The Pennsylvania anomaly: healthy old-line regional brewers. (Weekly Specialty Beer Report).

AP-As he watches thousands of shiny green bottles rattle down a high-tech, multimillion-dollar packaging line, brewmaster Joe Gruss is quick to say that Rolling Rock is still a home-town beer.

It's true that Latrobe Brewing. maker of the beer, is owned by Labatt USA--a subsidiary of Belgium-based Interbrew. And sure, the company brewed 46.5 million gallons of Rolling Rock last year and spent $25 million to market the beer to the far reaches of North America.

But Gruss, whose late father was the brewmaster there from 1969 to 1987, said Rolling Rock will never be a mega brand.

"We don't and don't want to market and compete with Budweiser or those bigger beers," Gruss said. "Yes, we're owned by a big company, but we're still small town."

For many Pennsylvania brewers--both large and small--popularity within the commonwealth and neighboring states is a point of pride. And while many are capturing national attention and sales, some brewers say it's OK if they never shipped a single bottle outside state lines.

Beer aficionados, such as writer Lew Bryson, agree. They say the best philosophy for brewers should be "sell the beer where you can smell it."

"I like to tell people to buy their hometown beer while they still can. It's the best way to get the freshest and best tasting beer," said Bryson, who is working on the third edition of his book, "Pennsylvania Breweries," which was originally published in 1998.

The commonwealth has six breweries that pre-date prohibition--more than any other state in the country--and about 50 brew pubs and small breweries dot the area.

And the D.G, Yuengling and Son brewery opened in 1829 and is the country's oldest brewery.

The state has always been a powerhouse when it comes to beer. Tom New, the producer of a public television documentary about brewing in the state, believes the vast immigration of Germans into the state in the 1700s and 1800s probably led to a large amount of breweries.

The Germans believed that beer should be made like bread, New said, with local breweries as prevalent as bakeries. Most of the breweries made German-like lagers when they started their local breweries.

By some accounts, Pennsylvania had 48 breweries in 1810, producing about 71,000 31-gallon barrels a year.

St. Mary's-based Straub Brewery, for example, started in 1872 when Peter Straub emigrated from Germany to Pennsylvania.

"I don't think they had mission statements back then," said brewery President Dan Straub, who is the great grandson of Peter. "I think he was making a beer that was familiar."

But many breweries around the nation, including the Latrobe Brewing Co., closed when prohibition started in 1919. A few savvy businesses, like Straub, Yuengling and Pittsburgh Brewing Co., found other uses for their plants.

"Anything they could to make money, they did," Bryson said, including making so-called "near beer," which is a brew with .5 percent alcohol. And because brewing equipment is similar to the equipment used in the dairy industry, many breweries processed ice cream and other milk products.

Five brothers from the Tito family bought Latrobe Brewing on the hunch that prohibition would be repealed after the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. After producing a few brands of beer immediately after the fall of prohibition in 1933, the Titos created Rolling Rock in 1939.

Meanwhile, technology advanced since the beginning of prohibition and it was much easier to mass-produce and ship beer across the country. Because many of the local breweries had closed about 13 years earlier, it made room for breweries such as Anheuser-Busch to claim customers in a national market.

But, Bryson said, some communities--particularly in Pennsylvania--stayed loyal to their local brands.

This loyalty is probably why Pittsburgh Brewing, the makers of Iron City and I.C. Lite, survived the post-prohibition years, said Frank Raneri, a marketing assistant for the company. The company, which celebrated its 140th anniversary this year, is the second-largest manufacturer of any kind in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh Brewing, however, has the capacity to brew I million barrels a year and is currently brewing 750,000.

"The most important thing with our company is that Pittsburgh supports us. We've stayed in the same building for 140 years. We're not expanding, but we're staying strong," Raneri said.

With the boom of smaller breweries and beer pubs that began in the 1980s, drinkers had the chance for more variety and the small breweries put the state on the map for great beer.

Thomas Pastorius spent 12 years in Germany before he came back to Pennsylvania to develop a line of beers he thought Pennsylvanians were waiting for. He started Penn Brewery in 1986. The restaurant and bottling operations are in Pittsburgh in a building that was once occupied by an old German brewery.

The brewery creates about a dozen beers, with Penn Pilsner its flagship brew. Pastorius follows the Reinheitsgebot method, which means his recipe and processing follows the German purity law of 1516.

About 15 smaller breweries and brew pubs rose and fell around Victory Brewing in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Established in 1996 in Downington, Victory makes about 10,000 barrels a year.

The brewery ships its beer to wholesalers as far away as California and Minnesota, despite spending about $28,000 on marketing last year -or just 1.5 percent of its overall budget

Bill Covakaski, who founded Victory with his childhood friend Ron Barchet, said they spend so little on marketing because that's all the company could afford when it started brewing. Also, Covakaski said he's found that word-of-mouth is the best marketing tool.

"(Sales to other states) is not exactly what our business plan called for, but we got a lot of calls requesting our beers," Covakaski said.

As more drinkers try new brews and appreciate the freshness of locally made beers, the state of Pennsylvania breweries will only improve, brewers and aficionados said.

Bryson predicts six breweries and brew pubs will open before early next year.

"There's not a single brew house in the state that is in danger," New said. "My heart tells me that brewing in Pennsylvania is a solid industry and it will stay solid, but it might even get bigger in some areas."