Never had Yingling but I used to joke that I sent some Schaefer off to the chemist and got a letter back asking if my horse had kidney problems.
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Old Style draft in the Chicago area had a certain appeal (cheap and plentiful)
something about Krausening something, hell it’s on sale for happy hour, get a pitcher
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I was fueled by this swill in college in Maine in the ‘90s. My roommates and I liked that the case was called the Weekender: we emphasized the second syllable.
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Oh dear. For me it was Oertles '92 beer, brewed in my hometown. We called it Second Hand Beer. I can’t drink beer to this day because of that stuff.
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Genesee Cream Ale was and is a good beer. I regularly drink craft beers, love them, but for an American “lawn mower” beer, Genny Creams are a best bet, I’ll never turn one down.
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True story. I was discussing beers with my college son when he mentioned buying Genny. I was shocked they still made it. I assumed after I got a real job in the 80s, and had a few bucks in my pocket, they stopped making it. Keeping the company going on poor high school and college kids.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
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Significantly worse these days.
Schaefer, Shlitz, PBR and most of other old regional brands are all owned by some sort of mutual fund held brewers portfolio. All of these breweries effectively shut down by the end of the sixties, having been bought out by rapidly conglomeratin’ beer companies like Bud, Coors, and Miller. They lingered around as cheaper regional sub brands of the bigger companies (and eventually just the big 3) through the 70’s and 80’s. But by the 90’s most of them had completely ceased production. Some investor group bought up all the IP and Trademarks, but not recipes, breweries, yeast strains or anything else. And packed them all in around Pabst (which has been in consistent production). They contract the brewing out to Coors/Miller/Molson. And periodically launch of few of the brands they own as national products, or withdraw them. Essentially as hipster can beer. Rheingold has come and gone a few time in just the last 15 years. Some of them remain regional products. Almost none of them have any direct connection to the original products.
Yuengling, Gennese and a few other old school regional brands just remained in production and independent (though Genny recently got bought out by a financial firm and merged with Labatt). So while they may not be terribly good these days, they’re a step up from the other vintage brands that are essentially Milwakee’s Best in a retro can.
The collapse of these regional beer brands between prohibition and the 70’s is basically what left us with a “big three”, American beer is shit situation. Some of the old brands were apparently quite good. And modern craft brewers still attempt to track down old styles that don’t exist, yeast strains descended from specific breweries (especially the original Pabst brewery), brewers notes and recipes in the hopes of bringing back something from the original high period of American brewing just before prohibition.
Unless anyone here was actively drinking beer in the 50’s or earlier, in the original distribution area for these brands none of us probably have any clue what they’re supposed to taste like.
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Anyone know who the musicians are?
They make IPAs, and they hide behind high alcohol content and hops. I like IPA as much as the next alcoholic, but let’s all admit it’s the training wheels of beer, no matter how fancy your graphic design is.
We should have a law that you can’t distribute an IPA unless you have first put out a delicious lager.
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As someone who grew up around Milwaukee in the 70s, you have made me very sad.
Thanks for the detailed info.
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Holy F***, there’s an IPA called Training Wheels. I’m off to Google for an IPA called Amateur Hour now.
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“Schaefer… is the… one beer to have when you’re having more than one!”
That explains why I’ve never had Schaefer beer.
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So no craft brewery at all makes good beer or understands how beer is made, even those that don’t make IPAs because they don’t make your preferred style?
How about the thousands of European breweries that don’t make a lager. And never had. Or don’t make whatever you think in you’re head is “lager”.
Because this is a lager. And this is a lager. Lager is a family of yeast and a conditioning method not a variety of beer. You’re basically arguing against ales in general.
I get it IPAs aren’t everyone’s favorite. They’re over exposed. The explosion in American craft brewing means every place has 14 different “local” options making crap poorly brewed beer with wacky names and crazy flavors.
But step off it man. Good craft breweries exist. And a hell of a lot of them are making bad ass lagers of all sorts. And guess what? They don’t sell. IPA’s are all over because its what sells in volume. The number of American brewers I’ve heard bitch about having to produce so many IPAs approaches all of the American brewers I’ve met. And there are almost no breweries that produce only IPAs. Brewers have attempted to make a thing out of Kolsch, Gose, Helles Lagers. American style trash lager, Cream ales, Saison and a dozen other styles. All of them have a brief moment of “its the next big thing”. Then they do poorly in the face of the never ending IPA boom. Breweries that refuse to participate tend to have trouble unless they were already established. But the general trend in IPAs is heading in the opposite direction. Everything is about less bitterness, moderate ABVs, dry hopping.
I mean the NE IPA thing is an even bigger collection of weird brewing flaws pitched as a style. But something interesting and generally drinkable is developing out of it.
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Forgetting the lagers for a moment, do you want me to step off it, or the American beer scene? Because it sounds like you agree that the IPA explosion is suffocating horse shit.
I just googled “Half-Assed IPA” and sure enough, that’s a thing that exists.
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In my area, it was Schaefer, Schmidt, and Schlitz. As a kid, I thought the names reminded my dad of his tour in Germany or something…
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