A Green Bottle Showdown

I remember hearing somewhere about Rolling Rock eliminating the DMS flavor after being bought out but then having to reintroduce it due to customer complaints.

That could very well just be another old wives tale though.

 

Not quite the way the story went, if you're referring to the Bamforth quote (same dude as in @GetMeAnIPA post) in his book Beer is Proof God Loves Us:

 

Thanks for the background I had no doubt you'd be able to bring!

Doesn't seem too hard to imagine the game of telephone that ended in the version I heard.

 

"Decent? Nothing wrong?" Well, unless you don't consider lightstruck beer indecent and wrong

Don't think I've had Presidente in decades (so long before it became an ABInBev brand) and doubt if I've ever had Miller's version of Mickey's since they pack them in totally exposed sixpack "basket" type carriers and eliminated the dangerous thrill of the old pull tops with a tame screw-off cap.

 

Well, Bamforth's story was from right after Anheuser-Busch bought the brand from InBev, so things could have changed after InBev bought Anheuser-Busch only a year or so later IIRC.

Some claim that that the RR deal and another deal from around the same period that gave AB's "Import Brands Alliance" subsidiary import rights to many of the InBev Euro brands allowed InBev to see AB's private financial info which helped them in their takeover of the company. Or maybe (as many joked at the time) InBev just wanted Rolling Rock back but had to buy all of Anhesuer Busch to get it.

 

Interesting. I don’t think this is the same beer. O’Keefe Extra Old Stock was a Carling O’Keefe beer and then a Molson product (after the acquisition). I’ve never seen Labatt Extra Stock in anything other than old stubbies at breweriana shows. I think it had disappeared by the late 80s or wasn’t a product available in Québec.

I remember discovering Molson Stock Ale when I moved to Ontario in 1999. It was available in the graduate student pub at the university I was at. It was my go to beer for a couple years, at least in that venue. I’d never seen it in Québec to that point.

 

Oh, damn - you're right, of course. I was playing phone tag with some folks and was so happy when I found the Labatt Extra (but not "Old") Stock Malt Liquor bottles ("Gee, totally different label design and colors...") I didn't really compare them close enough.

 

I remember an interview with someone at Pilsner Urquell talking about the troubles they had when using green glass for export for the marketing value in the US, and then Czech customers complaining that the US was getting the better premium liquid... and this pressured them to switch to green in their native market... and then they eventually switched to brown for the US. The monster of troubles with perception. I have no idea how much truth there was to that story vs how much of it was an exaggeration. I realize this is out of your normal lane @jesskidden , but do you have any genuine info on Pilsner Urquell switching to mainly green glass for the Czech market?

 

No, doesn't sound familiar. I do recall that when SABMiller dropped the 22 oz. Pilsner Urquell bottle in the US they told retailers to just break up the relatively new 4 packs of 500 ml. cans and put them in their "singles" section, that retailers got complaints that the beer "didn't taste the same" as from the bottles.

Also, when the US still got the greenies, the sixpack holder was re-designed to cover much more of the bottles than the old "basket" type carriers and some jerk made a video complaining about how difficult it was to open. "Well, buddy, some people find it difficult to spend the money and try to consume light-struck beer."

Many markets got brown glass P.U. before the US did. Here's a >snip< of a pic from Canada in the 1970s-1980s (based on that Molson stubby).


And a European (right) bottle next to the current US version.

Didn't realize the home Czech market is getting green bottles...

 

I don't have any real info, but the bottles are green on their Czech website (including their webshop) https://www.pilsner-urquell.cz/
A quick look on Untappd seems to indicate that they might be green in Germany.

If the story I heard has a good bit of truth, then it's quite the unfortunate twist of fate that the Czech people got stuck with green glass out of a "grass is always greener ()" consumer view of their export market (and the final twist that Americans eventually got brown).