The beer business was very good to Samuel A. Caruso.

He made a name for himself as a beer distributor in the Mexican War Streets neighborhood of the city’s North Side, where the Caruso name is preserved on the front of one of the former locations of the family business. It was started by his father, Samuel J. Caruso, who had the foresight to start selling beer from his grocery store as soon as it was legal when Prohibition ended in 1933.

Sam A. Caruso, who worked with his father and then ran the beer business for 53 years, died Friday, Dec. 5, at age 85 at his home in Penn Township, Butler County, where he and his wife, Barbara, raised a family.

As he told a television news reporter when he sold the North Taylor Avenue distributorship and retired at the end of 2021, “It’s a good livi

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