Beer back then vs now

I remember strohs was a noticeably different tasting beer in the late seventies than my more normal go to miller. Don't really have a comparable beer to that in today's beers.

 

And let's not forget the Coors New Light Beer of 1941:

“One is found in a brand of beer brewed in the Colorado Rocky Mountains by a brewer named Bill Coors. As near as I have been able to determine, it was the first beer ever brewed in America where both the product design and supporting marketing campaign specifically emphasized the theme of fewer calories. Its name? It was called “Coors New Light Beer,” with newspaper ads across Colorado (e.g., the June 19, 1941, ad from the Greely Daily Tribune shown in Figure 3 [49]) and adjacent states touting it as a lighter lager beer containing 13% fewer calories than Coors Banquet beer. With the latter typically containing 145 calories, I estimate Coors New Light Beer possessed 126 calories per 12 ounce serving. “

https://www.mbaa.com/publications/tq/tqPastIssues/2021/openaccess/TQ-58-1-0108-01.pdf

Cheers!

 

Well I was refering to the 3.6% abw of the regular Coors beer found in various later sources. However on the subect of 3.2 (abw) beer the 1963 article also has a few interesting notes on the Miller Brewing Company of which it says "Only one kind of beer, High Life Beer, is produced. Original gravity circa 12% B, alcohol 4 percent by weight. Only for military deliveries is the degree of fermentation regulated such that the beer contains not more than circa 3.2 percent by weight of alcohol." So 5% abv and circa 12% Balling for regular High Life while the military 3.2 beer (which I imagine was also sold to civilians in those 3.2 states) was evidently brewed to the same original gravity only the degree of fermentation was "regulated" to meet the 3.2 limit. That would have significantly reduced the degree of attenuation of the 3.2 beer.

I guess diluting the finished beer was not standard operating procedure at this time, and brewing separate 3.2 brews with its own recipe was seen as negatively impacting the efficiency of the production process for a brewery only brewing one brand of beer, so for those reasons I guess it made sense. Regulating the degree of attenuation, instead of the recipe itself, would have meant cooling down the fermenting wort before primary fermentation had ended I imagine, unless they bothered with a separate lower fermenting yeast strain which seems like it would be detrimental to the principle of streamlined production that Miller Brewing seemed to operate under. Pasteurization would have been paramount in that case. An interesting tidbit I thought.

Brewing a lower abv beer at a higher than normal original gravity due to restrictions on alcoholic content was being done also in Sweden at the time where class II beer of maximum 2.8% abw was the standard beer throughout most of the second half of the 1900s, sold in grocery stores.

Case in point Pripps Special from Sweden's largest brewery, this ad being from 1965, with the beer having an original gravity of 12.2% and an abv of "maximum 2.8%" abw. So even lower in abw than the American 3.2 beer.

 

Yeah, as mentioned I imagine the same 3.2 beer was being produced for the 3.2 states. For whatever reason 3.2 beer is not a subject which comes up in Swedish sources on American brewing, whether it was due to ignorance or disinterest. My thinking is that Swedes knew about abv restrictions all too well, what interested a Swede was the brewing of full strenght beer.

 

Well then, I suppose it would have been Spring of '78. Regardless, it was my senior year of high school. And it didn't taste like much of anything.

 

So, contrary to the general theme of this thread, some things never change...

 

Back "then" I couldn't afford good beer so I drank cheap stuff just to get a buzz. Once I "grew up" I could afford good beer, and now I drink it to enjoy the taste!

 

I remember when a friend got one of those 5 gallon “party ball” kegs of “Red Dog” that had to be finished that night, I did more than my share of getting rid of it. I still remember the hangover from 30 years later.

 

'Speaking’ of beer balls, the first beer brand that I was aware of that came in beer balls was Utica Club:



It was brewed by FX Matt Brewing (likely called West End Brewing at that time?).

I never tasted Utica Club but I found the beer ball to be an interesting concept.

Cheers!

 

Back in the 60`s and 70`s it was Pabst Blue Ribbon. Almost every corner bar had a Pabst sign hanging outside. Even if you went to fancy Supper Club, you still had a Pabst. Only then you`d let the waiter pour it out of 12oz bottle into a tall 16oz Pilsner glass so it had a big head on the glass.
All beer tasted and smelled different back then. Stronger
I buy Schlitz once in a while. I can only get it in 12 packs of 12oz bottles. For some reason I won`t drink it out of the bottle. I always pour it in a tall glass or Boomba glass. It`s one of the few beers that after I pour it, you can smell the scent of beer in the room.
'

 

Ahh, good ole Party Balls. I still have a tap for one of those, lol.

 

I'll admit that Iowans are less prone to litter than New Yorkers on average. When the bottle law was imposed here, the streets became noticeably less littered with cans and broken bottles. That's a benefit. Maybe less effect in Iowa. Also over the years, a nickel deposit has been devalued, becoming less of an economic prod. Most BA people buy at such a wide range of locations, they won't return for deposit anyway. By the way, Oregon implemented a deposit redemption station program to return everything, but that has its own drawbacks.

 

Have you been following the Oregon refillable bottle program: https://obrc.com/partners/refill-program/

If so, would you characterize this as being a successful program?

Cheers!

 

I haven't visited my friends and relatives there for a few years now so don't have any first hand info. Specifically, I wasn't thinking about the refillable bottle. Looking at the list of participating brewers, the refillables are a miniscule portion of the market:
https://bottledrop.comT/craft-beverage-makers/
Oregon apparently does a good job of getting the non-refillable containers recycled, as well as keeping the existing refillables in circulation.

 

I didn't start drinking beer until the mid 80s and my friends and I gravitated to Keystone because it had the least flavor (since we didn't think we liked the flavor of beer).

I wonder if Keystone was ahead of the curve on "dumbing down" their beer? We admittedly could have been swayed by their old "bitter beer face" commercials and touting of their specially lined cans.

And to echo a couple other posts here, I've warmed up mildly to most AALs, but still find Bud and especially Bud Light to have an off flavor that I don't care for. Haven't had a Keystone in going on 40 years though.

 

The bottles do get picked up, I will give them that, but Iowa hasn't updated since they first passed it so many bottles don't qualify.

I was more mad about the process in a college town with one redemption center (other than waiting for a clerk at customer service or feeding them in one by one). The center was on the edge of town and it would be an hour minimum every time. Oh well, I enjoy my throw it in my recycle bin and it gets emptied every two weeks here in Wisconsin. To each their own.

 

Keystone was first introduced in 1989 - 35 years ago.

 

They sure got popular fast.I remember Keystone Light was the frat boys beer of choice in 1990. I heard back then that Keystone was to Coors what Busch was to Bud. I had totally forgotten about Keystone until the Stone lawsuit.

 

@jesskidden
Have you seen brew logs with recipes for American breweries like the ones that Ron Pattinson posts about for English brewerries? You have posted about the wide variety of beers available in the US both pre and post prohibition, I would be happy to do some legwork in my area if I knew where to look for some of those old recipes.

 

Hey I'm impressed my memory was that close! Though it's funny I was picturing myself drinking it when I was closer to 16 than 20.