Grandpa Brews

Red Cap is still brewed up here. Up until recently, it was bottled in a stubby as well.

http://www.thebeerstore.ca/beers/red-cap

 

A couple more north of the border for those interested.

Bennett’s Dominion Ale, still with the same labeling as back in the 80s

http://m.nlliquor.com/Product Details?p=3476

Jockey Club, again, still with the old fashioned label.

https://m.nlliquor.com/Product Details?p=4030

In Nova Scotia, Oland Export.

https://www.mynslc.com/en/products/Beer/Ale/Light Ale/1001323.aspx

Oland Schooner

https://www.mynslc.com/en/products/Beer/Lager/Pale Lager/1000722.aspx

 

I picked up some of this at a Kroger store in Cincinnati last summer. Unfortunately, I can't for the life of me remember which store it was.

 

Does anyone remember plain label beer?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5GMnkJ4Cqz4/UCudic3IIII/AAAAAAAABgQ/nn1Pkde9GPc/s1600/generic-beer.jpg

And, btw, We get Genesee Cream Ale in MO.

 

I remember a 7oz bottle of Bud being called a 'pony', and that they were, in a way, coveted. I think they were so popular because a 7oz beer was always cold--with only 7 oz there was not much time to get warm while in your hand; and of course, ice cold is good for beers like Bud, because there's nothing under the hood to really 'taste' anyway ...

 

Sorry, but I was referring to me being repetitive like an old codger, I heard myself singing the same old tune about nostalgia brews once again and was trying to be apologetic.

 

My maternal Grandfather drank Budweiser. Dude called himself the king so he drank the king of beers. Maybe one or two a month though.

 

Yeah, after Heileman in the US bought the US-based Carling-National from Carling-O'Keefe, they eventually (or maybe immediately?) stopped brewing Red Cap and started importing the C-O version from Canada. Red Cap in the US seems to have constantly been changing labels, bottles and, likely, the recipe to appeal to the "American taste".

Yeah, "pony", "split" and "nip" (among many others) were the most common generic terms for 7-8 oz. bottles in the US, though many thought it referred to only the long-lived Rolling Rock bottle (what with the little horse on the label, and all) and Rolling Rock certainly used the term a lot in ads, POP items, etc.

Hey, now - sometimes* I suffer from that malady, too!
(* Like when? Oh, see my coupla dozen or so posts above ).

 

Tastes nothing like it though. I remember drinking my Dads and grandfathers Black Label when i was a kid.

 

Not sure what beer you're talking about here with the "Black Label" mention (Carling's?) - unless Matt's label changed color at some point?

I was commenting that I wonder if the 1940s all-malt Matt's Premium might be related to the beer they discuss in the page for the Haus Lager - "After founding our Brewery, (F.X. Matt) created a lager that his family and employees could enjoy during and after work."

The wording sounds much like this description from 1949 ad announcing the beer's release:

I agree, that the 1970-80s version of Matt's Premium that I knew was a pretty tasty but standard US premium AAL, which used both domestic and imported hops and rice and corn as adjuncts, according to the gold labels used at the time.

 

Sorry, as a local (I am outside of Utica) we called UC (Utica Club) Uncle Charlies and Matts we called Black Label because IIRC it had a black badge on the can.

 

i would suggest this book, it's right from that dead time in american beer and ends up being a great record of those beers.

 

Yeah, pretty interesting book of the period. US breweries at the time were very close-lipped so some of his info could only come from labels, ads, third party sources and such and, given the BATF regs of the era, ABV's are mostly missing, too. (Also, later editions, while they did add new "microbreweries", didn't delete closed ones so breweries like Horlacher and Peter Hand, which closed a decade earlier were still listed in 1980s editions).

Robertson as I recall lived out in your neck of the woods. Talked to him on the phone but never did get together (I moved out of state around that time). He later did those multi-person beer reviews in All About Beer, too.

 

Yeah, they briefly re-released 12 Horse Ale not too long ago - around the same time they re-introduced the (now defunct again, apparently?) Genesee stubby bottles. This Genesee-centric beer blog puts the year at 2011. I recall buying a variety pack of the stubbies with the 12 Horse Ale in it around that time in NJ.

I was pretty disappointed with it - but then, that's been true since the early 1980s when the brewery put it in a fancy "select" style green bottle with a new label design (below, right) after reformulating the 12 Horse Ale to be a "Canadian-style" ale.

Photographic proof of me drinking one during that period (I'm thinking it was around Easter time ):

Before that, in the late 70s when I first drank it, it was often available only in returnable longnecks, packed "loose" in Genesee Beer shells. Typically sold to bars but I had a NYS retail license and ordered it by the case from my Genny distributor. It was a much darker and somewhat hoppier ale (but, then, Genesee always skimped on the hops).

Will never understand the thinking of the brewers' who still made US ales during those first couple of decades of the very ale-centric "craft era". While the new craft brewers were reviving hoppy ales, the oldline brewers were either dropping them or continuing to dumb them down. (Granted, at the time, a Molson-ish ale probably seemed to Genesee to have a bigger market potential than a SNPA-ish one.)

 

yea my mom and dad are/were the larry & barbara carton thanked in the foreword for hosting all those tastings, and "taking care of left over beers." the tortures they went through to find anchor steam that wasn't years old. it involved cross country trading and so on and nevr was a decent sample. nothing is new
jim was the best taught me how to taste wines when i was a baby

 

Hah! I guess I never had the good stuff then. My earliest recollection was mid-80s, it was our beer of choice at the Tuxedo Ren Fest when we used to attend every year. I thought it was pretty good, actually.

 

Wow, that's really cool! So, that makes you kinda "second generation" in the greater US Beer & Brewing community...

Closest I can get is my ol' man drank the occasional Ballantine India Pale Ale and was once turned down for a job at P. Ballantine & Sons in the early '50s after moving to NJ for work... (Around 1972, though, he was happy he'd found work elsewhere).

Yeah, that was back when instead of their recently dropped, complicate code, they had an even more confusing "clock face" dating system. As important a figure as Maytag is to the history of the Beer Revival in the US, he was out of step with current attitudes in some cases. Take this 2006 quote from the Wall Street Journal.

 

Well, some:
https://www.anchorbrewing.com/beer/california_lager

 

It used to be a big seller in college because of the price -- you aren't missing anything.

 

Thanks, as always, for explaining this stuff.

One last question for you, it pertains to "Grandpa Brews". I sorta mentioned this already in another post, my grandfather (maternal) lived in NY for many years and was a big fan of Schaefer, Ballantine and their respective Bocks they brewed around Easter time. Do you know when these brands stopped brewing their bock beers?

...great, now I'm craving some Narragansett Bock (RIP)