Goodbye, Michelob Original Lager.

My brother tells a funny story of being really stoned and walking into a bar when they made the large format bottles, and thinking, “Wow, those dudes have really small hands...”

 

Yeah, that period seems to jive with my memories. I also distinctly remember having it at the end of the AB tour in St. Louis, which was 1994ish, so it lasted past then for sure.

The regular Mich on that tour was sublime, it never tasted like before or after to me.

 

A coaster from that period as a draught-only beer, pre-Michelob branding:

Right around that same mid-70s era, they released one of AB's first "light beers" with a similarly unwieldy name "Anheuser Busch Natural Light" (often shortened to "Busch Light" or "Bud Light" by customers and retailers, much to the chagrin of AB which didn't want their new light beer to cannibalize their premium and popular-priced beers).

Yup, as I noted above, too. AB had often said that Michelob couldn't be bottled because pasteurization would have a negative effect on the beer.

In 1955, a TIME magazine cover story on Gussie Busch noted that the company was working on ..."Another project: a new pasteurization process so that Michelob can be bottled." Not sure that happened but they did eventually reformulate Michelob as a rice-adjunct beer when they finally bottled it in 1961. But if our experiences are common, even the rice-brewed, unpasteurized draught Michelob was best when very fresh and well-maintained at the brewery itself.

 

Those sampler packs were always fun and an easy and cheap way to figure out what beer styles you liked back when they were around. Great way to expand your palate on a budget.

 

JK, is there a direct correlation here? Do all malt beers suffer flavor loss from pasteurization while AAL beers are more resilient in this regard?

Cheers!

@honkey

 

Either that or they hoped that diluting the malt character would bring the hops more out front.

 

[QUOTE="tolar111, post: 6883007, member: 243069"we used to say Weekends were made for Michelob regardless of what we were drinking.

[/QUOTE]

That brings back memories. One of my college drinking buddies in the 80's used to combine two sayings when we were having a beer (any brand)... He would hold his beer up to the rest of us and say "Gentlemen, weekends were made for Michelob... My advice to you is to live your life as if you are on an eternal weekend."

 

ISO: Michelob Original on draft at the brewery

 

The Publix within walking distance of my house carries Jai Alai. I bought some and loved it. I bought some more, relatively fresh, and it wasn't the same. In these "stay at home" times I try not to travel much. But the local carried in the nearby grocery stores don't seem to me my taste preferences. I seem to be gravitating to SNPA and SABL as my go to beers.

 

In my college age days Michelob Dark was the king- I still wish they made it 30 years later.

 

Do you think it is a batch to batch variation issue?

Cheers!

 

I'm not sure. I checked the cans and it says it was canned in Tampa. Perhaps it suffered on the journey to NC. I've looked for that Victory IPA you recommended but the only Victory beers I find here are the Sour Monkey - not my cup of tea.

 

I am 99.9% sure that is what happened on my last case purchase of Jai Alai at my local Retail Beer Distributor in PA. It was at the end of summer and the beer was only two weeks from the canning date and those beers tasted like they were over 6 months old. I sent an e-mail to Cigar City on this topic. I exchanged a number of e-mails with the Director of Brewing Operations. He was consistent in his responses that this batch was OK with no biological contamination per their QA/QC testing and monitoring. I specifically asked him how this beer was shipped to PA with the specific question whether it was shipped by truck with a refrigerated trailer. He at first would not even respond to this question but after about a month of back and forth e-mail exchanges he stated something non-specific like: they use an outside trucking firm to transport their beers. I have never purchased another Jai Alai in PA since that time (about 7 years ago?).

Needless to say I did drink Jai Alai in my recent visit to Florida (with mixed results).

Cheers!

 

I recall that Michelob Dark is a reference beer for color comparison (not Special Dark whatever the F that experiment yielded).

There are two widely used color reference codes. The Standard Reference Method (SRM) and the European Brewing Convention (EBC). Each method is similar though they vary in a few points important to brewers and beer judges (that and the EBC is Socialist and therefore inferior)*.

Michelob Dark is SRM 17. Other beers are used as references such as Molson Export, Budweiser and Bass. Though I am fairly certain that breweries that are very concerned with dead nuts color replication, batch after batch, have a spectrometer available these days.

Cheers

*The British Institute of Brewing (IOB) decided to make their own reference method, because they live on an island and must be different than the continent. But they did adopt the EBC once they realized nobody has really cared about Britain since 1950.

 

Except today's Michelob Original* is a different recipe that the versions TongoRad and I drank at AB breweries in the '70s and '90s...

(If it even still exists their toll free info operators appear to be "non-essential" and no one's answering the line these days.)

I've always figured all US pre-craft AAL brewers thought their beer "suffered" from the "necessary evil" of pasteurization - why else would most, having switched to Sankey kegs (which allow for flash-pasteurization), still keep their draught beer non-pasteurized?

I always assumed the adjunct addition was more for keeping the beer looking crystal clear under normal refrigeration temps and typical shelf life periods.

 

I discussed this topic with you (referenced to Peter Wolfe) in the other thread.

Cheers!

 

Michelob was the "Bourbon County" of their AB portfolio in the 70's and 80's. But year round and found in gas stations....well I guess kinda like how BCBS is today as well. :-)

 

I just mentioned finding January-bottled Spaten Premium in the Helles thread. There was a point in time that Spaten seemed to disappear around here (probably due to the glut of beer on shelves), but it seems to have become more available in the last couple of years -- when you know where to look.

Is it decent? Yes, though it started to lack in malt for me when Spaten stopped decoction mashing some years back -- but it's still tasty. I probably like HB Original (is that what they call it?) more these days, it has more melanoidin flavor to me, but I grab up a good German beer when I can find it.

 

Back in the 60's if you wanted to impress people, you picked up a six pack of Michelob. If you didn't care you got Strohs, Drewrys or Pfeiffers. I gravitated to Meister Brau because it sounded foreign and few people drank it. Haven't had a Mich for half a century.

 

It was one of the first beers I drank back in the '70's, I wasn't much of a fan of it or all things Bud for that matter.