American Lager Hops

The typical hop used in American lagers circa 1950-1960 was Cluster hops:

“The hopping rate was a New York tradition, as the population desired full-bodied, hoppy beers. Except for Trommer's, which imported Czech and German hops, most of the hops used in Bushwick were from the Yakima Valley in Washington and from the Russian River and Sacramento areas in California (7). Cluster was the predominant hop variety used, though current speculation holds that they had lower a-acid levels than Cluster hops today.”

Above is from:http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue2.1/jankowski.html

Cheers!

 

JackHorzempa is right. Cluster was pretty much the American hop both pre- and post-prohibition, up until the beginning of the modern craft brewing era.

 

When I had the first CAP brewed by a friend, I said that tastes like what Dad And Grandpa were drinking when I was stealing sips circa 1960. Cluster hops were 80% or more of what was grown back then.

Edit - Some we're finished with a small addition of noble hops late. The Cluster berry/black current will come through even from use as a bittering hop.

 

It is amazing, given today's large number of hop strains, that 50-100 years ago there was very little mention of particular hop type usage in US beers, both in advertising and in many of the existing old recipes. Ads mentioned only "choicest" or "finest" hops , recipes might refer to "imported" or "domestic" or, "State" hops (the latter the industry term for New York State hops). There were some notable exceptions - Ballantine advertised heavily that their XXX Ale used "Brewer's Gold" hops (with contract growers in OR, WA and CA in the '50s), Anheuser-Busch (especiallypre-Pro, but also after Repeal) noted their use of Saazer hops in Budweiser (they had over 1 million pounds in storage at the start of WWI), a few brewers' "super-premium" beers were advertised as using "Hallertau", or sometimes simply worded as "all Czechoslovakian" or "European" imported hops, etc.

Besides Cluster - which themselves were often divided into "Early Cluster" and "Late Cluster" (the latter having a slightly higher percentage of "soft resin", according to the USDA) - other domestic hop strains included Fuggles and Red Vine, and most every European hop would be experimented with by US growers. The above mentioned Brewer's Gold was introduced to the US - originally in New York as they tried to revive the industry after Repeal - from the UK in the late 30s, along with another strain called Brewer's Favourite - which was developed in the UK from US Late Clusters.

In 1965, the US brewing industry used 31.5 million pounds of hops, including 7.3 million pounds of imported hops (6 million of them from Germany) - so almost a quarter of total usage. I'd imagine the imports were used by some US brewers as finishing hops for their premium and super-premium beers. A-B, in the late '40's, claimed that they used 40% of the ALL the imported hops in the US for Budweiser - although in that post-war period imports made up only 10% of total US hop usage. Still pretty impressive given AB's market share at the time hovered around 5%.

No specific info on of the hop usage of 3 brands in the OP. I could see Falstaff - perhaps - using some imported hops for it's flagship brand, seeing as how it was in the direct competition with Bud at home in St. Louis (and often outsold it) OTOH, they also stressed they were a popular-priced brand (as opposed to the premium Budweiser, Schlitz, etc).

Falstaff was one of those brewers who advertised of using "...premium quality hops..." Probably ditto for the other two brands (that wound up in the Heileman portfolio by the next decade). But, then, no brewery ever advertised that they used "...the crummy hops left over that no one else wants!"

 

Those must have been some "funky" smelling hops.

 

Anchor's California Lager uses all Cluster hops because that was the "it" hop for many American lagers prior to Prohibition.

 

Make sure you use some corn as an adjunct as well to get that retro flavor.