Is Pabst and Hamm's the same beer?

Well, there had been an earlier fad of "real draft beer in a can/bottle" in the 60s, when it seemed that just about every brewer was doing it with "real draft" line extensions of their flagship brand (Piels Real Draft and Hamm's Draft in the steel barrel-shaped cans probably the most remembered), but IIRC Miller's 1980s version was also the result of new ceramic filtering technology pioneered by Saporo in Japan. But, yeah, likely the ability to say "Not Pasteurized" in ads, etc., helped them battle Coors, too.

Yeah, that was a real head-scratcher. First time I saw MGD on tap, I had to ask the bartender what it was 'cause I couldn't quite read the intials. When he told me, I thought "Wait - Miller has now perfected "real draft beer --- in a keg?"

In theory, in bottles or cans, since some people claimed that pasteurization resulted in a different taste and other claimed the microfiltering process stripped beer of flavor as well as yeast, MHL and MGD should have tasted different.

In theory, at least. Never bothered to test it myself. (In fact, I don't think I've ever had a can or bottle of MGD and very, very few MHL's...).

 

I probably couldn't. But at the very least, High Life is easier to find these days, and is likely the more recognized brand.

So for a blind tasting I'd pick that one, just because.

Much like the negligible difference between 4.6% ABV and 4.74, a difference of 1 calorie doesn't matter either.

Neither was very good?

 

You think so? I can remember a time when MGD was the beer to be seen with -- unless, of course, you wanted a green bottle.

Yeah, pretty watery, but it was the early days of the Micro-Boom® and about all that could be had at a race track was BMC.

 

Yeah, well, I'm not saying that it "matters", I'm pointing out that it "might" suggest they've tweaked one - or both - recipes and that MC obviously now is trying to distinguish a difference between the two Miller-branded beers - and the use of "hops" in MGD (in a clear bottle, right? ) as well as hop extract implies it even more.

Could it all be BS? Sure.

In the recent past, previous versions of MC's "Nutritional Info" pdf's listed MHL and MGD's stats as identical.

Yeah, in the 1990s, it was outselling Miller High Life.

 

I drank enough PBR in high school to last a lifetime. Can’t remember the last time I had one (probably not in the last 6 years) and I could still say with confidence that they are not even remotely close. Hamms is significantly better.

 

I'm not sure of production levels and distribution footprints of Lord Chesterfield. But I can say the local Miller distributor has never sold any around here. I like that beer!

 

The MGD sold in Europe currently, coming out of the Staropramen brewery, has "pasteurized" printed on the label (I don't recall that being the case when it was brewed in first Italy and then the Netherlands by SABMiller, but that doesn't mean anything necessarily). I thought that was a bit funny.

 

FWIW my favorite AAL beer is Lord Chesterfield.

I also appreciate Hamm's in and of itself but especially within the context of its price point.

Cheers!

 

As @jesskidden mentioned more in several posts on this thread, specifically in referencing Miller Brewing Company’s Brewing Method (and more specifically with reference to retired Miller employee and former BA user “LAD”) there’s a lot of similarities when it comes to these old recipes as brewed for Pabst Brewing Company -by- Miller Brewing Company at their various breweries located throughout the country. The high gravity stream + dilution method seems to work out well.

As I mentioned recently (“Shortened Order” thread, and in the footnotes of my recent review of Black Label) the reason we see Black Label up here is more likely due to chance than anything else, after Miller and Pabst divvied up the Heileman and Stroh’s portfolios.

I would like to think that Miller —doesn’t—just dump any old beer in a can and call it whatever brand name is on the can. I’d like to think that they’re a conscientious brewer that tries to keep as close as possible to the old recipes. But I’m not kidding myself, either.

Anyhow, to my palate, what ends up in the Black Label can is pretty close to Schmidt (a.k.a. “Schmidt’s”), which is also pretty close to Stroh’s, these days.

 

Ya really think so? I'd say it's up to Pabst (which still employees brewmasters, even without owning breweries) to supply the recipe for MillerCoors to brew, and I doubt in many cases they even have an "original" recipe, given the bouncing around some of the brands have gone through.

And then there's the problem of what is "original" anyway - since most of those old AAL were frequently changed by the originating brewer and subsequent owners.

