A Green Bottle Showdown

I was on the border when in college, so I had both the American and Canadian versions
of most of the Molson beers, the difference was night and day. However, I Mostly drank
the Canadian Brador, which wasn't available in the states at the time

 

Yeah, that's when they ruined it. Used to be only available in brown glass deposits (below right) then they reformulated in 1979, calling it "new" and, in other promotional material, admitted they were going for a "Canadian" type of profile. That didn't stop me from drinking it, occasionally (below left one Easter in the 80s - look, you can see a Chocolate bunny! ) but I imagine I was grumblin' all the time about how great it USED to be.

 

Turned 18 in 1979, so the green bottle version was the only one I had till the reissue. I thought it tasted like Molson Golden, which I never cared for

 

Yeah, I did a few runs across the border for some. Eventually we got it in the states (far right, brown bottle, too ) mid-80s or so?

 

Getting Chetty in a can now, there's a slight difference from the bottle, if my memory serves me correctly.
"Skunked" or not I still love them green bottled beers.

 

Trumer Pils would have mopped the floor. Wisely it's my recent experience that Trumer now only sells the green bottles in fully sealed 12 packs.

Oh, now I see there's a Treehouse option.

 

So I stopped yesterday with intentions on buying 1 Hamms and 1 Heineken, but my local place does not sell hamms and Heineken only comes in 12 packs....will wait to try both of these to a later date

 

Indeed. Trumer Pils 12-pack cans are now my house beer. The 12-pack bottles are available, but not as convenient.

 

I had just watched the video about an hour before I saw this post. Is it a surprise he liked his own beer? Yea, I know he said he never tasted it. I wonder how fresh that bottle was compared to the others and what kind of light environment it was stored in (for its ultra short life).

 

Covered 12-packs? 12-pack cans? Heineken isn't a bad beer to have on hand, but double check dates.

 

Yeah, it came in steel cans and brown 'Steinie' deposit quarts for a while, too (I looked for both in the '70s, but never found them) and even the once-standard US so-called "mod" bottle - green ones, too (like Ballantine and other US Ales) in the white wrap-around sixpack below. And then, before they adopted the current standard longneck, those Heineken-ish bottles of the late 80s-early 90s.


Of course, the current version is not the same beer as the one I drank in the 1970s and 1980s - which was hoppy and fragrant. (And I know a good half dozen people who agree). Chesterfield, Ballantine XXX and McSorley's were my 3 primary US house beers of the 70s-80s - all were eventually reformulated into blandness, even as "craft beer" was beginning to take off.

 

This thread reminded me of Highland Park's "Green Chimera" saison (available in a can), which was intentionally treated with UV light to approximate the "light struck" quality of green grass saisons (although I haven't ever had an obviously skunky bottle from Fantome, Dupont, etc.):

This is a seriously exciting beer that we’re all pumped about! Green Chimera is made up of a blend of oak aged spontaneous beer, oak aged mixed culture beer, and fresh lager. Before packaging, it was also treated to a small amount of UV light to recreate the "green bottle" saison maturation process before locking in those flavors as it can conditioned. Green Chimera is complex, funky, innovative, and incredibly refreshing experience.

 

Presidente is a decent green bottled beer, and nothing wrong with an ice cold Mickey's malt liquor.

 

I'm one who agrees with JKs assessment of the evolution of the subject ales. In the late 70s, the owner of my ex-urban NY beer store went to an NYC wholesaler occasionally to get Kulmbacher, but also carried Yuengling (100 mile round trip). I asked our beer store owner to pick up some Lord Chesterfield. He picked up the cans of Chesterfield, the mod bottle porter and premium. He charged 10c a six pack more than Schmidt products. The first load almost disappeared before I showed up to buy some.

 

Another case. Pretty sure when Budvar Budweis finally made it to the US around the turn of the century using the pseudonym "Czechvar", it came in sixpacks of green bottle 12 oz-ers and brown glass 500 ml's.

When AB briefly took over the import rights to Czechvar*, they apparently abandoned the brown 500 ml's, which I remember because one local store kept aging dusty brown bottles on the shelf long after the local AB house was stocking them with (relatively) fresh green 12's. *That deal ended only a few years later, after InBev took control of Anheuser-Busch.

 

Moosehead was another Canadian brand packaged in the classic brown stubbies at home but their then-US importer, All Brands, convinced them to use green Heineken/Molson type bottles in the US (center bottle below) in the late 1970s and the brand was in the Top Five of US imports soon after.

 

I have noted from time to time the comments made by Americans about making runs in to Canada for Brador. It was popular where I lived (north of Montréal) when you wanted a stronger beer. The other 6.2% ABV option, which I always felt was superior, was O’Keefe Extra Old Stock. There was a time when this was all I’d drink when I could get it (easy to get at the store, but hard to find in bars).

Was this ever on your radar? I’m not sure if it was available outside Québec, and I don’t have my old label collection available to check the info there. This image I found shows Winnipeg, so I assume it was for a time. I was drinking this in the post stubby, short neck era.

 

Yeah, we got that in the states in the '80s, in stubbies, too - by chance I still have a few with labels intact, that I was saving in an old Molson Porter 12 pack box for homebrewing.

I got the feeling that they weren't as well-distributed as other Labatt products in the US at the time (because of the use of the stubby bottle)- I was living in NY State in the early 80s when I picked them up.

I was always partial to Labatt's products, here or in Canada (and pre-Molson buyout of Carling-O'Keefe, their beers, too) mostly because of Molson's then dominance of the US imported ale market and those damn green bottles. Now, if Molson had exported another of their ales, the hoppy (at the time) Molson Stock Ale, I might have changed my mind.

 

I agree that Labatt brewed better beer than Molson (or Carling) in the 70s and 80s. I even had the impression that US Carling beers were probably a cut above Canadian Carling brands. I appreciated the Henninger (Hamilton, ON) German style beers when I could find them. I think I once bought them in NY state, but possibly picked them up on a trip to Canada.