Ballantine - Frasier - Martin Crane

https://www.google.com/search?q=Frasier,+drank+"Ballantine+Beer,&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

https://www.google.com/search?q=Ballantine+"India+Pale+Ale"&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

The above links will clear things up for you.

Cheers!

 

Not really - since the many links from those simple Google searches (esp. the notoriously bad "Wikipedia" links) don't agree:

Those were 3 different products from P. Ballantine & Sons, and, by the 90s, from Falstaff.

I can't say I ever saw the show often, but I'm pretty sure it was Ballantine Beer, by then an economy brand from S&P (General/Falstaff/Pearl/Pabst). If it was available at all in the PNW by then, it could have been coming out of the Pabst-owned Olympia brewery in Tumwater, I suppose.

Addendum (found an image - clearly the "Beer"):

 

Its them Olympia Beer Artisions I tell ya, always confusing the issue with the facts!
Bad Wikipedia, bad Wikipedia... The Artisions have infiltrated Wikipedia!

 

Looks like we have a can match:

http://www.youbulkit.com/vintage-pull-tab-beer-can--3

 

Yeah, the same basic label design that was used by Falstaff and other the other S&P breweries, but not a "match" exactly - wouldn't have been a steel can or a pull tab by the 1990s (which is when the TV show was in production). Looks like S&P was brewing and canning Ballantine Beer in Tumwater in the late 1980s, labeled as coming from their General (aka "Lucky Lager") Brewing Co. subsidiary.

They'd closed the last General brewery in Vancover by '85. They shipped the guts to China and opened a "Pabst" brewery there. Some of the Newark, NJ Pabst brewery equipment, closed around the same time, also wound up in China.

 

Yeah I was focused on the label match.

Interstingly, thought while there's no way to tell for sure without having been there, but there is a possibility of a "match." Given TV production codes its not likely there was actually beer in that can so what may have been showing on the TV screen was a refillable TV prop acquired several years before the production of that particular show.

I don't personally know much about TV studios but having been into the prop room of a few live production theaters there can be a fascinating "collection" of stuff accumulated over several years and left behind from a variety of productions.

 

As pretty clearly proven by the production still posted by jesskidden, it was indeed Ballantine Beer that was the character "Martin Crane's" favorite on the show.
In one of the later episodes, he is even actually heard lamenting, with great sorrow, the fact that his favorite beer had been recently discontinued and was no longer available.

Regarding the prop cans seen in the episodes, they could possibly have been vintage cans but not necessarily so. I've worked as an actor for the past 40+ years and can definitely vouch for the skills of the prop departments on productions such as this. Actually, the show MAD MEN is a pretty good example (where they did a remarkable job of sourcing and/or reproducing the packaging from a variety of 1960s era products).

Unrelated bit of trivia for the über-hardcore beer geeks: indications are that the original Ballantine lager (at least as originally brewed in Newark for many decades) was actually fermented with an "ale" yeast strain...a different strain than they used for Ballantine Ale, but an "ale" strain nonetheless.