RIP Old Tankard Ale

I heard the same thing from someone about the new Ballantine ales - IPA, Burton and Brewers Gold - but the person who told me wasn't sure if it was a Pabst decision or just that their local NJ Pabst distributor has stopped carrying them. (But, really, if those beers can't even sell in New Jersey... )

Hard to trace the availability of a small brand like Old Tankard through the decades - seems to me it was a sort of "regional" brand even though Pabst was a national brewery. Seems to have been brewed from the 1930s into the early 70s.

They claimed they built their Peoria Heights brewery post-Repeal specifically to be their "ale" brewery, (besides Old Tankard, there was also a shorter-lived Blue Ribbon Ale) and that closed in the early 1980s but I wonder if all the OTA came out of that facility, and it certainly unlikely that that 3m bbl. capacity brewery only brewed ale during most of it lifetime.

But there's no mention of Old Tankard in most of the Pabst promo material I've seen from the mid-1970s through the '80s. They did revive the brand in the early 90s when they started brewing Ballantine IPA in Milwaukee - the wording of the press release implied it might have even been the same beer (which the 70s version of OTA certainly was not).

 

Already?? Didn't it just get brought back last year or so?

That's disappointing. I never saw it around here, but I was hoping to get a chance to try it at some point.

 

“Regrettably, due to its poor sales performance, we have decided to discontinue our Old Tankard Ale. We would like to thank you for your support over the years, but unfortunately sales simply were not enough to continue producing the product.”

Has anybody seen these beers (Old Tankard, Ballantine IPA,…) promoted? Print ads in newspapers, magazines,…. Merchandising material (e.g., signs, big banners,…) at retailers? I have not seen anything at all to seriously promote these new brands.

A question: in today’s very competitive ‘craft’ beer market how does a brewery obtain non-poor sales performance unless they take measures to promote/sell their products?

Cheers!

 

I've always skipped over it but I'm going by tw to try and pick some up before it's gone lol

 

Generate online hype?

 

Kind of a shame. They bring back their classic beers that we enjoy and only keep them on the market for a short time.

 

No, I'm saying I heard it from a third party, quoting his retailer or local Pabst distributor. Got that Pabst email handy still?

It was a pretty nice beer but had nothing at all in common with Falstaff's Ballantine Brewers Gold Ale (P. Ballantine & Sons never brewed such a brand). But BGA never had much of a following, and only existed for a few years. It was a strange beer to resurrect.

There was a ton of Ballantine IPA POP material (so much that it surprised me "Pabst is spending money on advertising and promotion? Kalmanovitz must be spinning in his grave!") - two different glasses, posters, coasters, openers, wooden signs, T-shirts, hats, pretty ornate tap handles and they got lots of free press (Pabst's favorite sort of press, of course), pretty sure there were print ads, too, in beer publications.

But here's the thing - Pabst got lucky with the totally consumer-driven revival of Pabst Blue Ribbon - the company itself had little to do with it. After that, the two sets of new owners seemed to think that all they had to do was revive or resurrect other old brands they'd collected and the magic would just happen all over again. Schlitz Gusto, Primo, Old Milwaukee w/those non-commercials by W. Ferrell, Old Style returned to kraeusening, Stroh's, Rainier Ale, etc.

(They must be kicking themselves for letting Narragansett get away - a rare exception and a brand the current Pabst company owned even longer than PBR or most of their other portfolio brands).

 

You saw these items at retailers (e.g., beer stores,...)?

I can report even thought I read a fair bit of beer publications (e.g., Mid-Atlantic Beer News,...) I personally have not seen these ads? Did I just 'miss' them?

Cheers!

 

No sarcasm at all - I just want somebody else to do it 'cause I can't take the heartbreak (again)!

Members of the extended Haffenreffer family did get the brand back from Pabst and did --- briefly --- revive it (using the dba of Private Stock Brewing Co., contract brewed by F X Matt), but it died soon afterwards.

But the website lives on!
http://privatestockbrewing.com/

The same guy, Nick Shields, went on to create "Spiked Seltzer" and struck gold with that - by selling out to Anheuser Busch. I assume he still owns Haffenreffer trademark.

Yeah, a lot of the "other" current Narragansett beers have little to do with the original 'Gansett portfolio beers. I guess they don't want to spend money on buying or leasing more brand names when they're doing OK with what they got.

Pickwick Ale was great stuff (showed a real relationship to the Ballantine XXX Ale coming out of the Cranston brewery during the 70s) but not sure of the chronology of the trademark for the brand. IIRC Harpoon actually made Pickwick (draught only?) for the Boston market at some point - possibly the trademark had expired after Falstaff closed Narrangasett in the early 80s.

I asked Shields' company about reviving both Pickwick and Croft Ale (another fine hoppy "golden ale" coming out of Cranston in 16 oz. deposit bottles - might have been all the same stuff) but they thought there was no future in them since they'd been gone so long. Probably true.

 

I don't think the stores knew what to do with these beers, and got zippo help from the distributors, unfortunately. Does it belong in the craft section? Etc. And they weren't even featured in the sales sheets, at least not when I was asking my local to carry them. If you're going to introduce beers like this, you'd need to put a better plan into action, I'd think.

Oh, well. I really enjoyed the ones that I got to try, including the Old Tankard, so at least I got that out of the whole deal.

 

I really liked the Burton, but in hind sight only on bought it a few times (maybe twice).

 

Crap!! Never tasted Old Tankard Ale. Had my chance about two months back. My local Albertsons grocery had 2 or 3 cartons of cans on a top shelf but I passed it by. Told myself I'd try it later. May have missed a great ale and my only chance.

Cheers with tears!!

 

It really served a need in the market as well. At least you and I can get Yards, although they don't have a beer quite like it.