Premium beer back in the day?

Well, the modern beer geek would proclaim "Apples and oranges! You can't compare different styles!"

Wait, maybe the apples/oranges expression would not be used out of concern that it might be construed as comparing Angry Orchard to Blue Moon Belgian White Ale? But anyway... malt liquor vs all-malt lager, AAL and a US golden/cream ale.

And then the really fussy modern geek (< redundant?), however, might counter by saying that Brador was incorrectly labeled "Liqueur de Malt" since it was fermented with top fermenting ale yeast and "we all know" malt liquors use lager yeast.
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My favorite Canadian beer was the elusive (for me, at least) Molson Stock Ale - the hoppiest Canadian ale I ever found - but it was getting hard to find by the late 1970s.

 

Apologies for the transgression. In those days I was lucky to find one brew of ANY style that I really liked. Desperation opens the mind to alternatives. Wasn't McSorleys bottom fermented (I didn't know or care)? And Andeker then wasn't in the style of Bavarian Helles (it didn't taste like a Helles to me)? Maybe the only beer I mentioned that was somewhat true to style was Augsburger.

 

Ah, good point, good point. But, of course, the MBG* would have seen "Pabst" (3rd or 4th largest brewer in the US in the '70s) on the label and knocked it down to a MAML**, despite the ethnic background of Jacob Best and Captain Pabst, and their offspring.
* Modern Beer Geek
** Macro All-Malt Lager

Yeah, well, that one... You're right, those same MBG's would call it a "lager" despite the then-ATF's and the US brewing industry's (well, most of 'em) definition of "ale" - neither of which specified the use of a top-fermenting yeast.

As for the yeast used in McSorley's (Cream) Ale in the 1970s, it depends on who you choose to believe or, more probably, exactly when and from which brewer.

*** "True Ale" was typically US brewer-speak for a top-fermented product, as opposed to a "Bastard Ale" from lager yeast.

 

My taste buds don't conform to authenticity tests. I preferred Ortlieb's McSorleys. I stopped drinking it when Schmidt took over (then top fermented). I apparently disagree with M. Jackson on this one . . . .

 

Started myself in 93/94. Sam Adams. SNPA, and Pete's were premium nationally. Locally it was Saranac, Michael Shea's, Honey Brown and Matt's. Imports were Bass, Watney's Red Barrel and John Courage. And of course there was Guinness.

My fondest memories though were the Christmas packs. My one sister always bought be Saranac's 12 Beers of Christmas (it was ok to say that back then) which actually had 12 different styled beers. My other sister would get me the Sam Adams pack, which was very good in those days- Holiday Porter, Old Fezziwig, etc.

 

Does anyone remember Stroh's Signature beer?? That was considered premium back in the day.

 

Yes I remember it.

 

Sung by Arthur Prysock, released as a 45 RPM single by MCA. Recorded at Fame Studios, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The Beer commercial has Lowenbrau themed special lyrics. I have the 45 RPM singles (Two promo copies). Love the beer and the music in this case. Miss Lowenbrau being available in the USA.

 

Well... (yeah, I know, but I ain't givin' up on this) the brewery and the industry considered it a super-premium...

... one of 3 attempts by the Stroh Brewery to market a successful beer in the S-P segment in the 1980s, along with the Erlanger brand (part of the Schlitz purchase) and Augsburger.

The Augsburger brand, as noted above by @moodenba, was licensed to Stroh by the new owners of Huber, ex-Pabst execs, right before selling the brewery back to Huber and other investors. One of the ex-Pabst guys, William Smith (who was also once the president of Pittsburgh/Iron City) got a job with Stroh, too. What a coincidence!

 

Growing up in Canada, we considered the "premium" top shelf stuff was imported brands... mostly in green bottles... oh that's the good stuff... ie. Becks, Lowenbrau, Heineken....

It varied domestically as Labatt's and Molson would put out occasional new brands aimed at marketing to other groups, many of these off brands didn't last long such as Labatt Classic.

As for beer from the US they were never considered premium. The only one time I can remember in the late 80s was there was an opportunity to get Coors which had a little bit of excitement. They pulled out shortly, but would eventually return.

 

the one on the right in the linked story, if I can't link the photo----

 

Below is the 'story' of National Premium:



http://www.nationalpremiumbeer.com/the-beer/

The 'claim' is that they new version of National Premium is brewed using the "original recipe" which was written on "parchment".

@jesskidden, do you have any further details here?

I wonder which brewery is producing this contemporary version of National Premium? Is it an all-malt product?

Cheers!

 

It was Coastal Brewing Co. in Delaware initially, not sure if they still brew it there. Apparently he went to Heavy Seas right outside Baltimore but they didn't have the excess capacity at the time. A few years back the same company revived the defunct Wild Goose seasonal Snow Goose Winter Ale. That press release lists "Easton, MD" and it looks like they've got a brewery now. National Brewing Company

That "parchment" ad is based on one from 1940 - and it sure reads like it.

