestlé said 413,793 KitKat brand chocolate bars bound for Poland were stolen after leaving its production site in Italy .

At the time KitKat said the missing bars are traceable via a unique batch code. Anyone scanning the batch numbers of the stolen chocolate would receive instructions on how to contact KitKat.

"We've always encouraged people to have a break with KitKat - but it seems thieves have taken the message too literally and made a break with more than 12 tonnes of our chocolate,” a spokesperson for KitKat said