Beers You Took for Granted

Michelob lager was so good. As was Sam Adams Pale Ale. And Saranac Adirondack lager

 

May I say when Samuel Adams and Sierra Nevada use to make really really good seasonal variety packs? Now they all suck for the most part. Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale man.
Also the Rebel IPA series from Samuel Adams.
Honorable mention would be Leinenkugel’s Harvest Patch Shandy/ there good seasonal variety packs.

 

I miss having Yuengling. I make trips every so often to Ohio to pick up a pack. It was awesome having the t in a hot summer’s day.

 

Ithaca Flower Power. Oh how I loved this beer, I don't see it much anymore in my area like I use too. When I run across it now its months old. It seems to have fallen out of favor here.

 

There's a difference there. Samuel Adams still does the 4 seasonal variety packs where you get 1 or 2 new beers in each but Sierra Nevada has completely given up on the 4 seasonal variety pack format.

 

60 minute ipa. I first had it in 2012 and before that I was only drinking Budweiser and Rolling Rock. I have been chasing that dragon since. Nothing has ever compared to that first IPA sip ever. It’s incompatible and I’ll never taste that first sip ever again

 

ANDECKER

Back in the early 1970s it was always the brew I had on hand over the Christmas holidays , or give as gifts to friends or relatives. I just always thought it would be around.
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Andecker - Beer Supreme

 

Forgive me if someone already responded to this, but Red’s Rye is not distributed anymore (or so they told me but I did see some in a local store last year) because the taste that makes it so appreciated by so many people falls off fairly quickly when it is packaged. They have it on tap all the time at the brewery, and it’s consistently their best selling beer on tap.
All that stated, crowlers are available, just drink them quickly.
As to the Imperial Stout, yeah, that one I miss alot. Think I might just have one left.

 

The post by @Roadsnakes above got me pondering about two beers which I wish I could have tastes:

Pabst Blue Ribbon (technically Best/Pabst Select) as brewed in 1893

Below is from Wikipedia (with some emphasis in bold by me):

“The company has historically claimed that its flagship beer was renamed Pabst Blue Ribbon following its win as "America's Best" at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Whether the brand actually won an award in 1893 is unclear. Some contemporaneous accounts indicate that many vendors were frustrated by the fair's refusal to award such prizes. One account says that the only prizes awarded by the executive committee were bronze medals, in recognition of "some independent and essential excellence in the article displayed", rather than "merely to indicate the relative merits of competing exhibits". However, the beer had won many other awards at many other fairs – so many, in fact, that Captain Pabst had already started tying silk ribbons around every bottle.”

Who wouldn’t enjoy an award(s) winning beer!



Horlacher Perfection Beer

I never had the chance to drink Horlacher Perfection beer but I wish this beer could 'magically' come back. In the book The Great American Beer book published in August 1980, the author and many other members of his tasting team tasted hundreds (maybe thousands?) of beer brands and below is what was reported for this beer:

"Top domestic beer from the taste trials, one of America's best."



Cheers!

 

I second that. For me, Andeker was the best of the US lagers, a unique beer (virtual tie with Huber Augsburger which was more comparable to German lagers).

 

From my readings (and YouTube views) it seems that there are a lot of American style hoppy beers being made in the UK (e.g., England). Do these beers get exported to France? It would seem this might be a better 'deal' since the shorter transport distance would hopefully result in fresher beers.

Cheers!

 

We'll never know what original Blue Ribbon was like. But the 70s version was OK, and Pabst still brewed Andeker, Old Tankard, Bock, and Dark then, all of which were tasty. Not so good were Red, White, and Blue and Eastside.
I think I had an early 70s Perfection, and was not impressed. But it's possible that the beer had spent too much time on the shelves before we picked it up. Horlacher was mentioned in a 1983 Brewers Digest article about Prohibition (50 years after repeal). Horlacher was reputed to brew for the New York City Dutch Schultz organization.

 

Yeah but the Sammy packs in my opinion suck now. I miss six varieties and two of each. This years fall pack is already out and I think it’s weak. Boston lager, Jack-o, Octoberfest, Flannel Fest

 

I did this when I visited Vermont back in 2015. It was back when NEIPAs were a somewhat new thing, but I didn't stock up on them, just drank them in the moment. Instead got a bunch of beers that were nothing like what I could get in the DC area (saisons, sours, maple syrup beers, dry ciders).
Fun fact from that trip, visited the Leahy aquarium in Burlington and saw on the website that they had some bigass muskie there. It had since died or been released or something, and when I asked the docent about it, she said that it had been "retired". Met Patrick Leahy at "Taste of Vermont" the next year (I used to be a big deal in the cheese world), and told him about it. Two days later, the website was updated. Direct action works.

 

Anchor Steam Beer
Samuel Adams Boston Ale
Sierra Nevada Stout
Brooklyn Brown Ale

 

Flannel Fest as a Dunkel is encouraging from BBC. Hopefully Festbier makes a return, that beer was very solid.

 

Beers I took for granted? Probably those various styles of pint bottles from Ayinger and Samuel Smith that used to be easy to find in many craft beer stores 10 years ago, but now seem harder and harder to find.

 

I want to take a trip like that. I am a huge Civil War buff. I want to walk on the Gettysburg Battlefield. Yeah, I know that is a cliché thing, I mapped the route a while back, I wanted to travel. It would take me about three weeks and travel over 5000 miles. I would start across I90, go toward Michigan, drop down to Illinois, go Across to PA, go Up to Vermont, go down to Maryland, cross VA to Civil War Battlefields, across Tennessee to the Bourbon Trail, and then meander to Idaho, finding new and tiny breweries along the way.