What was the first beer you had?

Olympia from a can, creekside with a buddy during a BBQ in Jr. HS. I remember it being very bubbly and bitter.

 

I don't know. And I think I like the fact that I don't know. It's a pretty cool story.

The summer after my senior year of high school, my dad was attempting to get his scuba certification. Apparently the nearest place to western Kansas to do that is at Beaver Lake in Arkansas. So I drove with my dad to Northeastern Arkansas. One night after dad had completed his certification we were hanging out with the dive master. He asked us if we wanted a beer, went into the shed when the dive equipment was and filled up cups with beer from his fridge kegerator. Never said what it was. We didn't ask. So I ended up having my first ever beer on a dock on a cool Arkansas evening with my dad.

 

The original Carlings Black Label.

 

The official beer of most HS kids in Pa in 1974. $3.50 a case 7 oz Pony bottles. Lol, looking back it was pretty shitty beer.

 

That was probably around 1976. My father had a fridge in the basement full of mostly that. I believe it was brewed in Canada back then. Couldnt tell you what it tasted like. Just beer.

 

It's funny how life comes full circle some times. About 10 hours after the post above, and after my third and final "taster" pour at Super Stouts Day at HopLeaf, I went to the bathroom and noticed a sign I have passed in the past for the first time (my ever third visit to HopLeaf).



Wish I could find one of these today.

Cheers!

 

Carling Black Label was brewed in the US starting after Repeal, first under license to a new start-up in Cleveland called the Brewing Corporation of America, which the Canadian Carling company eventually bought. After that they started buying or building breweries all over the country (hmm... Baltimore in MD, WA, IL, GA, AZ, MI, MA, TX, etc), eventually rising to the 4th largest brewer in the US from the late '50s into the early 60s. Was all downhill from there - they merged with National in the mid-70s and then Heileman bought the merged company a few years later.

Up until around '76, Rhode Island was likely getting their Black Label from right next door - via their brewery in Natick MA on Lake Cochituate.

 

Great info and not surprised coming from you. I did remember seeing Canada on the label so that makes sense now. However I grew up in the Tri State area and I was living in NJ at the time. Was there a brewery in Newark?

 

Schlitz with Cheez Its or Cheese Nips. On rare occasions a beer hits just right and the taste brings me back.

 

Nope. We got it from MA or Baltimore. After Heileman bought the brewery (according to reports at the time, they were most interested in Tuborg, which was licensed from the Carlsberg brewery in Denmark - so they had to work out that 3-way deal) they did play up the Canadian connection on the label of Black Label - calling "Canadian-style" or something (and they did start importing Carling Red Cap Ale from Canada after awhile, which up until then had been brewed in the US, too).

Never cared for Black Label myself, but the Red Cap was OK - but was way under-hopped, even for a US ale at the time. Because Carling was so big and had so many US breweries, Red Cap Ale was said to be the #2 ale in the US for a period there (but then, so supposedly was Pabst's Old Tankard Ale).

They did have some cool bottles for a short time there in the 1960s - think they were called barrel bottles or something... no, it was "Keg bottles". I might have changed my opinion of Black Label if those were still around when I started buying beer a few years later.


And perhaps their most important lasting influence on US beer culture (or lack of same) - they pretty much created the "FORTY":


IIRC, they first used it at their Arizona plant, but it was biggest in New England where Narragansett had been selling an "Imperial Quart" (note the text in the ad) which was a mere 38.4 oz., and had been advertised as the "Biggest bottle of beer you can buy" --- until the Carling 40 came along.

 

Mich ultra
First legal beer toppling Goliath Light speed

 

Thats awesome! I do remeber there being a red maple leaf on the can obviously to make it look " Canadian".

 

Yeah, the Heileman cans in the '80s looked like this - but note "Product of USA" and the cities listed around the base of the can.

 

Thats the exact can I had my first taste from. Of course they had the ring pull top.

 

The exact can? What, you can make out your fingerprints on it

The other "interesting" thing about Carling Black Label beer is that as the international beer wars heated up in the 1970-1990s, with breweries like Carling in the US and parent company Carling-o'Keefe in Canada being broken up and sold, etc., the once "international" brand wound up being owned and brewed by all sorts of different companies in various countries. So, in the US it was Heileman and then Stroh and finally Pabst, in Canada it was Molson, in the UK it was Bass and then Coors (the latter two now the same company, of course), pretty sure that SAB owned the rights to it in South Africa, etc.