Most “Historical-Tasting” AAL?

Based on...?

 

My Dads on a Moosehead kick, has been, the beer distributor special orders him a case like $21. My dads started with Black Labels into the mid 70s. Then came Budweiser, then Miller, then PBR, then Labatt, now Moosehead.

 

Dale, there is nothing unique there to US western towns. Beer brewed in Eastern America, England, etc. faced similar issues.

The fact of the matter is that beer did indeed spoil back then and that was the principle reason why Louis Pasteur studied this topic. Because of his studies we learned that a single cell organism (yeast) was the 'mystery' of why wort fermented into beer. It is also because of Pasteur we learned there are other microorganisms (e.g., bacteria) that if present can spoil beer. It is my understanding that the strategy back then was to drink the beer quickly before it 'turned'. And brewers did learn through experience that through best practices they could mitigate spoilage. And as a result of Pasteur's studies the mitigation process of pasteurization was developed.

One example: in Germany they just knew that beers brewed during the warmer times of the year were more susceptible to going bad quickly so there was a law that:

"In 1553, Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria outlawed summer brewing (the wedding that initiated the Oktoberfest was in 1841, I believe - one year before Pils was invented) altogether. He decreed that brewers were allowed to make beer only between St. Michael's Day (Sep 29) and St. George's Day (Apr 23). Just the slightly sour-tasting, warm-and top-fermented wheat beers were still permitted to be brewed year-round. The summer brewing was rescinded in 1850."

Source: Bavarian Helles - Horst Dornbusch, pp 31-32, Classic Beer Style Series, # 17."

Above was posted in a HomebrewTalk thread.

Cheers!

 

My imagination only. (You think I'm that old? )

Actually it's what I imagine the perfect AAL should taste like, which may not have been what the best AAL tasted like right after prohibition. So the 70s-80s Moosehead would have been Best in Class if it was up to me. Current Moosehead? Not at all.

 

Do you happen to have brewery & brand names here? Is this topic on your blog and I just missed it?

Cheers!

 

Do you know how Moosehead was brewed back then? For example did they used adjuncts back then (present day Moosehead is 100% malt)? Was there a difference in hopping (amount, hop type,...) then vs. now?

I never had a Moosehead in the 70's - 80's but while visiting Canada (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick) in 2019 I had a few of these beers and I thought they were just OK. I did get to see the Moosehead Brewery in St. Johns since it is very near the Bay of Fundy (reversing falls).

Cheers!

 

Back then, Jack, the only technical thing that I knew about beer was its taste, and that's not very technical.

EDIT: I have a Moosehead bottle in my colllection that I'll guess is around 20 years old. I'll see if I can find it to maybe determine what the ingredients were then, and report back.

 

I did a bit of web searching and I did find:

“Henry Riter was running his Elite Brewery at the Washoe Brewery building by the 1890s, making Elite Steam Beer, one of the prominent beers at the time in ...”

https://www.google.com/books/editio...+Elite+Steam+Beer&pg=PA29&printsec=frontcover

Elite Brewery was located in Reno, Nevada.

Also, according to Wikipedia:

“Historic steam beer produced in California, and in the East at the James River Steam Brewery in Richmond, Virginia from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer

I will await your answer(s) but do some research on my own as well.

Heretofore all of my readings about Steam Beer in the 1800’s concerned breweries in San Francisco.

Cheers!

 

And as much as we can read about beer there is nothing like tasting!

Cheers!

 

I don't have a blog and I never completed my pre-Pro Steam Beer pages, but here's a collection of ads from my files I threw together. Oh, yeah - add Alaska and Wyoming to that list of states.





Oh, I shoulda read the rest of the thread before I replied - I see you found Ritter's in Reno.

That's really unlikely . In the US "Steam Brewery" usually referred to a brewery operated under steam power. Unless there is proof that they made a product called "Steam Beer" I typically ignore it. Even the famous Fred Lauer brewery in Reading PA was sometimes advertised as a "steam brewery". The famous Lembeck & Becks brewery in Jersey City NJ was sometimes advertised as a "steam ale brewery".

To complicate matters even more, some early pasteurized bottled beers were advertised as "steamed beer".

 

I can't find that empty bottle, Jack, so it must have been packed away in one of the many case boxes when I ran out of display room. That's a question that will have to go unanswered for now.

 

In the mid-80s there was a great jazz bar in Chicago's south Loop neighborhood (probably more Printer's Row, specifically) called The Moosehead Bar & Grill (great chili) -- not sure what their affiliation was with the brewery, but they definitely had the beer on tap.

However, they also had a house beer brewed by Huber -- drank that more often; cheaper and tasted better to me. Probably just repackaged Augsburger, but I liked it better.

Still not quite the Wild West, but maybe a few wiseguys haunted the joint.

 

I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around beers in Nowhere Az in 1860 being room temp when it’s 110 degrees outside. No way to disinfect, no ice, no way to keep it cool, his far away was the brewery? I’d guess it would spoil very quickly. Given the common knowledge of IPAs, a bit of extra hops and a bit more abv wouldn’t seem to be enough to overcome Mother Nature. Or maybe they just drank shit beer because its all they knew.

 

Well then maybe John Kerry was not the inventor of the Beer Bong!?!

 

Maybe Mr. Peabody will lend you his machine?

 

The beer was probably warm, cellar temp at best. Plenty of pictures in this link.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ry-photos-reveal-world-Wild-West-saloons.html

 

Watch for it! Wait for it!
“High Life” Steam Beer

 

Didn't they have bottled beer in the mid 19th century? Obviously it would still spoil faster than refrigerated and/or pasteurized beer but it would last for weeks or months if the brewer was moderately sanitary in production. Even in the heart of Arizona a small cellar into the ground would keep stuff in the 50s, so not frosty but its not like you'd be drinking 85 degree beers

 

Yeah they had..
https://beerandbrewing.com/19th-century-beer-in-a-21st-century-world/

 

Ewww gross, old beer!