What was the first beer you had?

Can't remember, too long ago - over 1/2 century.

 

If I gave my co-workers beer, they wouldn't leave. They would definitely stick around for more.

 

I'm pretty sure it was a Miller Lite. I choked it down and wasn't a fan.

I didn't drink beer for over a decade until about 10ish years ago when I had Hacker Pschorr with a lemon and thought "not bad." But the craft beer crazy began only within the past year and a half or so. Now, I'm like a fiend, trying to learn (and taste) everything I can.

 

There's so much variety, it's hard not to get sucked in. Beer flights are what did it for me.

 

First full beer (not sips) was a mug of Olympia Dark which I downed in about 2 seconds.

 

Grandpa Kaspar drank it because it was super cheap.

He's also the man who often drank a beer with the official title "Beer" ... I swear I'm not making that up. H.E.B. in Texas one time sold a generic brand beer literally called "Beer" in an all-white can with black lettering. Probably 1982-86. I'll ask the family if that was really a thing or if my memory is off. I think we thought it was brewed by Schaefer specifically for H.E.B., but who knows?

 

Yeah, it's a topic that comes up a lot but, think about it, a pretty damn difficult beer to do a search for here on the BA forums.

Well, Schaefer the brewing company no longer exist by then (bought by Stroh) but there were a few other brewers- August Schell, the General/Falstaff/Pearl group, Pickett, Pittsburgh (Iron City) Brewing Co. - which made them for numerous grocery store chains. You could usually easily tell who brewed it by the city listed - New Ulm, Ft. Wayne, Vancouver, Pittsburgh... I guess "San Antonio" on the label gave you choice of two at the time...

Google hits claim they came from Miller but I have a hard time believing that. Lots of images of the cans if you search "Generic Beer"...

 

As a youngster I distinctly remember having sips of my grandpa's Genesee as he sat on the porch on a summer evening.

 

Spotted Cow from New Glarus

 

Thanks for chiming in! I knew I wasn't crazy enough to invent the beer called "Beer".

My guess is this particular "Beer" was brewed in San Antonio and likely by Pearl. But again ... my memory is fuzzy at best on the particulars. I remember now that Stroh took over Schaefer, and it's not impossible that this "Beer" was brewed by Stroh's, but that doesn't seem as likely as an in-state brewery.

I think the big Anheuser-Busch plant in east Houston existed back then, but for some reason it doesn't seem likely that they'd have brewed a "Beer" there.