Do you remember beer's "dark days?"

My beer drinking started when I was around 16 [late 60s]. I don't think I was in a lucky area, I think my expectations were much lower. Hell, the drinking age was 18, we were all 16 and Colt 45 was the choice since we knew a store where the owner didn't check for proof, he just put it in a bag and said "thank you my friend". And there was no light beer. I recall when we found Carlsberg Elephant beer and thought it was the strongest beer we ever had.

There are still quite a few places, mostly individually owned, that still have the same old Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Heineken, Amstel lineup. Maybe they were "encouraged" by their distributor to take some Shock Top or Blue Moon, but that's the extent for some of these places. Needless to say, I no longer feel the need to frequent them, especially since there are places with the same type of food and good beer.

 

Brain fart over. Just thought of the dark days. College. Came from NY where at the time the drinking age was 18 and my friends and I knew the places that didn't check proof to CO where the drinking age for everything but 3.2 beer was 21 and since I was near a college, all the stores checked proof. Drank alot of 3.2 beer and I certainly hope I never have to endure that again.

 

My favorite dive closed a while back (it had fresh Michelob on draught, dammit!) owing to taxes having gone unpaid for umpteen years. Thankfully, the owner of that joint still owns an even dustier dive just down the Avenue, and this one has five of its seven taps dedicated to Craft* nowadays -- Times they are a changin.'

(*Naturally, I loyally drink Special Export silos when I visit. )

 

And Detroit and Corte Madera, CA, too.

"Where!?"

Corte Madera was the the corporate headquarters of Paul Kalmanovitz' S&P Corp. [aka "General-Falstaff-Pearl"], which bought Pabst mid-80s. As was his management style, he canned a bunch of executives, one of whom, William Smith (who also previously ran Pittsburgh/Iron City for awhile) went looking for something to do and found Huber. Fred Huber was ready to get out of the industry so Smith's MTX Corp. bought his brewery.

A few years later, the ex-Pabst exec is bored and broke so they license the Augsburger brand to Stroh (and conveniently he also gets a job at Stroh - then the #3 brewer in the country).

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Thus when Fred Huber teams with Berghoff family to re-purchase his family brewery, the Augsburger brand is not part of the deal and their premium flagship line becomes Berghoff. For a short time, the brewery is even called Berghoff-Huber Brewing Co., Ltd.

And as you guys know, that's not even the end of the Augsburger story (but end it does).

 

Drank a lot of Schlitz, PBR, Old Milwaukee and Naragansett in the late 70's. My brother started working for a Bud distributor and I got burnt out on crappy American beer by the early 80's. Killian's Red opened the door for Sam Adams and Harpoon and then we got to this point where I don't have the time, money or liver to try everything good out there.

 

The first side-by-side comparison I probably ever did was Augsburger next to Berghoff. Funny how similar they tasted...

IIRC, the Augsburger label was bought out by one of those other big conglomerates... Point Brewing.

 

Man, that was one bad step child of a label, wasn't it?

http://www.realbeer.com/news/articles/news-001949.php

 

Heh. This comparison of North Korean and South Korean beer came immediately to mind.

 

Well, maybe it was only licensed and not purchased outright? Maybe --thanks to the latest $6 million expansion-- Point will bring it back, just to give some of the many Pabst throwback brands a run for their money.

 

Mostly dark times, except the 7-11 we frequented in the late 70s early 80s had Watney's Stingo in four packs (sitting undisturbed next to cases of Bud, Coors, etc..). My underage friend and me thought we died and went to heaven when the owner let us imbibe.

 

Five owners - not bad. I've often wondered what current brand has had the most owners over the years. Probably a Pabst-owned brand, since they bought the Heileman brands from Stroh, and one of Heileman's big purchases in the '70s was buying most of Associated's brands. So, right there you have:

[Original brewer] > Associated > Heileman > Stroh > Pabst

 

Yeh -- same link I provided!

 

“Maybe --thanks to the latest $6 million expansion-- Point will bring it back ..."

Jon, does the name “Augsburger” have a significant amount of cache?

If not, I think it would be ‘better’ for Stevens Point to not pay licensing fees and just make a beer like Augsbuger but call it something else. There must be another Germanic name which could be used (for free).

We could have a contest!

Cheers!

 

Sorry, I missed the link you posted (all the communist/non-communist beer talk threw me ).

Not really, at least not insofar as budget lager drinkers under the age of Thirty-one Forty are concerned. And assuming that Pabst still owns it, I can't see them being too excited to start production again just to satisfy some folks with a long memory.

In addition to some newer contract brands, Point is also brewing a few older, revitalized regional brands under contract, so no doubt there's a better-than-Minhas lager in the bunch! But I doubt there's anything that would really make waves amongst the German lager-lovers hereabouts.

 

Funny to see all the references to "Green Death". In California, and I imagine the West coast, "Green Death" was Rainier Ale. I started drinking beer in the late 70's and we were coming out of the dark ages then. Anchor had been revived, New Albion was widely available, new breweries like Palo Alto Brewing Co.(London Real Ale), Pete's Brewing (Pete's Wicked Ale) and Sierra Nevada coming on the scene. Henry Weinhards PR with the bottling number on the neck label was very popular. We also had a local pub that had an extensive selection of British brews and other imports on tap. Imports still made up most of the selection at good liquor stores that started to change in the mid 80's. For a time there we were getting some regional beers like Yuenglings, Ballentines, New Amsterdam, Augsberger and Genesse. Good times.

 

Lot's of decent beers in the seventies. At least I liked a lot of them. Consolidation and bankruptcies started killing off breweries late in that decade and by the mid eighties it had gotten pretty bad.

 

Based on everything I've had from Minhas over the past 2 years, I'd probably take Coors Light over anything! They really have a yeast problem going on when all of their beers taste so much the same... and so not good.

 

The entire premise of Smokey and the Bandit was bringing a special beer, Coors, across state lines. I remember several of my father's friends trying to get some of that "Banquet Beer". Long time ago when Coors was craft!

 

From the article: "...Taedonggang, a government-made, full-bodied lager that The New York Times called one of the finest beers on the Korean peninsula."

He was the tallest midget I ever met...