It was in the 1930s but I suspect like a lot of all-malt US beers, the brewer eventually reformulated it.

As for the original in the 1970s from National > Carling-National - it was OK, I liked it well enough. No more impressive that the other US macro super-premiums. Didn't see it much in NJ and when I did, I wondered about freshness. Recall buying a sixpack in D.C. around the time Heileman bought CN. It hit the spot after a hot day walking around the city.

 

Started drinking beer in about 1983. For us, premium was either Herman Josephs or Henry Weinhardts Private Reserve.

 

Definitely Michelob. Really had it in my mind that it was something special. Usually just drank Bud regular, but when it was a "special" occasion like a party or a girl was involved, I would get Michelob

There was also a time when I thought the green-bottled (Rolling Rock etc.) stuff was cool as well. Pretty lame, but thinking back, that kind of seeking out of something different is probably what led me to craft beer.

 

Re: “not more impressive…” Maybe, but I’m pretty sure this beer is the reason I’m a craft beer drinker today. As a college student in 1971, it’s appeal was a) it was better, at least marginally, and it was MARKETED as being better, than the run-of-the-mill premium beer b) it wasn’t everywhere, you had to look for it, I.e. scarcity marketing c) it really was, as advertised, drier than the super sweet widely available beers of the day, and also drier and (maybe indefinably) just BETTER to my (very young) palate than Michelob or Andeker, which I learned in those college years made it much easier to drink 6 or 7 or 12 without feeling blah and d) it was local, brewed in Baltimore and only in Baltimore, maybe 60 or 70 miles away from me.

whatever it was in me that found all that appealing, while my friends were just pounding Buds and PBRs, or worse, is, I’m pretty sure, the same thing that made me interested in Sierra Nevada in the 80s…after some intermediate stops at the European import stations along the way…

 

National did a lot of advertising for National Premium from the late 1930s into the 1960s, in which, I agree, they did stress that it was an "above (super) premium-priced" beer and claimed in ads and, based on the locations of the papers and magazines (The New Yorker, for one, frequently featured National Premium ads, including the one in 1940 mentioned above), it was actually well distributed:


...and ads show that it was sold outside their mid-Atlantic home market during different times in states like California, Illinois, Michigan, Texas, Florida and even Iowa. So, "coast to coast" with some gaps in-between...

A 1966 ad featured the results of a taste test of 500 drinkers comparing it to the largest US imports of the day - Lowenbrau, Heineken and Tuborg (still a Danish import at the time) and NP "won" with over 60% preference against each one.

By the 1960s, National Brewing Co., which also had breweries in Miami, Detroit and Phoenix, (unclear if NP was brewed only in Baltimore but seems likely) had national success with their Colt 45 Malt Liquor - they even ran out of capacity and had Lone Star contract-brew it for a time - so National Premium seems to have been put on the back burner, and it likely stayed there after the merger with Carling in '75.

Ha, ha... yeah, you know, when I wrote that I added something like "better than many..." but it seems contradictory to write that after I'd just said "no more impressive", so rather than figure it out, I just deleted the first part.

As I did say, only had it a couple of times (one of which I'd guess was kinda old), but I do remember it fondly and, if it was 1970s, I'd pick it over the national brewers' super-premiums and debate whether I should buy it or Augsburger.

(Wait - the Augie's probably been sitting next to that florescent cooler light too long..."Say, do you have any Augsburger still in a sealed case?")

 

I am fairly certain Anchor kegs were distributed far and wide by the late 70s.

The story I have been told, and it makes sense, is that Fritz wanted to establish Anchor in the wider market. The product would compete with European imports. But Anchor would need to invest a boat load of cash to buy the cooperage. At the time major brewers had been converting to Sanke D couplers. Fritz thought his kegs are going to go back to Coors, Miller, Anheuser. everywhere but San Francisco.

So Anchor was packaged with European Sanke "G", which was a) already in use and more importantly b) not useful for the big brewers. A 50 liter keg btw, which is 13.2 gallons or 2.3 gallons less than the US keg. That's over 18 pints! These unique kegs were painted as well, to be easily identified.

Cheers

 

Hmmm... interesting. Never really thought about the Anchor's keg usage, but it makes sense, too, because c) Maytag was an early US adopter of flash pasteurization of draught beer and one of the reasons the Sankey keg was invented was to be able to flash pasteurize draught beer.

Seem to recall that Lone Star was an early US brewer who was flash-pasteurizing bottled beer and Maytag visited to learn about the process.

In a reversal of the story, pretty sure that Anheuser-Busch sold Wm. Newman old Golden Gate kegs (needed because they were naturally conditioning in the keg and needed the side bung hole) because AB was converting to Sankeys around that time (I don't know, does that chronology work out?). Supposedly Newman called A. Busch III himself to ask for them. Of course, the pre-craft US brewers eventually all went to the Sankey but most didn't flash-pasteurize, at least not initially.

 

This Anchor blogpost had some information on the topic.