Genesee upgrade/expansion

I recently got a 4-pack of this and was pleasantly surprised. It tastes just as described and is very sweet, but in a good way.

 

Under a new "Genesee Brew House" line:

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I probably had the Honey Brown, and maybe the Irish Amber?, at some point but I was generally annoyed with Genesee in the '80s and '90s after what they did to Genesee 12 Horse Ale in the late 1970s and then buying the Koch brands (some of the most interesting beers coming out of a non-craft brewer in the early 1980s - at least, in the Southern Tier) and eventually dropping them all, except for turning Golden Anniversary into their discount brand.

Matt's Premium was my choice for an AAL when I lived in the area.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I contacted a couple of area stores and was told by both that they can only get the 6 packs of Cream Ale. If I ever make a trip back east I will be stocking up on Genny Cream Ale and Yuengling Lager!

 

JK, how did the Black Horse Ale compare to Ballantine XXX Ale?

Cheers!

 

Black Horse Ale had a very strange history. (And, no, it's not really OT - since Genesee did brew the Koch version for a few years after buying their brands in '84- the only other one they continued besides Koch Anniversary resulting in Genesee marketing both "Twelve Horse" and "Black Horse" Ales at the same time ) .

Black Horse Ale had been among the most advertised Canadian brands in the post-War US - a time when "Canadian" was still a big marketing image for many US ale brewers in the NE and along the Great Lakes, thanks to Prohibition and the Canadian beers (often with rumored very high ABV's) that flooded the US market - in some cases, faux Canadian labels brewed illegally in the US. For example, two of the few US-brewed ales with very wide US distribution in the post-Repeal era, Carling's Red Cap Ale and Drewry's Old Stock Ale, had Canadian origins.

So, in the late '50s when Dawes Black Horse Ale was owned by Canadian Breweries (which would be known as Carling-O'Keefe by the 1970s) they apparently let the rights to the brand name expire in the US - some sources have it that the brand was no longer brewed in Canada by then. The label was then resurrected by 3 US breweries - Diamond Springs, Lawrence, MA (best known for it Holihan's label), Fred Koch (Dunkirk, NY on Lake Erie) and Metropolis in Trenton, NJ (best remembered by it's later name, Champale, Inc) without any connection or payment to the Canadian owner, Canadian Breweries which, of course, had a US subsidiary- Red Cap Ale's brewer, Carling Brewing Co. It's unclear exactly how the 3 brewers divided up the label's ownership - Diamond Springs claims it was someone in "Buffalo" who connected them with the brand, and Dunkirk was near Buffalo.

The 2 Black Horse Ales I was most familiar with, Champale's and Koch's (Diamond Springs having closed in the early 70s, before I got to New England as a legal beer drinker) were both roughly in the US "golden ale" style, exemplified by Ballantine XXX Ale. I'd always heard that the NJ BHA was hoppier (and probably had much greater distribution since Champale was a half million barrel a year brewing company, but BHA was no doubt a small percentage of that and, damn, was it hard to find it fresh, even within a 50 mile radius. By the time I had steady access to Koch's they were owned by the UK's Vaux and had probably "tweaked" the recipe given those early years of the US's great beer re-awakening.

In my list of those great hoppy US golden ales of the 1970s and 80s, I'd have probably put both versions of BHA way behind the Ballantine ales - both XXX and and the short-lived Brewer's Gold - and the sister ales out of Falstaff/Narragansett - Pickwick and Croft, the Rheingold/Ortlieb/Schmidt's versions of McSorley's Ale and even Lord Chesterfield Ale (that era's version - sorry, I find the current version very disappointing as far as hop flavor and aroma go). I think I may have had Genesee's BHA but don't remember it. I could see them even simply relabeling their then-current version of 12 Horse Ale, which, by then, had also turned into a "Canadian" sort of golden ale, not very hoppy at all.

 

That's exciting for Genesee. Their craft beers have been worth a try, and the old reliables out taste anything in their price range. It is a shame those tanks could not be saved somehow.

 

So is it the same as it was 30 years ago? We used to drink a boat load of Genny Cream.

 

Those tanks are merely wrapped to look like cans - you can see the wrinkles in the photo...


Probably not manufactured to last many more years.

Parent company NAB did the same thing on some giant grain elevators in Buffalo- first painting them blue and then using plastic wrap for the labels to look like Labatt Blue cans.

(I read they were damaged in a storm last year but can't find the article now - it looks like the one on the right is missing most of the label).

Now these were giant cans done right

(unfortunately now replaced with the La Crosse Lager brand (is that stuff still around?), with the demise of Heileman Brewing Co. And they're not looking too good according to the street view on Google Maps.).

 

Even in NC one has to know where to find Genny Cream, as many grocery stores don't carry it any longer. I have learned which do, and even living with 20 craft breweries within 10 miles of my home, there is a 30 pack of Genny Cream in my 'beer fridge'.
Or it may be just a 'local' distributor/retailer issue here, but picking up a 30 pack for $13-14 is one reason to enter into the bowels of Wal-Mart. I'm sure the battle for shelf space in grocery chains beer corner is intense.