Falstaff. What was it like?

You will not find any authoritative brewing industry reference work that states that Falstaff's Chicago "Plant 11" was a brewery rather than a malt house. That includes Falstaff's own Annual Reports (two quotes from which are below). As also noted below, Falstaff - at the time, the #3 brewing company in the US (behind only AB and Schlitz) - purchased the Chicago malting facilities of the well-known US maltsters, Albert Schwill & Co., in 1961.

 

Wow. Well done.

 

Right in the article:

I don't see any reference* to a "brewing facility," just a Falstaff Brewing Co. plant. Inferring that the plant was owned by the brewing company.

*Other than the headline, that is -- obviously written by someone who didn't read the article.
Abandoned Brewery A Deadly Playground For Boy

 

All through high school and most of the 70's Falstaff mini kegs was my go to beer . Similar to most macros but for what ever reason I liked it and usually bought a mini keg every week end.

 

I remember the A&P Tudor Ale! In the late 60s/early 70s a lot of my friends in college drank it (and beers similar to it) and couldn't understand why I was willing to pay almost $3 for a sixpack of Ballantine IPA or $1.50 for a sixpack of a decent domestic Bock (and there were several available at the time).
I think the real difference was that they were just pounding whatever cheap beers they could find simply to get drunk.
I actually liked beer that had flavor. In their eyes, that made me something of a nerd.

 

In the 1960's and 1970's Falstaff was a favorite of Harry Carey in Chicago. Other beers with similar tastes were Drewery's , Blatz, Red-White-and Blue. Falstaff was a favorite of the older beer drinker crowd. Some of the younger beer drinkers enjoyed Stroh,'s Olympia , and Old Style.

 

Probably because of his "falling out" with the Busch family...

 

Here's a four part series on the history of Falstaff that appeared in St. Louis Magazine:

http://www.stlmag.com/arts/history/the-history-of-falstaff,-part-one:-founding-a-brewery/
http://www.stlmag.com/arts/history/the-history-of-falstaff,-part-two:-the-golden-years/
http://www.stlmag.com/arts/history/the-history-of-falstaff,-part-three:-the-beginning-of-the-end/
http://www.stlmag.com/arts/history/...t-four-the-death-of-a-great-american-brewery/

 

Falstaff was pretty much like everything else that was available at the time.

 

yea, colt 45, etc. lots of lagers back then. and the malt liqour thing. ale was very rare in the North Houston, Texas area.

 

We were spending $.69 a six pack for Ballentine beer at Standard Drug in Richmond in 69. It sucked but we loved it!

 

I am not trying to be troublesome here but were you have the opinion that 1969 vintage Ballentine Ale sucked? I have seen a number of BAs who seem to have positive thoughts about Ballantine Ale of that era. Maybe they 'liked' it because to them it was 'better' than the other beers readily available?

Cheers!

 

We were poor, thirsty, and having fun. College never interfered with true learning.

 

Ballantine Ale was a good brew. Ballantine Beer was an AAL that was middle of the pack at best.

 

Ballantine Beer and Ballantine Ale were two different products. The Beer was a regional (primarily northeast by the 1960s) "popular-priced" beer, and the XXX Ale was a near-national, "premium-priced" brand. Even though the Ale was easliy the largest selling ale in the country, by the '60s the market for ale was dying and Ballantine was as a result suffering a slide in sales. Attempting to regain momentum, they reformulated the beer in the mid-60s going from (as industry sources were quoted in the NY Times) a “heavy German-type beer to a lighter, smoother and mellower premium beer more attuned to the modern taste". Lots of brewers did that at the time, but it often did not work - as was the case with Ballantine. The former drinkers of the "heavier" Ballantine Beer who'd switched to the lighter, national brands did not return and changing the recipe only alienated their loyal drinkers. (Joe Owades said in a talk about the failure of the NYC metro area brewers that Ballantine's failure was in part due to simply making "poor beer" in its last years).

Ballantine, after being sold by the post-Repeal era ownership to a NYC investment house, went back to a more traditional recipe in it's final years (complete with a somewhat famous ad campaign created by Stan Freiberg, featuring a fictional "Herman Ballantine" who claimed "My relatives had loused up my beer" when he was away in Europe) but it did not help the failing company.

Anyway, back to the 69¢ sixpacks - that was a typical way at the time to enter a new, distant market or just to sell a large quantity of beer quickly out of a brewer's standard distribution region. Ballantine tried a lot of different things in it's final years - added a new "discount" brand that was aged in wood (Munich), jumped on the malt liquor bandwagon of the mid-60swith their own brand (a bit too late) and later brewing Olde English 800 under license from Blitz Weinhard. They did a similar contract with a brewery out of Chicago, brewing a beer called Meister Brau Lite for the northeast market. In that case, they were a few years ahead of the curve...

 

We knew that Ballentine beer sucked, and I was amazed by the the IPA years ago. That beer was strong and a genuine benchmark.

 

Can you explain that to me? He got fired at St. Louis, but was a Bud man later on in Chicago. It always seemed like he supported the beer that sponsored the team and radio broadcast - at least on the air.

 

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2012...-william-knoedelseder-busch-book-interview/2/

I think his later return to being the "Bud Man" was because August III was out of the picture, but I don't really recall the full reason.

 

When I was 16 every beer was kinda like the next, except Heineken and Lowenbrau, that was high end shit.

 

Thanks. Didn't know any of that.