Miller High Life vs Coors Banquet

I recently started buying High Life to convert my Miller Lite loving family members to step up their game. It's a long process, but hey are noting the difference. Naragansett and PBR are my preferred brands of the style with High Life and Coors Banquet coming in equally the same. I'll drink Miller Lite if that's all you got but if Coors Light is all you got I'll have some tea with Grandma.
High Life is definitely seeing a bit of a revival in my area as of late. More so than Coors - but it is rare to see either on tap.

 

I missed the question about being on draft. Honestly, I don’t think I have a preference as the only time I drink AALs is when I am visiting my friend in Sacramento and we hangout at this dive bar that has free darts, shuffle board and you can smoke inside. They sell just bud at $3. That’s the only beer they have.

 

High Life for sure. My local Kroger usually has 30 packs on sale for $20 and some change after tax and deposit.

Also really like Hamms for the price. Little over $15 after tax and deposit at my local walmart for a 30. With a price that low and a beer that drinkable, I don't see how sewage like Natural and Milwaukee's still manages to sell.

 

Of those 2 I'll take the Coors. Prefer Budweiser over either of them in any case.

 

They've got a way to go to reach their previous highs.

Aw, c'mon, what BA can't distinguish and have a preference between dextrose and maltose?

 

Yeah, those stats weren't meant to compare the two beers as much as simply show how their total sales have decreased since their heydays of the 1970-80s.

Miller, although much smaller than the others nationally-distributed brands, was headed towards coast-to-coast distribution by the late 1930s. An industry publication noted that in 1940 only (#1) AB, (#2) Schlitz, (#3) Pabst, (#5) Ballantine, (#10) Falstaff and (#18) Miller advertised in national magazines. After WWII (and its rationing and shortages) Miller was being sold in all 48 US states by 1950.

 

I used to buy Miller Pony bottle 8 packs for my drive from Lejeune home on weekends. 1976 to 1979, it was all over in N.C. Popular beers were Miller, Bud, some PBR , Strohs was new here, Miller Lite the only reasonably popular one of these I can remember. You went to any bar here in N.C. your choices were usually just Bud and Miller, in PA your choices were generally just Bud and Schaefer, Schlitz or Michelob here and there, living large you were drinking Lowenbrau and or Heineken. The state of beer in the late 70s.

 

More like Doobie Brothers, Grateful Dead, Foghat. Neverr saw Zep, they were too big to play anywhere in Eastern NC.

 

No Schlitz? Schlitz, with a 5.5M bbl brewery in Winston-Salem, was still the #2 selling brewer in NC behind AB (based on contemporary reports) in the early-mid-70s, with Miller - also brewing in NC in Eden, opened in '77 (w/9M bbl capacity) - moving up quick, as it was nationally.

As Schlitz stumbled in the last half of that decade, rumors were that tobacco giant, R J Reynolds, was interesting in purchasing it, hoping to mirror the success that Philip Morris was having with Miller.

Not sure what "NA" is, but the shift in popularity from those brewers' flagship brands (Budweiser, Miller High Life and Coors Banquet) to their "light" versions didn't happen in the 1970s.

• Miller Lite's sales overtook Miller High Life in 1983.
  
• Coors Light began selling more than Banquet in 1988.
  
• Bud Light (which was first released in 1982) began outselling Budweiser in 2001.

 

Before I discovered craft beer, Coors Light ("the silver bullet") was my go-to. And after a summer run, there's still nothing more refreshing that a cold Corona Light with lime.

 

In the 70’s growing up in Wisconsin the state H.S. lunch program served MHL. All students.. wink.wink.
Well, it was and still is widely distributed with strong brand loyalty as a local brew. Count me in. I definitely “ . . have the time. . “.
Ice cold baby! Really tough to beat. A tad sweet but infinitely drinkable. Not to bad of a hang over either, if you stayed away from the brandy shots.

 

Damn son, you're getting ripped off, I bought 2 18's of the high life at WM yesterday for $8 a piece

 

Per my WBAYDN posts last night, I'll take the High Life every day and twice on Sunday over Coors. I was weaned on Miller and Strohs, and back in those days, I don't think Coors was available in Ohio. No loss.
High Life, CL, ML, Coors

 

Of course my friend, hell 40 didn't even go all the way to Wilmington until the late 80s.NC pretty much stopped at Raleigh until you hit the coast

 

I enjoy both the Champagne of Beers and the Banquet Beer. I probably would give Coors a slight edge for sentimental reasons -- in 1983 I turned 18 (legal age at the time) and Coors was my first legal purchase as it was still fairly new to North Carolina (Coors was still riding high on the post-Smokey & the Bandit mystique). These days I buy both High Life and Banquet -- High Life is usually cheaper around here ($13 for a case of 24 versus $15 for Coors).

I have yet to tour a Miller Brewery, but when I toured Coors in Golden I have to say the free Banquet on tap was excellent. Wish I could get Coors that fresh all the time. I look forward to High Life in a Miller facility one of these days.

Nice to see several other North Carolina BA's chiming in on this thread!

 

In order for the light beer category to get off the ground and eventually overtake the regular brands in sales people had to start buying those beers though instead of regular brands, and in increasingly greater volumes. So not an overnight process by any means, but people started to increasingly choose light beer over regular beer. That's a process which I, like Warwick7, find to be interesting. Every light beer hoisted was a vote for lighter beer.