Capping an Era : Out of work: As the Stroh brewery closes, three laid-off employees share their plans and hopes for a more stable future.

Tomorrow, the last 670,000 bottles of beer will pass rapidly through the assembly line. They will be capped and labeled, ready for shipment to wholesalers from Oregon to Arizona.

Meanwhile, the last employees at the Stroh Brewery Co. plant in Van Nuys will prepare for their own departure. Tomorrow is the final day of work for most of the facility’s 390 hourly and salaried workers. After 36 years, the plant, on Woodman Avenue, several blocks north of Sherman Way, is shutting down.

George Kuehn, a Stroh senior vice president in Detroit, said the company blames the closing on its declining market share--Anheuser-Busch and Miller dominate the industry. “The beer industry is relatively flat in terms of volume growth,” Kuehn said. “Not everyone can grow.”

Of the company’s seven plants, Kuehn said, the Van Nuys facility proved to be most expendable because it was producing at only half its capacity.

For employees, both union and management, the new life many never expected will now begin. Some have worked at the plant since it opened in 1954, when it belonged to Jos. Schlitz Co. Some got hired last fall, just before the closing was announced in December.

At left and below are three workers--a bottler, machinist and electrician--who, facing unemployment, are revising their plans for the future.