It certainly appears that MC breweries' AALs all use corn syrup at an adjunct (maltose or dextrose) - thus any beer that once was brewed with corn grits (PBR) or flakes, or rice (like their own Coors Banquet) isn't "original".

Many (all?) of them also use hop extract, so any beer that once used whole hops or even pellets isn't really "original". In addition, of the few Pabst brand websites that mention specific hops, many of the hops date from after the heyday of the original brand.

Ballantine Ale's ABV is way under the standard alcohol level for the brand and it seems to have been reduced to being a "bastard ale" (bottom fermented at warm temps).

Likely, MC doesn't use a large number of different yeast strains, either. Although, by the time most of the Pabst brand breweries disappeared in the 1960-80s, apparently a lot AAL brewers used the same C. Schmidt's or Schaefer lager yeast.

And if one believes LAD's comment about Stag (a Carling>Heileman brand), Old Milwaukee (Schlitz>Stroh), Black Label (Carling>Heileman) and Schmidt's (a brand name Heileman created when they wound up owning both the former Associated/St. Paul and Phila. beer brands), seems unlikely those original brewers all used the same recipe.

 

Agree with your last paragraph. I read your Black Label review and I thought you could of easily been describing the latest version of Stroh’s.
Side note- Stroh’s Bohemian Pilsner (different) is excellent, and Michigan distribution only unfortunately.

 

LOL. No. They taste nothing alike.

 

Nope.

 

I tasted Hamms and Olympia side by side recently it was really hard to tell them apart. But comparing them to PBR, there was a difference. Maybe using the same ingredients, but varying the recipe.

 

Olympia 95% Malt was one my favourites and I thought that Hamms couldn't hold a candle to it. Shrugs.

 

What about Red White and Blue?

 

Likely disappeared from the market after Pabst bought most of the old Heileman-Stroh portfolio in 1999, if not earlier? (It's a tough name to research). Pabst owned something like 75 brand names after that deal, but never marketed half of them again and has continued to drop brands in the 2000s.

RW&B was originally a turn of the century Pabst brand said to have been inspired by "... the nationalistic enthusiasm of Theodore Roosevelt's first term" and noted to be very similar to Pabst's Bohemian Beer (at the time, their best selling brand, 20 times larger than Select/Blue Ribbon) - according to Cochran's Pabst history.

Heileman took ownership of the brand during the Pabst buyout/spinoff in 1983 (I guess 'cause their philosophy was "a brewery can't own too many dying popular-priced brands" but turns out - yeah, it could):

RW&B was selling in 1M bbl. range for Heileman during the first few years but had fallen to 100k bbl. by the early 90s.

 

You can get a beer that's labeled Red, White & Blue at the Pabst microbrewery in Milwaukee.

https://pabstmkebrewery.com/featured-brews/

 

Ha - well, considering all the brands Pabst owns, I guess they don't have to make up the goofy "craft" names for awhile. An odd beer to revive, for sure, but I guess if there's a nostalgia for Red, White & Blue, it'd be in Wisconsin and surrounding states. (I doubt I ever saw it after Heileman took the brand, and likely never had it before that, either, when it was a Pabst economy brand.)

Of course, Pabst plays fast and loose with their revivals - obviously the original pre-Pro RW&B would not be 10 IBUs but the final versions in the 70s-90s might well have been. OTOH, look at that description of Old Tankard Ale:

None of those hop varieties existed in 1937.

Or Andeker:

Andeker was one of the most well-known post-Repeal draught-only all-malt US lagers, a "superpremium" in the vein of Michelob, from the mid-1930s through the early 1960s (with quite a bit of time "retired" during WWII-early 1950s when it had been dropped due to unavailability of the European hops and general shortages and rationing of malt).

After reintroduced and becoming a bottled beer in the early '60s - again, following AB's lead with Michelob - they used corn grits as an adjunct for a time, and then reverted to an all-malt recipe. M. Jackson's early '80s ed. of Pocket Guide to Beer made special mention of that era Andeker's "...assertiveness and aroma of Styrian hops" - likely the IBUs of that version would have been well above 16.

But if there's a market for Red, White and Blue, I guess we can expect to see revivals of MAXX, CASINO and BUCKHORN.

 

I had heard rumors of Red White and Blue being seen in a liquor store on Minnesota's Iron Range. I have not been up there to confirm and it very well could be beer sitting on the shelf from the 80's still up there. Wouldn't surprise me.