Pabst Brewing Company's chief executive, Greig DeBow, has issued a public appeal to whoever stole an entire truckload of Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) beer, offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading to its recovery. The theft, which the company has dubbed the "Great American Beer Heist," has become an increasingly high-profile saga, with Pabst using humour and social media to draw attention to the case while insisting the incident is not a publicity stunt.

The beer, comprising 1,602 cases weighing roughly 40,000 pounds, vanished from a warehouse in Montclair, California, on 17 August. DeBow has given the thieves until 9 September to return the shipment, having previously set a more whimsical deadline referencing the company's 1844 founding year. Police in Montclair are investigating the theft alongside a separate but potentially linked case involving fraudulent paperwork used to steal roughly $25,000 worth of Anheuser-Busch and PBR products from the same distribution centre, suggesting a wider cargo theft operation may be at play.